Reddie Reasons.

Argh!

2011-05-04T10:55:00.009+05:30

This completely pissed me off. How much more dubious can it get? Really?

Report one: Imran Khan has begun his rant about there being no evidence that Pakistan was harbouring Osama Bin Laden:

"There is no answer to these questions and this simply allows allegations from the West and from India to go unchallenged that Pakistan has been protecting Bin Laden and other terrorists; that Pakistan knew he was here and kept him safe"

Report two: John O. Brennan, a senior counterterrorism official, said it was highly unlikely that Pakistan was not aware of Osama's presence in the country:

On Monday, Brennan suggested that the US would go further than just letting Pakistan ask those questions. He said it was "inconceivable" that bin Laden did not have a support network inside of Pakistan, though he stopped short of suggesting that the network involved government officials. "We are going to pursue all leads to find out exactly what type of support system and benefactors that bin Laden might have had," Brennan said.

Scholarships!

2011-01-28T01:12:00.004+05:30

Did I tell YOU that I have received TWO (!) scholarships from the adorable, generous, smashing, swell, the all-merciful ;) Charles. G. Koch Foundation to take Market Process Economics I and II from National University? Did I also tell YOU that I am also having an orgasm just thinking about the wonderful time I would have?

Oh yeah my lovely, lovely reader -- its all true! Enuff' said!

My Thoughts on Determinism and Free will.

2011-01-27T18:34:00.011+05:30

I think the debate about free will as generally portrayed is a false alternative.

On one hand, the determinists pretend to act as the defenders of science by attributing cause and effect to man's actions. They argue that all effects have causes and in order to be scientific about the whole issue, man's choices have to determined by antecedent causes and that they are determined by one's environment or one's genes.

On the other hand, the indeterminists argue that man's actions have no causes and that there is no reason that explains why a man acts in a particular fashion. Such a view of the debate leads one to think that man is either determined or that he is a freak.

I think this where Ayn Rand stands up and makes herself counted by not getting boxed into any of these alternatives.

Before she addresses the question of determinism or indeterminism, she first looks at the facts. Each of us face a fundamental choice even before one starts thinking about any issue (including the issue of determinism versus free will): the choice to focus or not. Focus doesn’t mean thinking. As Peikoff puts it, it is the "readiness to think". The choice to focus, however, requires effort -- every single time one chooses to activate one's equipment. It requires effort to start up the machinery and sustain it through out any thought process however long or short.

One can easily contrast such a phenomena from the phenomena of mental drift (where one may be reading a lengthy passage and not remember what was said in the preceding paragraphs) or from the phenomena of outright evasion (where one is required to think of some urgent, uncomfortable, pressing matter but puts it off actively by thinking of something less discomforting).

Once the primary choice is made, secondary choices readily follow. For instance, one may choose to activate one's equipment by focusing in a computer shop (primary choice). A person may then prefer to buy a Dell instead of Apple after giving thought to various considerations he might have on his mind (a secondary choice).

In order to unpack the debate on determinism, it is crucial to distinguish between the primary choice and the secondary choice. Given man’s metaphysical nature, the only thing necessitated by his nature that at every moment of his life is that he has the primary choice to think or not to do so. The content of the secondary choices which is made after the primary choice however, is not determined or neccessitated in the same way as the primary choice is.

Although one can ask why one preferred a Dell instead of Apple (a secondary choice), one cannot ask such a question about the primary choice itself. One cannot ask what antecedent factors neccessitated one to be in focus and expend effort. A person chose to be in focus because he wanted to be aware of reality or if a person was partially in focus, it was because he wanted to be partially aware of reality. Even though one accepts a reality oriented approach to life, the choice to focus can neither become automatic (my daily temptation to procrastinate is proof of it) nor can it become neccesitated by antecedent factors. Activating my faculty of thought is an act of choice and requires effort each time.

The debate about free-will should not be a debate about CONTENT, like something versus something else, but should be a debate about PROCESS, like a choice between something being activated and nothing being activated. Put another way, given human nature, the primary choice to think or not is NECCESITATED by antecedent factors (his nature), but the content of the secondary choices itself (whether to buy a Dell or an Apple) is not determined by prior causes.

Free-will is an axiom and therefore any determinist who tries refuting it has to fall into the same trap : reaffirming free will by denying it. When a determinist argues that determinism gives an accurate account of man, what he really means is that he has followed the evidence wherever it has taken him. On the basis of his thinking and evaluation, he beleives he is correct. But how are we to know that his position wasn’t necessitated or pre-determined by factors unknown to him (in his environment or his genes) which only give him the illusion that he has followed the evidence conscientiously? His adjudication of the matter then, however scrupulous, would be irrelevant.

Update: Minor edits
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The Ambani’s Fiasco

2010-07-16T14:49:00.002+05:30

After six years, the dust has finally settled between the warring multi-billion dollar Ambani brothers. Owing to their differences, the empire had been split into two with a scheme of demerger. Agreements were drawn between both the brothers that elder Mukesh Ambani could take control of the gas sector provided the younger Anil Ambani was given a fixed quantity of gas produced from the Krishna Godavari basin on previously agreed rates.

Everything seemed to go as planned until a committee led by the Finance Minister nullified the contract between the brothers since the price of hydrocarbons had shot up. The justification advanced by everybody supporting the move including the Indian Supreme Court is that natural resources belong to the people of the country and therefore the State has the right to regulate the price at which the gas would be sold.

Much debate has centered on the scheme of demerger between the brothers and a million other factors but the one percept deemed blasphemous to question in public policy debates is the notion that natural resources somehow belong to the people. Even critics of the government policy debate only how much government intervention is permissible but the governments' right to offshore property is considered self-evident. As Murli Deora, the Petroleum Minister commented, "I am appalled and disgusted at how these two brothers are fighting over something that belongs to the government and the people of India."

But does it?

Any natural resource belongs to individuals who have put in the necessary thought and effort to harness the otherwise unusable material lying in remote, inaccessible corners of the sea. Without the complex technical know-how of scientists or innovators and the courage of entrepreneurs to risk large sums of money in exploration and extraction, there is no potential resource itself, let alone the gas which we use to enrich our own lives. Consider oil. Before men understood how to process oil, oil fields far from being perceived as a boon, were looked upon as menace where one could neither inhabit nor cultivate. However, the ingenuity and labor of pioneers transformed a seemingly annoying liquid and a menacing natural "resource" to products that are used for human benefit.

Recognizing such facts, innovators should straightaway own the lands off shore where they have taken the pains to unlock a resources' potential with the help of astounding technical achievements and effort. As John Locke noted, it is only one's labor in a thing that "excludes the common right of other Men". However, such Lockean notions of property and ownership are lost out on today's socialist mentality.

Consider Production Sharing Contracts.

Production Sharing Contracts are contracts whereby the State reduces producers to mere contractors who invest their own funds into exploration, extraction and processing of any mineral or gas. If such an investment turns out to be a good one, the State acquires a substantial part of the end product (hence the name Production Sharing Contract) and compensates the producer by allotting him a part of the end product he made possible. Even from the minor share allotted to the producer, the government dictates to what sectors and at what price the gas may be sold. In other words, the right of ownership of the usable product is retained by the customer (the government) and the contractor is compensated by taking a part of the end product.

Morally, such horrible policies are based on the assumption that a businessman has a "duty" to give back to the society what he has taken in terms of natural resources. However, resources don't belong to any collection of individuals since none of them have put in an iota of effort to make it usable for human purposes. More importantly, one does not merely discover his wealth readymade at the bottom of the sea; one has to make it by investing decades of thought backed up by action to develop enough knowhow to tap the otherwise useless material resource.

Legally, such policies are based on the assumption that the government holds all natural resources in trust and that they should reach the "ultimate consumer" in each sector of the economy deemed important by the government. However, if consumers can claim a right over the products created – not merely discovered -- by entrepreneurs, it means that the entrepreneurs are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor. Ironically, the beneficiaries of the trust don't include producers because it doesn't recognize their right to rightfully trade the resources they have toiled to tap.

Although Courts can legitimately decide how to manage private property issues arising from off-shore land, policies such as the PSC's must be opposed since they are -- on principle -- hostile to the institution of private property itself.

Crazy Signage.

2009-10-12T19:38:00.004+05:30

These crazy signs on from all around the world are sure to crack you up. My personal favorite: WARNING Trespassers will be prostituted. Hehe.

Check em' out here!

Paul Van Dyk - Nothing but you (Cirrus Mix).

2009-10-06T21:40:00.001+05:30

I've never really been a fan of trans music but this one by Paul Van Dyk has an awesome tune.

Enjoy!

S.L. Kirloskar on Mahatma Gandhi

2009-10-02T22:25:00.002+05:30

Last night, as I was reading some of the blogs I follow, I found this fascinating account of India's history by one of first few entrepreneurs, S. L. Kirloskar. One incident in his life in particular caught my attention – his meeting with Mahatma Gandhi.

Today, October the 2^ndis Mahatma Gandhi's birthday and his birthday is being celebrated all over the country – especially in Gujarat which has kept the prohibition on liquor based on Gandhi's ideas, I thought it would be instructive to understand Kirloskar's evaluation of Gandhian philosophy and the reasons for his judgment.

Some background: During the Indian independence movement, Gandhi had popularized a small wooden spinning-wheel known as the Charkha which spun Khaddar cloth. His purpose in doing so was to discourage the use of foreign goods among Indians and promote local, Indian made goods. The Charkha in the early 1920's in India was a real patriotic symbol. Gandhi then introduced a competition in April 1931 to improve the charkha and laid down the rules of competition that the desired charkha "could be run by one person and which would produce 15,000 yards of 40-count yarn within 8 hours of working." An engineer working under Kirloskar's father had though of an ingenious simple machine doing exactly what was required by the competition. However, the engineer later received a letter informing him that Mahatma Gandhi "did not approve of the charkha". Kirloskar, his father, the engineer and an entourage went to meet Gandhi to find out why he had not approved of the Charkha in spite of the fact that it fulfilled all the requirement as laid down in the competition.

The following is the conversation that they had according to Kirloskar:

Gandhi: "Your charkha is good but I felt it is more like a modern machine than a simple device. I did not want a machine."

Mr. X: "You had stipulated how much output you expected from the new charkha, but you never laid down a condition that it should not look like a machine."

Gandhi: "I agree with you. But we must consider that it is the uneducated villager who is going to use this charkha. You know how scared villagers are of anything that looks like a machine."

Kirloskar's dad: "I know how scared the farmers get of new machines. But they also get used to them; and if their experience convinces them of their benefits they enthusiastically use machines. Farmer's now-a-days use bicycles, sewing machines and even pumping sets. So, in my opinion, once they know the benefits of this new charkha they will accept it."

Gandhi: "And supposing, your charkha breaks down?"

Mr. Y: "We guarantee immediate attention for its repairs and will also make the spare parts available"

Gandhi: "I know you would but what I had visualized was a Charkha of my dreams, so simple in construction and operation that even a village carpenter should be able to make one. I don't think your charkha is according to my dream."

Kirloskar: "Then the best way for you was to give us a blue-print of your Dream-charkha."

Kirloskar expands on the conversation elsewhere in his book saying:

"And here lay the heart of my difference of opinion with Mahatma Gandhi and his followers. Like Papa before me, I am, have always been and shall always be, a "machine man". I see the machine as the friend and helper of man, not as a demon devised for man's economic and spiritual destruction, which is the way Gandhians regard it. Our own experience had conclusively proved the benefits which thousands of farmers derived from our ploughs, our pumps, our crushers and shellers and other labour-saving devices. Were we now to scrap all these benefits and revert to the traditional reliance on human and animal muscle-power, with all its slowness and inefficiency? No. a hundred time No! On the contrary I was convinced that India needed machines and prime movers in thousands. And what applied to agriculture, I would equally apply to textiles. If pumps and cane-crushers and groundnut-shellers were good for our economy could spinning-frames and power-looms be bad? I could find no virtue in the slow and tedious spinning of yarn by human finger-power."

Personally, Gandhi has never had any influence on my thinking whatsoever. Call it blasphemy, but I really do think his philosophy is pretty nasty. I do not think that one should offer another cheek when one is slapped right across the face. I think evil should be labeled as evil and fought every step along the way. Imagine the absurdity of telling the Jews during WWII to surrender to Hitler, have their lives wrecked on the hope that Hitler the monster would feel any remorse and based on that remorse would stop the war and leave the Jews alone. Would anybody make such an insane claim? Well, the answer to that question is a resounding "Yes" and the man who offered that advice was unsurprisingly -- Gandhi himself. He said:

"I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions...If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."

Here is what Ayn Rand had to say about dealing with force and tyranny:

"When someone comes at you with a gun, if you have an ounce of self-esteem, you answer with force, never mind who he is or who's standing behind him. If he's out to destroy you, you owe it to your own life to defend yourself."

If Indians view the occasion of Gandhi Jayanthi with respect and hope – if it represents everything good Indians would like to see their country achieve, one should not only take the time to really get to know the facts about Gandhi but also take the time to understand and put in place a philosophy for living one's own life. My recommendation in the marketplace for a philosophy is definitely Ayn Rand. Pick up Atlas Shrugged and see what you think about it. (For sources on introduction to Ayn Rand's philosophy, go here.)

Without an understanding of the framework of moral principles grounded in reality, there is no way on earth to determine what is good or bad for you, let alone the whole nation. It is philosophy that we need the most today because if we default on that critical issue, there will be a million more Gandhi's on the way offering the same kind of advice they did the last time around. So, on Gandhi Jayanti, as ironic it may seem, do take the time to think who is right – Gandhi or Kirloskar. Do take the time to think as to what makes a thing or an ideology good or bad because in the long run – human life depends on it.

Today's Random Thought

2009-09-21T19:57:00.007+05:30

Mahatma Gandhi is known the father of India. In accordance with his philosophy, politicians have banned liquor in the State he was born. The man called for non-violence even in the face of evil. I think his claim amounts to, "Don't defend the good, don't kill for any cause even if barbarians initiate force."

Here is what Gandhi had to say to the British people when an invasion from Nazi Germany looked imminent:

Yeah right!

The BCCI bans galli cricket.

2009-09-07T00:48:00.002+05:30

Cricket is the most loved and followed game in India. It is probably the only sport that most Indian kids play after school. Many players who made it to the national team started out playing on narrow streets [gallis] in India. In this format, the game is usually played with a tennis ball so that people can play without using pads and gloves for safety. Even kids in my college play with a tennis ball. Just get a bat and a ball and we are good to go.

Here is the cracker: the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) has decided to ban all forms of galli, indoor games played by kids and adults alike with tennis, hockey or plastic balls!

An official said, ""We are specially warning children playing cricket without wearing shoes, pads and gloves, or using tennis balls or any non-cricket ball — stop it or face our fury, which will be unleashed ruthlessly, by placing a life ban on you, preventing you from watching any IPL matches, having your thumbs cut off if you persist, or your TV cables blocked out of all cricket telecasts,"

Somebody remarked a little while earlier that "It was always there openly in front of the public. The alphabet 'C' in BCCI stands for control…why cricket or cricketers need control, no one questioned. This is the logical end of it." I fully agree.

This is without reservation – crazy! Who the heck are they to tell me how to play a game cricket with a couple of my friends by setting rules none of players accept in the first place? Is it not total lunacy to hijack a game and use nothing but force to implement ones arbitrary wishes? What is even more surprising is the long line celebrities and cricketers endorsing such an absurd view. If somebody would have told me a few years ago that people -- and I mean the elite could defend such a preposterous view – I would have laughed hysterically at the speaker that it was impossible for so many people to give into such absurdities. After watching the global warming hysteria, I have come to see that most people have no limit for stupidity. Even by that account, banning galli cricket is a far cry.

It really is a mad, mad, mad, mad world!

It happened to me.

2009-09-06T23:47:00.002+05:30

I am really, really proud to announce that I have been accepted for the four year undergraduate program for Objectivism at the Objectivist Academic Center. It is "is currently the only academic institution to offer systematic instruction in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism." I was not accepted last year or even during this year's early application process. I was informed that I would be reconsidered for the regular deadline but I was pretty skeptical. The chances seemed slim when I was weighing it then but I think applying early was the one thing that really helped. Like most students, I have received a tuition waiver and a phone scholarship to cover my costs. I've told a few people at home about my acceptance and they don't really know what to make of it yet. I am not sure I do at this point!

On a different note, I was actually prepared to write the entrance for the next decade if I had to in order to gain that kind of necessary understanding. The course is really that good.

I am a pleasantly shocked with my acceptance. I read Atlas Shrugged in my first year of college when a friend told me that it was ranked second most influential book and that it was fiction. Who would imagine I would come this far! It is ironic that I read the book in Sector 24, Gandhinagar in the state of Gujarat in India where nobody would ever imagine a guy going nuts reading Atlas. Or maybe it is not so ironic because I read it in my first year of college wherever the college was. It really depends on which way you look at it. Another contextual absolute.

I am overjoyed with the prospect of working the staff at the OAC when I go to law school in the US next year. It is kind of hard to digest the fact that I don't have wonder about what courses to take next or whether I will chew on the material presented to integrate challenging ideas. Moreover, if college class rooms are filled with ideas such as "right to food" and whatnot, one has to ask: if I don't get to hear the truth in class, then where the heck am I supposed to go? Happily for me, I simply have to go class and report back to the faculty at the OAC with a remark to the effect of "Here is what happened in class" and they will help me integrate all the cool stuff. Is that awesome or what!

I still do have my doubts about how well I'll do in the course itself. I don't think I have ever taken a course which required me to do stuff like assess the viewpoints of major philosophies and then defend my view on the subject. Hell, most of my education consisted of memorizing stuff that was way too soporific. I am mildly tensed how the training will turn out to be and insanely happy for the opportunity provided. I will, without a doubt, do my very best in this course.

Overall, I am really glad to make it and am also looking forward to improve my writing and sharpen my skills on Objectivism. It's a rare opportunity to study with the leading and rational intellectuals of our time. To put it another way, Objectivism is being served on a platter – if you are thinking of applying, DO IT!

Here is a video by the Ayn Rand Institute outlining the basic structure of the course –

Gujarat’s Prohibition.

2009-08-30T19:13:00.003+05:30

I have been schooling in the state of Gujarat in India for the last four years. It is one of the few places in India that still has a prohibition on consuming liquor. If you are wondering whether liquor is available contrary to established laws then yes – it is available and it is no secret. Historically, the ban was in place before India's independence and has continued to stay in place in an attempt to uphold the "values" of Mahatma Gandhi's. The man also wanted to ban beef and whatnot.

After consuming illicit liquor, about 136 people had died last month in the State's capital city. Critics have zeroed the cause of death to the prohibition imposed by the State. The prohibition outlaws the manufacture and sale of liquor in the State. Those who cannot afford the smuggled liquor fall back on illicit liquor which is literally speaking – the highway to hell. Smuggles don't face competition on a free market and as a consequence don't face bankruptcy. Competition absent, they have little or no thought for their reputation when they end up killing people with adulterated liquor. Most people who would have otherwise provided quality booze disappear because smuggling liquor is illegal and even face a death penalty for bootlegging. At least two commissions, one headed by Justice M N Miabhoy and another later by Justice A A Dave had said that prohibition has not worked well.

Undeterred, the ministers are coming up with twisted arguments to still keep the prohibition. For instance, the Ministers have stated repeatedly that deaths by illicit liquor have occurred in other parts of the country and are not exclusive to Gujarat. However, this does not provide any indication as to why the deaths happened in the first place. I think most people consume illicit liquor in other parts of the country for the same reason they consume it in Gujarat where there is a prohibition. In the case of Gujarat, it is smuggled liquor and in the case of the rest of the country its taxed liquor. In most cases, the taxes imposed on liquor are prohibitively high for the purpose of "constructive social change" or whatnot resulting in the fact that not many can afford safe liquor and end up drinking illicit liquor which is available for a cheaper price.

I think the minister's observation that people elsewhere [not living under prohibition] are also dying from consuming illicit liquor has profound significance – just not in the way he would like us see. The prohibition in Gujarat forces people to consume adulterated liquor if they wish to have a drink by eliminating competition while taxes in other States force people to resort to adulterated liquor which would not have been the case in the absence of taxes. In both the cases, the principle that the government shouldn't dictate the way I choose to live my life is conceded. The only real difference between both the cases is that of measurement or of how much intrusion by the government is acceptable.

The question debated is not whether the government should violate both the rights of the seller and the buyer by making it impossible for them to agree to a certain price but what is being debated is how to curb the deaths by illicit liquor while ignoring the cause that led to the deaths itself: government intervention. Without the prohibition and the taxes, buyers would be left free to buy safe liquor provided by sellers. If the seller sold adulterated stuff, he would be held liable and charged accordingly in a Court of law. Cheaper prices means buyers would have more money left to invest or spend elsewhere entailing more jobs and more wealth for all.

Any of this doesn't mean that one should associate themselves with alcoholics and their likes in a free society. To the contrary, one is free not to associate with or not finance their booze. But when the government steps in enacting laws prohibiting trade in liquor – the field is left open for all sorts of twisted individuals to sell illicit liquor without any regard to reputation of their product nor to human life.

The only real alternative to death is the path of freedom. The path where people are left free to think and then act accordingly to one's highest judgment. Man doesn't live by means fangs, claws or the legs of a cheetah. His sole means of survival is thought followed up by action. The government can choose to ban the liberty to think and act on it but it cannot choose to escape the consequences of its policies. Man is man and if one ignores the requirements of human life then death necessarily follows.

The Nature of Miracles.

2009-08-22T03:10:00.003+05:30

Every time I discuss the issue of religion with any non-Objectivist, I usually cover all the bases I understand best: identity, causality, the "super" natural and mans means of knowledge – revelations v. reason. However, my favorite ground for disqualification of the notion of a god lies in the nature of miracles.

Most people confuse miracles with magic tricks. They confuse illusory tricks with metaphysical impossibility. Could magicians really get a normal rose to speak? Could Jesus really break a normal piece of bread and break into a thousand parts? No, the discussion here is not about whether they have found a special rose that could speak or special bread that would break itself into a thousand different pieces. If there was really something special about the thing, then why would such an act even qualify as a miracle? It doesn't. And it doesn't because there is nothing "miraculous" about things acting the way they are supposed to act. In essence, a miracle has to this: It has to make a thing act in violation of its properties, its identity, its nature. In technical terms, it has to violate causality. It has to make a thing act against its nature – it would require that a normal rose speak instead of blooming and that a regular piece of bread break into a thousand parts.

As Greg Perkins puts it in his great essay, "In short, a genuine miracle requires a thing to act against its own identity—to have a contradictory identity—to literally not be what it is, which is incoherent."

As far as the magicians go, any successful magician will tell you that magicians have to closely conform to the identity of things to perform a trick. If he expects a heavy rock to fly in spite of gravity expecting a miracle in the course of a trick, he will without doubt end up making an ass of himself.

Update: A few corrections.

An Awesome Commercial.

2009-08-16T01:23:00.002+05:30

I've always been a sucker for creative commercials and this one by BMW definitely makes the cut.

The Cheapest Car In The World.

2009-08-16T00:51:00.004+05:30

Enter the cheapest car in the world. TATA Motors has recently announced the release of its car, the TATA Nano which has caused quite a flutter among the middle class families in India. It costs roughly about $2500. The great news for most of them is that people will now switch from using motorbikes to cars. Unlike Western countries a lot of folks drive around on bikes in India because it is cheap and gets you from point A to point B. It's great news for them.

Also, the Nano is quickly becoming the symbol for progress. A few hate it because it will cause even more global warming and a larger group hates it becuase it will end up clogging already overcrowded roads owned by the government. A friend of mine had a sharp retort for the later complaint -- "Would you privatize regulated roads or regulate private car companies -- how would you roll?" A no-brainer by all means!

Here is a review by Autocar

The bizarre airlines “bailout”.

2009-08-05T19:18:00.002+05:30

There have been a series of bizarre events over the past few days in the Indian domestic airline sector. What triggered it off though was not. The government owned airline, Air India which was facing dire losses asked the government for a bailout for about Rs 20,000 crores. The government was aware of the losses and the finance ministry made it mandatory for all government officials to fly Air India while travelling on work, on both domestic and international sectors. A couple of days later the airlines popped the big question – "Could we get some of that booty you stashed away from the taxpayers?" The aviation minister, Praful Patel went to the extent of saying that a government bailout was on the cards for Air India with the only condition being that the government would only dole out a fraction of the requested amount.

Watching this trend, the domestic private airlines jumped in and apparently asked to be bailed out with the ultimatum that if the government failed to bail them out – all services were slated tp be terminated on August 18^th or worse – even indefinitely if the government refused. Barely a day after the airline chiefs announced that they wouldn't fly on August 18, Delhi based low-cost carrier Indigo withdrew from the industrial action. The government flatly refused to yield and even cut Air India's bailout "which was on the cards" and the other airlines gave in.

In my opinion, the airlines demand does not even constitute a bailout in the first place. Responding to a question in an interview Ajay Singh, Director, Spice Jet said,

"Let me just clarify. You said when introduced the story that the airlines were looking for a bailout. The airlines are not looking for a bailout. Essentially, what the airlines are saying is that let us create an environment for aviation in which the cost of aviation in India is comparable to the cost of aviation anywhere in the world. Today, airlines in India are paying 60-70% higher tariff on aviation turbine fuel (ATF). Sales tax is averaging 26-30% and we are requesting that this sales tax be put in a level of which is sustainable and which is comparative to any other airline in any other part of the world. Similarly, airport charges landing and parking fees are very high. There is a new ground handling policy, which increases the cost of aviation further. We believe that we should be in terms of cost put at the same level as airlines in other parts of the world."

The private airlines are not asking for a positive – i.e. a sum of money from the government but on the other hand are asking for a negative – to cut back breaking taxes which are making it impossible for the aviation industry to stay in business. Praful Patel, Minister of State for Civil Aviation said, "The government understands the difficulties of the sector and also would see whichever way we can be of help. We understand aviation is very important to the economic development of the country but to say we will cause inconvenience to the passengers and to the people, I think, that is not acceptable." If the government really understands the difficulties of the sector and would like to be of service, why don't they simply roll back all the crushing taxes they have enacted in the first place?

The answer to that would most likely be that government needs the revenue from taxes to fund all the programs that they would enact in favor of the "public good". Even speaking only in terms of free market economics and "public good", one could point out that taxes have the seen and the unseen effects as illustrated by Frédéric Bastiat in the Broken Window fallacy. Were the money from the airlines not snatched away then they could have more money to spend on building their business which would result in creation of more jobs, cheaper air fares and more "public good" than any government program could ever attain. If anyone ever doubted the efficacy of freedom in a market, one simply has to look at India before and after 1991 – and what's more, all the fruits were a result of only partial freedom that was allowed to seep in.

But the good as the minister puts is that the individuals in the airlines industry should self-sacrificially work themselves and run a business that is hardly profitable but what's "unacceptable" in the whole matter is that they may "cause inconvenience to the passengers and to the people". Mr. Minister, could we please ask how do you expect any good if you pursue policies that are contrary to man's life such as the initiation of force against private individuals who decide to sell their product at a particular price? What is "unacceptable" then is for people to ask the question: "What's in it for me?" As long as the airline industry is willing to slave away, devoid of any profit to their own selves, for the general public – they are moral and good and to the extent that they would like benefit from their own actions, they are immoral or at best amoral. I think this is the root cause that is literally plaguing mankind on earth. All welfare programs that are eating away the freedoms of individuals eventually justify themselves that they are noble because the beneficiary of one's actions is somebody else.

If the airlines are to stand a chance the next time around, it is the principled stand against such arbitrary power they must take. They should do precisely what they are omitting to do now – assert that the governments function is to protect individual rights from agencies that initiate force which includes the government also. If the principle is conceded that the government may initate force and collect taxes – the question then is only how much should it tax or take away. How much of taxation is permissible is only a measurement with the principle conceded. They should not employ pragmatism by conceding that such taxes are great in theory but impractical in reality. It is not merely the "non-initiation of force principle" that they should invoke but also assert that being moral consists of acting in a fashion that promotes man's life and that anything that thwarts it is evil – and deserved to be condemned to be so. As Leonard Peikoff puts it his famous essay, "Health Care is not a Right",

"This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan—not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it—to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance."

Russell Peters is hilarious!

2009-08-05T04:22:00.004+05:30

Russel Peters, the Indian stand up comedian -- plainly speaking -- is funny as hell. He has been my favorite stand up comedian ever since I watched his show the first time. One of the greatest things he ever did, I think, was to get Indian people interested in stand up comedy. At least I do not recall most Indians interested in comedy before they watched him. Yeah, Chris Rock is pretty funny and was around for a while but does not make the cut in India by a far cry.

He is especially great with the Asian and Indian people -- and he is frickkin hilarious. Here are a few. Enjoy!

Group or Arrange?

2009-08-01T19:10:00.004+05:30

I have been working for my LSAT's from the Logic Games Bible lately and found something interesting I thought I would share. When a problem discusses linearity [arranging or ordering given variables into fixed positions] and grouping [which sets rules as to which variables can go together and which cannot or which variables can be chosen and which cannot be chosen with a given variable], do you first order the variables in accordance with the linear rules or group with the grouping rules?

The answer to that is one has to group before arranging the variables. Taking an example from the book – if I win ten tickets to the Super Bowl I don't start off by putting people in the second, the fifth or the tenth seat. Instead I would first select the group that I intend to invite and then arrange if necessary. Thus, one always groups before starting out with the linear component of the game.

Explaining such an abstract principles with reference to a simple example is really, really smart.

Saint Joe's Magic.

2009-07-31T04:45:00.003+05:30

The solo by Joe Satriani in his song, "Flying in a blue dream" is right on. He makes it seems like the guitar is a part of his body -- he is just so comfortable with it!

One of the reason I love this song is not only because it consists of many amazing guitar solos but also because it has an overall tune to it. There is a relatively slower "chorus solo" that he keeps reverting back to after each fast one. The mix makes the music all the more amazing.

Enjoy!

A Great Review

2009-07-30T19:39:00.005+05:30

The article, "Property and Principle: A Review Essay on Bernard H. Siegan's Economic Liberties and the Constitution" by Larry Salzman totally kicks ass.

Check it out!

Update: If anyone is interested in property rights and legal history, do take a moment to check out the footnotes -- there are some great recommendations out there.

Genda Phool

2009-07-26T20:04:00.005+05:30

I usually don't listen to Bollywood music but the song, Genda Phool from Delhi-6 is pretty awesome. The song is originally a folk song from the Chhattisgarh region in India and was improvised for the movie. As this author puts it, it is "a well known Chhattisgarhi folk song, performed in almost all Chhattisgrahi marriages. The pains of a newly wed daughter-in-law is being depicted through this song."

Enjoy!

Hilarious Stuff in the Mail.

2009-07-22T16:19:00.008+05:30

Sardar Jokes are very common in India. They are the equivalent of Blonde Jokes in the United States.

Wikipedia states, "Many of the Sardarji jokes are variations of other ethnic jokes or stereotype jokes. Some of them also depict Sardarjis as witty. Researcher Jawaharlal Handoo associates some traits of the Sardarji jokes with the stereotype of Sikhs being associated with jobs where physical fitness is more important than knowledge of the English language or intellect.

Although such jokes have come under criticism from the Sikh community, it was said that the jokes were best said by Sardar's themselves presenting Khushwant Singh as an example . As Vir Sanghvi writes, "The Sardarji joke, like all ethnic humour, is part of a good-natured Indian tradition and hardly an example of any kind of anti-minority feeling."

I received a couple of great Sardar jokes in the mail and couldn't resist posting them. For the record, I obviously don't see any merit in the claim that Sardar's are of low intellect and whatnot. I have known many of them who are intelligent and confident people.

Here are a few:

A Teacher lecturing on population - "In India after every 10 seconds a women gives birth to a kid."
A Sardar stands up- "We must find her and stop her!."

Teacher: "I killed a person" convert this sentence into future tense.
Sardar: The future tense is "You will go to jail".

A Sardarji is travelling for the first time in a plane, headed for Bombay. While the plane is landing, he starts shouting "Bombay, Bombay!".
The air hostess says, "Be silent".
Sardaji says, "OK", and starts shouting "ombay, ombay".

Books On Islam In India.

2009-07-20T21:14:00.002+05:30

Every once in awhile, people encounter works of art or new knowledge which makes them pause, think and admire. One of the symptoms of such an encounter is when a person can't stop talking about it or literally lecturing friends about the profound effect of new knowledge and the anticipation of all such effects it may have on man's life. My first such encounter without doubt was when I borrowed a copy of Atlas Shrugged from one of my seniors. I couldn't contain myself, let alone telling my friends of how great the experience was. I was thrilled, exalted and found tears running down my cheeks in the college library out of all the places in the world. I obviously wouldn't say that I understood the whole book the first time around but even the inkling that such knowledge existed gave me great joy. Ever since, there have always been such pauses; the difference has only been in the intensity or the measurement of such pauses – but the essential principle of furthering human life was always present.

I bring all of this up only because I've been encountering such a phase since last night. I can't stop recommending a couple of books to all and any Indian who wants to protect a semblance of a civilized society which is at great stake today – from Islamic totalitarianism. However, there are many Muslims and non- Muslims around us who would like to challenge the facts itself and proclaim that Islam is a peaceful religion and that Prophet Muhammed is a great man. If you've gotten into an argument with any Muslim about the nature of Islam, you would notice that he will inevitably allege that any verse in the Quran which propagates violence against non-believers is read "out of context" or is taken from some sort of Zionist sites. The argument in most cases gets personal and name-calling is often resorted to. John David Lewis has written an excellent piece on one such onslaught he encountered. While one is debating the need to attack Islamist Iran, the Muslim stops his opponent and tells him that he does not know the nature of Islam or Islamic theology. According to his version, Islam is a peaceful creed and Prophet Muhammed was a virtuous man. To any objection you raise you will be told that you are quoting the passage out of context and misrepresenting a peaceful religion. If you tell him about the slaughter of Bani Quraidha tribe where 900 Jews were killed in broad daylight, he will teIl you that the Prophet only did it because the tribe engaged in mutiny by negotiating with the enemies. If you cite a verse that says do not take non-beleivers as friends, he will say that the Prophet only meant "do not take them as allies" and not "do not take them as friends". If you tell him the doctrine of Taqqiya -- the order that one can lie to further Islam -- he will tell you that only the Shia's engage in Taqqiya and that Sunnis don't. I for one am not prepared for a strident defense of Islamic jihad and Sharia law. From the material I have read, I understand that the Prophet killed non-Muslims if they refused conversion. I see Muslim women everyday wearing burqas which cover their body from head to toe. But no matter what objection you raise, you are always quoting the passage "out of context" and sometimes the even worse "You are not a Muslim so you don't know".

I think the same trend occurs in the global warming propaganda. Mainstream media is full of the "science" behind the global warming theories and how certain it is that we are going to die if we continue to progress. Such claims give it the semblance of genuine facts.

Although it's impossible to become a philosopher, climatologist and a scholar in Islamic theology in a specialized society, I think one needs to spend at least sometime evaluating these claims for one selfish reason only: self-defense. Our culture is full of nonsensical ideas and weeding such ideas out requires that one seek out facts that one has to process to ascertain the truth of such claims. One can do as John David Lewis did. "In answer," to an angry questioner Mr. Lewis writes, "I re-read a series of quotes in which Islamic leaders—as well as a young girl on Lebanese television—call for jihad, war, and death; and I pointed out to the monologist that he must be quite angry at these Muslims for their incorrect view of jihad. But instead of being angry at those who give his presumably peaceful religion a bad name, he condemned me for reading their quotes. This is evasion par excellence—to condemn those who raise Islam's violent past and present rather than have to face the fact that the vision of idyllic peace that one associates with one's religion has no basis in reality." On the issue of global warming, Yaron Brook does a great job.

Of course, if one finds a field to be of particular interest, he can delve into the issue. I think the real challenge is to identify, narrow down one's interests and then really nail those issues down. As for me, I have lived in India and had many, many Muslim friends as a kid. This documentary opened my eyes to Islamic totalitarianism and was a rude shock – to say at best. Ever since, I have been following people like Robert Spencer and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I have been thinking about pursuing and investigating Islam and it has been quickly developing into a hobby of mine. I have decided that apart from studying Objectivism I would also like to study Islamic theology and history to the extent that I can.

Last night, after a few Google searches, I found this page which hosts free e-books on the nature of Islam. It piqued my attention because a few of the books which are offered are about the Jihad in India. Although our first Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru, was adamant that after the Muslim invasion, Hindus were treated properly and that the Mughal rulers were peaceful, there was a blood bath in India. Two of the authors I had wanted to read – K.S Lal and Seetha Ram Goel – were among the e-books. Here are a few I plan to read in the next couple of days:

The Calcutta Quran Petition by Sita Ram Goel
Indian Muslims – Who Are They by K.S. Lal
The Legacy Of Muslim Rule in India by K.S Lal
Muslim Slave System In Medieval India by K.S Lal

I think my real education in Islamic history will come from Scott Powell in his A First History For Adults which I plan to take in the next year. In the meantime, I am going to do what I can to further my values. I think these books should be compulsory reading to any Indian if he wishes to understand the Kashmir issue or the string of bombings in the name of Allah because such issues can be sanely understood only when one looks into the theory that's behind such atrocious acts: Islam.

I welcome any book or course suggestions for beginners in the study of Islam.

Rock N' Roll Queen.

2009-07-18T03:19:00.003+05:30

Here's a fast number that has been buzzing in my head for the past few days. It's from the movie RocknRolla.

The Man With A Beer.

2009-07-17T17:19:00.005+05:30

Here's a picture of me drinking beer from a couple of months ago.

Loving Life: The Morality of Self-interest and the Facts that Support It

2009-07-16T22:08:00.006+05:30

I have recently finished reading Craig Biddle's book, "Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It" and loved it. I think it should be compulsory reading for any just-discovering Objectivist who is looking to understand and integrate the philosophy of Ayn Rand into his life. I've read a lot of Biddle's articles from his quarterly journal,The Objectivist Standard and think of his work as completely awesome. He specializes in bringing complex abstract problems to the readers in extremely simple terms. This book was the first book of his I've ever read and really enjoyed it.

I had written sometime earlier that, "What we need today is not just a defense of the free market from economists; people like Henry Hazlitt and Von Mises did that decades ago but we still see socialism and fascism around us every day. It is the notion of altruism that we need to dismantle and bomb away. Until it is accepted that a person has a duty to live for somebody else, the growth of the mixed economy will not stop nor the growth of regulations until we get to a point of no return. To fix it, its not just free market economics we need but cultural change that will show that a person should be selfish and pursue his chosen values as he sees fit."

Craig Biddle does exactly that. He demonstrates that morality is not a matter of divine revelation, social convention or personal opinion-but, rather, is the factual requirements of human life and happiness. My favorite parts from his book are the early chapters where he is setting the context of the rest of the book. He starts off by explaining the false alternative of religion v. subjectivism and very plainly and clearly reasons that both – religion and subjectivism – uphold sacrifice as the moral virtue and selflessness as the moral ideal.

But what I take away from the book – the thing that made the cut – was his explanation of the is-ought problem and the nature of values. I had never been aware of the is-ought problem or David Hume's theory until now. The theory says that one can never go from the realm of facts to the realm of values – that there is nothing in the what is that tells us the what we ought to do. As Biddle puts it, "But reason allows us to identify facts and only facts, which alone does not seem to tell us about anything about what we morally ought to do. There simply is no fact labeled "ought" out there." If one witnesses a murder, then the relevant facts are that one man is stabbing the other while the other is trying to resist or run away. Hume asked, in essence, where is the notion or concept good in facts? How does one get from facts to values? By analyzing such a premise, Biddle sets a context to the discovery of Ayn Rand and why her discovery was so fundamental in nature. The answer to the is-ought problem lies in the nature of values.

Biddle notes that Ayn Rand did not start out by asking what are values but asked why does man need values in the first place? The need for values arises from the fact that life – any life is conditional. The notion of good stems from acknowledging this fact and doing everything that sustains and promotes life. The only morality that grasps the fact that genuine happiness comes from the achievement of one's values is Ayn Rand's theory of selfishness. The notion of value is not a primary; it presupposes the questions: value for what? and value to whom? Rocks, for example, don't value staying in one piece or not whereas I definitely do. I value food and shelter precisely because my life is ultimately at stake. It is precisely because one's ultimate value -- life -- is at stake – that at each moment one may or may not exist – one has to take life affirming actions if they seek the stuff of good living. The standard for which one judges a thing to be good or bad is: man's life. Thus, all that promotes man's life is good for man and everything hinders it is bad for man.

The other question a value presupposes is a value to whom? I was always unclear what value to whom precisely meant and Biddle gave me a lot to chew on and process. Biddle writes, the question value to whom, put another way is asking: Who should be the beneficiary of values? Should the beneficiary of values be the subject himself or some other person or entity? If we are to take actions that promote life we must grasp the fact that life is the attribute of an individual. To promote life, the beneficiary of a value should be the individual himself. The morality that holds that the individual himself is the beneficiary of values is the morality of rational egoism.

Resolving the is-ought gap, Ayn Rand wrote, "The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do." In other words, she said that concept of values like all other concepts is the grasp of certain facts: it is the fact that life is conditional that make the transition from facts to values – possible and necessary – if one chooses to live.

If one chooses to remain in existence, then one must use the faculty of reason that arranges the data gathered from our senses in conceptual form, by the method of logic. Reason, like life, is the attribute of the individual since it is only the individual who can observe, think, make deductions and understand the world around us. If the individual chooses to sustain his life, then, in short, he must be productive. I really enjoyed Biddle's desert island examples to concretize higher abstractions. On the point of productivity, if one were on a desert island one would have to produce to live, the relationship with reality doesn't change even in a specialized society because one still has to produce to live. Other lively examples involving desert islands scenarios occur when he explains the nature of rights and the requirements of a civilized society. Desert island examples, I think, reduces the perceptual data one has to hold in their RAM thus making the reasoning easier to follow.

The chapter on Objective Moral Virtues is wonderfully written and is filled with examples underlying the principle that one can never fake reality and get away with it. The primary virtue is rationality. As Miss Rand puts it, "it is the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action." Since rationality as such does not offer specific guidance, it is narrowed down into other virtues like independence, productiveness, integrity, justice, honesty and pride Examples given range from the dishonest manager who occasionally promotes his employees on the basis of seniority or gender or race and to the "selfish" activity of cheating on a test. The book does a great job of analyzing higher level abstractions and concretizing them into great examples.

Loving Life engages and introduces complex principles for readers who have no prior knowledge of philosophy. If anybody is looking for a genuine book on self-improvement, this is it.

[Update: The first two chapters of the book are available for the subscribers of The Objectivist Standard here and here.]

That LSAT thing.

2009-07-12T21:16:00.006+05:30

Tomorrow is Day 1 of the LSAT preparation in the college library. I have studied some for the LSAT's already and there is a long way to go. The whole test comprises of four sections with equal marks each.:

Logical Reasoning [takes up 50% of the test]
Logic Games [25%]
Reading Comprehension [25%]
All the marks are calculated on a scale of 120 to 180. Basically, there are four sections of about 25 questions each -- and to get a good score one has to get about 20 questions right on each section. That's 80 out of 100 questions. The test takers are advised to take a sample test before starting any prep. I scored about a 140 in them and that's only getting 40 answers correct! I did decent in the Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension section but did awful on the Logic Games section. I am confident I'll do well in all the sections except Logic Games. Gives me the jitters. If I plan to do well, then I'll have to really well on the other sections if I am to cut some slack on the Logic Games thing.

It's about four hours of study per day from tomorrow and I have some real muscle flexing to do.

College Blues.

2009-07-09T13:56:00.003+05:30

I am back in college after the summer break. I've done some reading, listened to the podcasts of the Objectivism seminar and worked some on my LSAT's at home. I am in my final year of college and life here is just too boring! We just have a lecture a day which ends at 10am and we are free the rest of the day. The last I heard, people go to work at 10 in the morning and here we are – done for the day. The final year students have a pretty light study load. There are some projects to be submitted, a few reports on the forthcoming Court visits and that's that. We've been settling in for the last week and I have watched the show, Dexter and played loads of poker with my friends. I think this is just the beginning; seniors end up getting so bored in the final year that they organize cricket matches to pass time.

Happily for me, I have my LSAT's to nail this semester so I won't be quite as jobless as my batch mates are. I plan to start studying in the college library for the next few weeks and do about 25 hours of studying per week.

I've recently seen a pair of Vibram Five Fingers at NoodleFood and absolutely loved them. Also Richard at Free The Animal has an interesting post on walking and why Five Fingers does a great job at it. I usually wear flip-flops to almost everywhere I go; I just love the comfort they offer and also are so easy to take off and put on. But Five Fingers is something else. The safety of a second layer of skin and the feel of walking barefoot at the same time must feel just awesome. Great pair of shoes!

Here is a great song by Kings of Leon called Notion. I love that tune.

Great workout songs.

2009-06-29T23:04:00.002+05:30

Anyone who reads my stuff knows I am a sucker for good music and that am always on the lookout for more. Scott Colby, the creator of The Abs Expert, has put up a post of his favorite 21 workout songs here. Be sure to check out the comments for recommendations from his readers too!

Flippin' Stuff

2009-06-26T01:38:00.001+05:30

'I've never cooked before but the prospect of flipping omelet's sounds way too coool!

Two excellent pieces.

2009-06-24T02:01:00.005+05:30

I've received my copy of the latest edition of The Objectivist Standard and I couldn't resist recommending two excellent articles in it.

The first is "Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution" by Thomas A. Bowden [accessible for free]. It surveys the dissenting opinion of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in the case of Lochner v. New York. The article introduces the reader to early 20th century New York and the Bakeshop Act of 1895. The case challenges one of the first few regulations that were set on bakery shop owners. "The Act made it a crime for the owner of a bakeshop to allow a laborer to work more than 10 hours in one day, or more than 60 hours in one week." Lochner, a bakery owner was found guilty for violating the provisions of the said law. He decided to challenge it on the ground that his contract rights were being violated. Although his claim was rejected by the lower Courts, it was upheld by the Supreme Court -- on fickle grounds conceding the principle of liberty. Justice Holmes reframed the issue and asked a more fundamental question: What if, the constitution doesn't specify the relationship between the State and the individual itself? As he saw it, it is the opinion of the majority that subjectively shapes and shifts the law and that the constitution does not support any political theory.

Each time, the validity of the constitution is thwarted for the opinions of the majority, I find myself asking, "What is the whole point of writing a constitution in the first place?" The purpose of a constitution is to limit the power of the majority -- to make sure that democracy or mob-rule does not exist. To claim that a constitution does not limit the power of the government is absurd; it means annihilating the essence of the document while retaining the word. It is absurd to deny that Americans do not have individual rights even when the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness are clearly enumerated.

I highly recommend the article or maybe it is the fact that I am a law student that I could not let it pass without mention.

The interview I recommend is, "An Interview with a "Capitalist Pig " Jonathan Hoenig on Hedge Funds, the Economic Crisis and the Future of America". Until I'd read this interview, I had absolutely no idea what a hedge fund was and never really understood what "speculating" was all about. Although it is relatively easy to prove that the financial mess was not caused by capitalism (thanks to Yaron Brook), it gets pretty tough to really understand and comprehend the articles and posts that delve deep into the economic crisis. However, this interview is free of such jargon and makes for an excellent introductory piece to a layman.

Enjoy!

The Sparrowhawk series – Book One: Jack Frake

2009-06-22T01:29:00.003+05:30

I strongly recommend the book, "Book One: Jack Frake" by Edward Cline. The book is the first in the Sparrowhawk series which sets the scene and the context in which the American Revolution took place. In Book One, we are introduced to 18^th century England whose various trades are heavily regulated by the Crown by means of taxes and customs. Amidst all of this we meet Jack Frake who is a boy of ten. Jack is independent in thought, values privacy more than hunger, born in a lowly class and has a keen interest in studying. We also meet his rash father, Cephas, his mother Huldah Frake, his notorious uncle Isham Leith and his parish, Parson Parmley who also happens to be Jack's teacher. The parish quickly acknowledges the talent in Jack and requests his parents to send him to a good boarding school to which they flatly refuse on the account that there would be nobody to help with the household chores.

Later in the book, Jack ends up running away from home and through a series of events joins the smuggling gang of Augustus Skelly. The gang routinely smuggles various goods into the country which were otherwise taxable by the Revenue men appointed by the Crown. There are constant rumblings in the public of high taxes and they secretly welcome the smuggling gang from whom they can purchase materials at a much cheaper price. Jack also meets Redmagne, who is a member of the gang and an intellectual figure. Jack receives most of his education from him and is a big brother figure for Jack. In the book, we encounter Augustus Skelly, who as a leader of the gang sets the policies that the gang must follow. They are often referred to as thieves by the Revenue men but we soon learn that in fact, there is nobody they steal from. They enter into voluntary exchanges by men such as themselves and don't recognize the authority of the Crown on their lives and on their spirits. Skelly remarks in his first encounter with Jack Frake, "There is more freedom in these caves, Mr. Frake, than in our towns. And chains – these things – are a more honest form of slavery than the specious liberty enjoyed by most of our countrymen, who are chained to the laws….You will notice something about the men here, which is that the prospect of being swaddled in chains like these frightens them less than being swaddled in chains of laws, of which there are many more links. We will submit to chains, but we none of us will submit to their paper and ink parents!" Book One closes with Jack leaving England to serve an eight-year sentence in the colonies in the ship Sparrowhawk.

We also encounter the James Taggart-ish, Henoch Pannell, Commissioner Extraordinary of His Majesty's Revenue, and his likes to whom the Crown represents all the privileges they can curry favor with. To them, Augustus Skelly stands as the symbol they dread; a free England where they would have to earn a living.

The narrative of the book is the best I've read in recent times. I was even surprised to see a few tears run down my cheek in response to some of the lines in the book. A few of my favorite passages were one's that described egoism so passionately and the passages that described 18^th century London, Paris and Vienna in such awesome terms. The reader is also treated to a firsthand experience of "tragedy of the commons" and the "seen and unseen effects of taxes".

All in all, the book was a great read and I just can't wait to get my hands on Book Two. I can say without any reservation, "This, is great art".

Great song.

2009-06-21T01:09:00.001+05:30

I've fallen in love with this song since I heard it for the first time a couple of years ago. It's always been there in my 'Favorites' playlist. The soothing Chinese music really does it for me.

Hope you like it as much as I did!

Angels and Demons II

2009-06-16T13:33:00.003+05:30

For the better or worse, I've watched Angels and Demons twice. I felt the first review didn't address the central question the movie asks over and over again: Could one ever bridge the gap between religion and science? Here is my take:

Metaphysically Speaking

Science is the product of observation and the application of reason to understand the physical and natural world around us i.e. understanding the natural world which is independent of our consciousness. Now what does it mean for a thing to be "supernatural"? Nature is all there is even including everything that there is in the outer space. If a star ends at a particular point, then it ends at that point. It is not limitless. For that matter, any entity be it on earth or outerspace or wherever, if a part of the natural world and exists, then cannot shrug the restrictions placed by identity. It has to act in accordance with its identity and properties. If a thing exists, it has to follow natural law that to be is to be something. A thing that is not something specific cannot exist. If there is nothing, then there really is nothing.

Lets consider another angle. Leonard Peikoff tells us in OPAR, there can be no fact of this reality and this world that transcends everything we know. Thus, any inferences from the natural can only lead to more of the natural, not to something that does not exist. Take rocks. If we decide to research rocks, then all inferences drawn from it will lead to only more of the natural world. For instance, a discussion on rocks may lead us to understand that there are different kinds of rocks viz., igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks, metamorphic rocks and so on. There can be no evidence that will arise that will lead us an entity beyond the whole of existence itself. The realm of evidence itself then becomes inapplicable.

Craig Biddle nails it in his book, "Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It" when he says:

"But that raises the question: How can anyone know anything about that which is "not an aspect of nature" or "greater than the universe" or "beyond our sensory abilities"? Nature is all there is; the universe is the totality of it; and our senses are our only source of information. In other words, such "knowledge" would require understanding of a non-thing from a non-place by the means of non-sense.

This is why religionists of all walks ultimately echo the famous words of Saint Augustine: I do not know in order to believe, I believe in order to know."

Epistemological Stand

If man wishes to survive on Earth, then his survival entails a long chain of factual requirements he has to fulfill in order to live. Ayn Rand summed up the factual requirements succinctly as, "One cannot place an 'I wish' above 'It is'". These 8 words sum up such a vast quantity of knowledge that one needs to delve a little deeper into the issue. To refrain from placing an "I wish" above "It is" presupposes that one acknowledges that a world exists "out there" and exists independently of our wishes, feelings and desires. It acknowledges the responsibility that it is the duty of the individual to conform to facts and not the other way round. This view towards reality is known as the primacy of existence viewpoint according to Objectivism. It acknowledges the fact that a reality exists out there independent of our consciousness and that it is our duty to conform to facts through the faculty of reason. The opposite kind is exhibited by the primacy of consciousness viewpoint. It is the view that reality should shrug off the restrictions placed by identity and conform to ones whims and feelings. To them, it's not the duty of the individual to conform to the identity of things to live but the duty of things to act according to their wishes. True, nobody actually states it in such explicit terms but the primacy of viewpoint is assumed in any argument for religion or subjectivism.

Reason is the faculty that helps us draw relationships, deduce, induce, connect ideas, observe data and build it up into a consistent sum of knowledge. Using the faculty of reason presupposes the fact that one acknowledges the primacy of existence of viewpoint; that there is a world independent of us which requires observation and study. On the opposite side of reason stands faith. Faith is precisely this: the belief of the existence of a thing for which no evidence exists. Having faith presupposes the primacy of consciousness viewpoint; that one can close their eyes to facts and pray that reality conform to ones desires. Application of reason, leads us to knowledge and progress while the application of faith leads us voluntary blindness and ignorance.

If reason is our faculty of knowledge, then one looks outwards for knowledge and corrects his mistakes through a span of time. It is pertinent to ask then, what is the means of knowledge of the faithful? Since metaphysically speaking, God doesn't exist or since in fact, God doesn't exist, it is metaphysically impossible for God to inject knowledge into an individual head through the means revelations, intuitions and whatnot. A person disavowing his distinguishing characteristic of reason, has only one other guide to action: feeling. He does a thing and acts in a particular fashion because he feels so. He feels that God magically appeared in his head and told him to take a course of action. He obviously cannot prove the existence of a god, let alone entering his head but that doesn't concern him – it is not consistency that matters to him but having "a little faith" totally does.

Coming back to the question: can one bridge the gap between religion and science? To state the question differently: can one bridge the gap between reason and faith? Can one bridge the primacy of consciousness viewpoint and primacy of existence viewpoint? Can one bridge the rational means of knowledge with revelations? Can one bridge emotionalism with reason as our primary means of knowledge? Can one take two extremes [science and religion], extremes from all different angles and claim to bridge them? Could one bridge clear logic with the twistedness of the arbitrary? Could one bridge the method that furthers man's life and the method that hinders it?

The answer is painstakingly obvious: a resounding, "No!"

Update: Minor edits.

Some of the Stuff Around Me #3

2009-06-11T15:46:00.004+05:30

I am back from a trip to Delhi. I've stayed there for about a week for the yearly ritual of hanging out with a few school friends who get together once a year. I've been in a boarding school for 12 years and have made some great friends in that time. Each year, we get together, hang out in a friend's apartment and load ourselves with lots of drinks and surround ourselves with roars of laughter. Here is some of the stuff that came up --

1. I've always got a mixed response when the movie Slumdog Millionaire comes up. I know of many Westerners who like the movie and many Indians who say it's totally not Oscar material and that it's just ok. I agree with the Indians and definitely think that the movie was not all that great. I mean, it's not even the case that the guy actually studies hard and answers questions, he luckily encounters situations in his life where he comes across the questions that would be asked in the game show he participated in. But I think why Westerners generally end up liking the movie is because of it was multi-ethnic. It brought forth a whole new culture, poverty unimaginable by Westerners and two brothers fighting through it. The presentation of the movie was pretty good I admit. However, when it comes to the central story or the theme of the movie, it gets pretty bad. If the purpose of the movie was to show a kid fighting poverty and answering questions in the game show by his own conviction and relentless work and not by chance, then the movie utterly failed at it.

Here's what Ayn Rand had to say about the movies –

Today, the movies have gone all the way back to the pre-Griffith days; or rather, they have accepted, on a broad scale, the error that destroyed D. W. Griffith: the belief that a movie is primarily a director's art, that content, story, and cast do not matter—i.e., that it is an art concerned only with the "how," not the "what"—i.e., that it is an art of means, without ends—i.e., that it is the field of trick photographers, not of artists.

If anybody is looking for a great Indian suspense movie, I highly recommend Johhny G. I really, really liked that movie. Although, I don't think its great art, it is just so much more intelligent and well-written than Slumdog Millionaire.

2. Whenever I call terrorism by its proper name, Islamic terrorism, people [Muslims and non-Muslims alike] end up getting pretty pissed. One of the most oft-repeated retort I've been offered is that if Islam is really that totalitarian, with so many Muslims around me in India, one of them would have surely done me in. I usually tell angry Muslims [at this point] that if the Quran enshrines violence [which it does], and the followers don't, then they simply aren't good Muslims – good people probably. You can't eat your cake and have it staring in front you too, you know. But I think we should find something that unites the Muslim attitude towards life if they believe in Islam [to whatever extent that they actually do believe in it]. It was startling to discover that most old cities – i.e. the part of city which is usually the least developed consists of Muslims. Consider a few examples: Old Hyderabad, Old Delhi, Old Ahmadabad, Old Calcutta. These are the ones I know of but I am sure there are more to add to the list.

3. Over a couple of beers, I was introduced to a friend of a friend. He was a strict vegetarian and it came as a kind of a shock to me. Upon some polite enquiry, he told me that his girlfriend was against the killing of "innocent" [as they could be anything else] animals. I asked him what did he think about it. He said he was convinced that eating meat was not a bad thing to do and was sure that his girl would somehow be convinced otherwise. I told him that, to the contrary, he was emboldening her stand and was not even close to convincing her.

She is the third girl I've heard of who is a vegetarian and wants her boyfriend to convert too. I've been dating a girl for a couple of years now, and she seems to have a big problem with using animals as viable values for humans. Of course, she doesn't force me to convert. I think that the animal should be given a good life when it's alive and given a quick death. She tells me that it's hardly the case in India and that animals are tortured on a regular basis. Her solution: meat eaters should quit eating meat which would in turn force the producers to rethink their ways. My take on the issue is that if there was a choice and somebody to offer good, torture-free meat, I would definitely go for it but I am not sure, devoid of such a choice, if one could transfer the guilt of the torturing producer to the consumer who purchases it. Moreover, killing higher animals is still a big no-no. I wonder how will the animals that are never to be hunted sustain themselves in the first place. Consider whales. Even if all the countries unanimously passed an anti-hunting law against whales, there would still be poachers who will kill animals for free because they don't have to nurture them anymore. More so, I don't think any police force could actually police the seven seas. Since each poacher knows that sparing a whale only means leaving it for the next poacher, why wait? Kill as many as possible and drive them to extinction. People and governments alike will come along crying along that people are just too corrupt and "selfish" for their code. Never once do they question their code since resting the blame on human nature is so much more convenient. We've had so many heated arguments about the whole thing that we don't talk about it much anymore. I am happy that she doesn't scorn at me like the girlfriend of a "friend of a friend" for eating meat and lets me do my thing. Still, what is it with women and vegetarianism?

4. All in all, the trip to Delhi was great and most of my friends are on the side of "common-sense". However, there are a few downsides like think "America shows off too much" and the likes. I told them that only seems so because to each country, the relationship to the US is a pretty important one and one shouldn't be surprised to find the US almost ubiquitous.

Anyway, that's that.

Angels and Demons.

2009-05-31T00:35:00.003+05:30

I went out and watched Angels and Demons today. It had a pretty good plot with a lot of twists and turns. Although it was cleverly written and directed, (to the extent that I overheard a girl exclaim, "Awesome" in the interval), I have to state the not so obvious -- God does not exist.

It might be true that the Illuminati as a group existed to safe guard themselves from the persecution of the Catholic Church, but I would think it idiotic to say that they are still plotting and are ruling the World. Scientists and academicians don't have to be fearful of the tyranny of the Catholic Church as of now. Moreover, the other thing I didn't understand was the transfer of guilt from the old Catholic people to ones now and actually killing them. I mean, if members of the Church killed then, it would not really justify transferring their guilt to members now and calling it revenge. The movie piles on premise after premise until you stop caring about the whole thing and just go with the story.

The movie clearly states the reports of the Catholic Church on man: flawed. Objectivism thinks the exact opposite. As Leonard Peikoff puts it, "Man qua man is a hero -- if he makes himself into one". One definitely trumps the other and each man has to do the "trumping" himself because eventually, that will determine what kind of a person one will end up becoming.

As of movies, I have long given expecting any great art given the movies that release nowadays. Did you guys watch the movie, The Reader which won an Oscar. I thought the whole movie was completely stupid. The woman lets Jewish prisoners burn and then testifies in Court arguing something to the effect of, "But they were my responsibility!". Angels and Demons was far better and way more intelligent.

In any case, I guess it would be wishful thinking to expect a principled stand against religion by Dr. Robert Langdon. No doubt about that!

Some of the Stuff Around Me #2

2009-05-26T17:12:00.003+05:30

Here are some of the things that have been buzzing in my head for the past few days --

1. What does it mean to serve the society or the public good?

Let's zoom out a bit.

Individuals could live on desert islands but prefer not to because an individual can reap a great amount of value from people around him in a division of labor society. A tailor stitches his clothes, Bill Gates makes computers and the pleasure of watching Adam Gilchrist bat of course. Now what does it mean for a person to propagate the idea of altruism in any form -- whether one should serve the Lord, the society or weeds. It especially comes out very nicely when somebody asks young people to live not for their now little "selfish" dream but for the greater public good. I mean, individuals chose to live in a society precisely because it would benefit each of them; so that they can trade values, grow richer and live a more fulfilling lives. But for somebody to ask me in a society, to serve the society [other people] instead of selfishly pursuing my chosen values is total lunacy. Here is what Hank Rearden had to say from Atlas Shrugged:

I could say to you that you do not serve the public good–that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices–that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation–as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own–I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it! [Bold Added]

As Kevin from Logical Disconnect put it: Hank is the man!

2. A mixed economy is an anti-system -- literally speaking. If it sounds too far fetched, then simply take a look at the current financial mess. Something definitely failed. Identifying the elements that failed is the first setp towards repair and prevention of such a mess ever again. It is a fact that what failed were not the elements of the free market process but those elements of government intervention. Now take a look at who is blamed. The evil free market of course!

The cure: more regulations and an even worse day to wake up to in the following years. The mixed economy literally sucks the good blood out of the economy and injects venom into to it. As Ayn Rand put it:

One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."

What we need today is not just a defense of the free market from economists; people like Henry Hazlitt and Von Mises did that decades ago but we still see socialism and fascism around us every day. It is the notion of altruism that we need to dismantle and bomb away. Until it is accepted that a person has a duty to live for somebody else, the growth of the mixed economy will not stop or the growth of regulations will not stop until we get to a point of no return. To fix it, its not just free market economics we need but cultural change that will show that a person should be selfish and pursue his chosen values as he sees fit.

The Status of Property Rights In India – A First Hand Account.

2009-05-23T16:32:00.002+05:30

Since I am home for the summer break from college, I've been doing some great legal work with my grandpa who is a lawyer in the High Court Of Andhra Pradesh. It's been a great ride. All the things and lively discussions I expected at law school that never materialized did actually happen in my grandpa's office. I am insanely happy to know that life after law school will be so much more than the boring rants by college professors in soporific classrooms. Incidentally, the case that we have been working on for the past week or so is in relation to the property we own, or more precisely speaking, relates to the property I own. Applying and integrating Objectivism to the facts of the case gives the awesome feeling of a sum and I logically feel the pride oozing through my head. Wow!Whoever said pride was a sin!!

Putting on my legal hat for awhile here is a brief background of the case: My grandpa bought a piece of property in the 1960's which was worth pennies but which later turned out to be a great investment. I mean, the value of the land which my grandpa bought was worth about Rs. 500 then and now is valued at about Rs. 5 crores of so. An Act was passed by the legislature of India called the Urban Celing Act in 1975 which mandated that a family unit may own land upto a certain extent only and any land beyond the ceiling limit would be confiscated by the government and would be redistributed as the government saw fit. However, there was a clause in the Act that said that a family unit would only include the mother, father and their minor children excluding the major child. In other words, if there existed a major child when the Act came into force he or she would be considered as a separate family unit and could own land as apart from the parents and the minor children. Like any man wanting to protect his property, my grandpa transferred the then worthless piece of land to his son (herein after referred to as 'The Idiot'). A partition was executed in good faith and the said land went to The Idiot who later taking advantage of the good faith and soaring prices declared that it was indeed his land and that a real partition was executed, thereby depriving my grandpa of his rightful property. However, our case against The Idiot is that there are many adverse circumstances to the case as The Idiot did for a long time behave like his partitioned land was a part of the joint family property and so on and so forth. There is a long story after all of this but not relevant to the purpose of this post.

Here is case that is directly a consequence of the Urban Ceiling Act through which the government unjustly tried to deprive men of their property which they earned and rightfully deserve to keep. Such cases are rarely tracked and remain to be the unseen effects of such monstrous statutes. God only knows, how many partitions and what kind of other twisted means were resorted to by good men to protect their property – and god only knows how many people were defrauded in ways we cannot imagine like we were in the present case. Now we are forced to go to Court and plead that the partition was nominal and fictitious -- to which the Court will reply a partition is a partition in law and that there is no such thing as a fictitious partition in law. We are now forced to ask the Court to look at the whole context instead of looking at the partition as an isolated fact in a vacuum. THIS is the status of property rights in India today.

Such statutes are the direct implication of altruism in the realm of politics. As I noted earlier, if it is widely accepted today that one person has a duty to other people then nothing stops the government from initiating force to fulfill a cause so 'noble'. Altruism, as Ayn Rand pointed out, does not require one's consent and is far from benovolence to which altruism is equated with today. As long as the fact that living for onself is not accepted as proper and moral, it is only the names and the means of statutes that seize people's wealth will differ, but their goals and intentions will remain the same.

As Ayn Rand correctly noted, property rights are the practical implementation of the right to life and liberty. If man does choose self-preservation and takes the liberty to think and act according to one's highest judgment and is denied the fruits of his labor, just what is the point of saying that one still upholds the right to life and liberty? None! When the purpose of the law is inverted in so gross a fashion, that it becomes not the protector of men's rights but its chief destroyer, who then, in reason, is the guilty party: the man who secretly acts in self-preservation [as a result seeks to protect his property] or the government who usurps its citizens rightful labor? I swear the first thing that hit me when I was evaluating the issue was the following quote by Ragnar Danneskjöld from Atlas Shrugged: "When robbery is done in open daylight by sanction of the law, as it is done today, then any act of honor or restitution has to be hidden underground."

Well said, Miss Rand.

Quote Of The Day.

2009-05-16T12:25:00.002+05:30

"The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and

apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without
growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be
no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is
associated with it...." - Thomas Edison

The Argument from Self-Interest.

2009-05-11T21:21:00.003+05:30

Lately, I've noticed that each time I have a discussion with someone with no idea about Objectivism, I center most of my arguments around the "non initiation of force principle". For instance, if the issue in question is about taxation or anti-trust laws then argument boils down to this: "If you were deserted on an island with ten other people and suppose X proves to efficacious and successful amongst the people you live and Y proves to be the worst at survival. At what point, would you advocate appropriating X's wealth forcefully and giving it to Y even when X disapproves of it? If you think that such an act is morally condemnable, what makes you think it would be right to do it here, in a civilized [?] society? Simply because it makes sacrifices easier given the prosperity and sheer number of people, it wouldn't make it right!" In other words, the relationship of a man with reality and other men remains the same -- in a desert island or in a society. Science, for instance, is still advanced by observation and primacy of existence viewpoint, not by consensus or whatnot. One should grant principles the same status.

However, this video by Yaron Brook completely changed the way I will handle such discusions from now on. Apparently, starting with non-initiation of force principle is the libertarian argument. Dr. Brook correctly points out that this line of argumentation misses the point.

If it is generally accepted that one has the duty to live for others, then there it is completely consistent for the government to tax away a rich persons money to give it to a poorer person. If the rich man has a duty to live for others, then why the heck not? This is the essence of altruism, and why Ayn Rand went such distances to oppose it. If one accepts altruism, it entails a long list of implications.

Here's what Ayn Rand said about altruism:

What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”

I think this should be the essence of an argument any Objectivist takes on with a new comer. Can I live my life anyway i choose only by upholding my highest judgement or do i justify my existence on the basis of service to other people? The challenge is firstly to understand the thory of altruism and then explain it as best as possible giving examples along the way. Craig Biddle, the editor of The Objectivist Standard, nails it by exposing the true nature of altruism when he said the following in his talk, "Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's Morality of Egosim":

"Altruism does not call merely for “serving others”; it calls for self-sacrificially serving others. Otherwise, Michael Dell would have to be considered more altruistic than Mother Teresa. Why? Because Michael Dell serves millions more people than Mother Teresa ever did.

There is a difference, of course, in the way he serves people. Whereas Mother Teresa “served” people by exchanging her time and effort for nothing, Michael Dell serves people by trading with them—by exchanging value for value to mutual advantage—an exchange in which both sides gain."

It is crucial to understand this issue and nail it down whether one is talking about the current economic crisis or individual rights or any other position due the fundamental nature of the issue of self-interest and altruism. If one is ethically bound to live for other people then what can be immoral about redistributing the money of the citizens by the government? Any political argument presupposes that one can and should properly live for oneself and it is this that one must understand and explain. Starting with the non-initiation of force principle will not comprehensively win the argument because it bases the whole argument on politics instead of ethics and all the fundamentals that underlie it. I think the conversation will end up being a lot more smoother and clearer if one justified from the perspective of ethics of sefishness instead of politics of non-initiation of force.

Thank you, Dr. Brook!

What's Goin' On?

2009-05-09T22:28:00.003+05:30

It's been about a month since my last post. My reasons? Exams, LSAT prep but most of all, just plain fat old lazy. I am home now for the summer break and will stay here for the next two months. I am 'truly' enjoying the breather; college is usually so depressing.

Here is a list of things I've done in the past few weeks without any order --

1. The biggest highlight is that I've reappeared for the OAC entrance this year. I didn't make it the last time but there is absolutely no talk of giving up! Objectivism is being handed out on a platter, I'd be an idiot to miss out on all the fun.

2. I've never really been a big fan of cricket but the IPL is fun for a change. It's short, sweet and exciting. I live in Hyderabad and the team representing my city is the Deccan Chargers. They lost pretty bad the last time around but looks like they are atleast going to make it to round two with the way they are playing this season. I am beginning to love the pub atmosphere -- drinks, cricket and a great crowd. Aah! The perks of adulthood.

3. On the music scene, I've hit back to the classic rock. A few of my current favorites are One Bouron, One Scotch, One beer by George Thorogood and Catharsis. I love the guitar solos in the second song.

4. I've lately been watching Boston Legal. They go bonkers with intelligent design and government internvention at times but the trials are pretty interesting. I hope they stay that way instead of rotting like That 70's Show. The last few seasons were crap compared to the way the show started up.

5. Diana at NoodleFood recently referred to Ramen&Rand. It's a great read and I've lately also been enjoying Miranda's photos. Another find is the new Indian blogger Rajesh Dhawan. It's great to see Indian Objectivists like myself. Although we are way too far a philosophic revolution in India, its great to see a few start up.

I plan to take a few trips this summer, study for my LSAT's (which I havent even touched upon in the last week I got home. Yikes!), write a series of interesting posts I've got lined up, continue the Objectivism seminar and hope to get through the OAC. Stick around for a great ride!

Edicts Of Ayn Rand Or Tolerance For All Ideas.

2009-03-27T17:56:00.003+05:30

Is that an either-or? Most people in Indian Universities seem to think so. To be honest of the views of people on Objectivism – are mostly subjectivist or intrincist or a hash of both. This issue came up explicitly when I was remarked at, time and again, from different people that "everything about me is about Ayn Rand". Most people in college who know me associate me with Ayn Rand and think I am one of those "Ayn Rand types". These are the subjectivists. To them, some people have a thing for Ayn Rand and some others have a thing for Che Guevara. It's not much of a difference. They don't even care to think of the kind of a mental process would lead to a person upholding reason and what kind of a mental process leads to ideas of Che. Some subjectivists, even openly admit that Atlas Shrugged is a book about big business with loads of long speeches. Of course, I don't expect anybody to understand the whole book in their first read, but evaluating probably one of the greatest book of our time with a bored, unimportant look convinces me all the more that they think "anything goes". I wonder whether they really care to understand the book in the first place. They fail to understand that the luxuries that they enjoy today, from matchsticks to cyclotrons are not metaphysically given. They are a product of reason – to which they remain disinterested to. Sadly, this does prevent them from carrying Ayn Rand's books in between classes to look cool and to be counted as a "rebel".

The intrincist goes the other way. He thinks everything about an Objectivist is primarily and fundamentally about Ayn Rand. To him, an Objectivist is not one who processes Ayn Rand's philosophy, judges it as great for man's life and applies the Objectivist framework to the best of his knowledge to his life. Far from it, an Objectivist to the intrincist, is a person who follows the edicts of Ayn Rand dogmatically. Any mention of an Objectivist, and they immediately think that everything about him is only about Ayn Rand, not Objectivism. They mean it in the sense that reason is not an Objectivist's means of knowledge, but the edicts of Ayn Rand are. To them, the choice is intrincism or subjectivism. It's either the dogma of Ayn Rand or "anything goes" including glorifying killers like Che Guevara on t-shirts. To the subjectivist, people supporting the ideas of Ayn Rand are "extreme" and "stifling" and to the intrincist, people supporting the ideas of Ayn Rand are "dogmatic moralizers" or "angry emotionalists." Such an alternative is patently false.

As Peikoff writes in Fact and Value:

"Do any of you who agree with her philosophy respond to it by saying "Yeah, it's true"—without evaluation, emotion, passion? Not if you are moral. A moral person (assuming he understands philosophy at all) greets the discovery of this kind of truth with admiration, awe, even love; he makes a heartfelt positive moral evaluation. He says: Objectivism is not only true, it is great! Why? Because of the volitional work a mind must have performed to reach for the first time so exalted a level of truth—and because of all the glorious effects such knowledge will have on man's life, all the possibilities of action it opens up for the future." [Bold Added]

I think, any person who agrees with the ideas of Ayn Rand, is an Objectivist, not a Randian or whatnot. He upholds the fundamental of the philosophy: objectivity. Objectivity denotes a certain kind of a relationship between concepts and reality; concepts are a result of a volitional
observation of existence by the human consciousness. Another Ayn Rand's seminal discovery is that any kind of cognition or fact amounts to an evaluation for man – carbon is good for man and the global warming agenda is anti-man. There can be no thought for thought's sake or "pure thought" without any value-judgments to draw. Even a pebble on the street is evaluated by man as harmless to man. One cannot value with without a process of evaluation. Yet, this is what everybody think of when they talk of a "spiritual" or an "intellectual" realm of a person. This is why they award the same status to Ayn Rand and Che Guevara. For them, ideas, concepts or theories are other-wordly "spiritual" matters which cannot be looked upon judged and evaluated in the cold light of reason. It does not matter whether the question is: is capitalism is a superior system, morally and politically, than communism. Most students just simply repeat what is taught in classrooms: they are two different schools and cannot be judged on a rigid standard of objectivity. Translation: it doesn't matter what kind of a thought process led to such an irrational idea and what kind of an effect such a philosophy will have on man's life.

Judging any Objectivist merely to be "a follower of Ayn Rand" misses the whole point about an objectivist; an objectivist is a person who seeks to advance his life, spiritually and materially, knowing fully well that any good (the rational) can only be achieved by the means of reason and not by means of evasion. "The most eloquent badge of the authentic Objectivist who does understand Ayn Rand's philosophy," Peikoff writes in the same essay,

"is his attitude toward values (which follows from his acceptance of reason). An Objectivist is not primarily an academician or a political activist (though he may well devote his professional life to either or both pursuits). In his soul, he is essentially a moralist—or, in broader terms, what Ayn Rand herself called "a valuer."

A valuer, in her sense, is a man who evaluates extensively and intensively. That is: he judges every fact within his sphere of action—and he does it passionately, because his value-judgments, being objective, are integrated in his mind into a consistent whole, which to him has the feel, the power and the absolutism of a direct perception of reality. Any other approach to life comes from and pertains to another philosophy, not to Objectivism."

It's a shame that most students in India see Ayn Rand and Objectivism as a subjective fancy or an intrinsic edict coming from Ayn Rand instead of God. In reason, they are two ways to get Objectivism fundamentally wrong.

Global Warming -- A Summary.

2009-03-23T20:52:00.003+05:30

A friend of mine recently asked me to prepare a short speech on the issue of global warming. Based on my reading on the internet, I wrote the following:

Global Warming, in and of itself, is no longer a science that scientists publish papers about but has become a distinguished political movement of our time. To understand the issue, it is important to get the facts straight. To put the whole issue into one question: is global warming man-made or is it occurring due to factors unrelated to man? Do we know that a warmer planet is harmful in the first place, before we start closing industries as fast as possible? Here are some facts to help make up your mind: The climate of the planet has changed for centuries without any help from humans. For instance, consider the fact that the warmest years of human civilization occurred much before the industrial revolution had happened. In fact, when temperatures were considerably higher in the medieval period, that period is referred to by scientists, as the climatic optimum – in other words an optimum temperature. In this period, Greenland, which is now covered with snow was a booming economy. All in all, higher temperatures are shown to be good for man than being covered by snow when life becomes impossible. Are carbon emissions causing the planet to warm?All the evidence points to the all important fact that carbon-di-oxide increased some 800 years after there was a rise in temperature. All of this combined with fact that scientists in the 1970’s predicted a large scale global cooling and anybody who disagreed was thought of to be a freak. However, no such cooling infact happened. On the other hand, the same people are crying over global warming today. The only “facts” that the global warming alarmists show is a “consensus” of a number of scientists who think that the planet is warming because of man – and the dissenters today, like the 1970’s are turned away as freaks. But consensus is not the way of science. For instance, Galileo was prosecuted because the consensus was that the world was flat. If it’s science that we are concerned about, then its facts that matter, not consensus. If global warming alarmists have their way, it is the developing countries who will take the worst hit if we indulge in carbon trading or put a limit or close down industries. The thing to understand is that even if we decide to combat global warming, we will be sacrificing a poorer generation for a richer generation in the future.

Considering all the above facts, could we say that these alarmists do not know the facts. Obviously not. Ignorance cannot be a plea. It's pertinent to ask: if facts don't motivate the policy behind the green movement, then what does? It cannot be imagined that people like Al Gore who have millions of resources at their command couldn't get to the evidence. Global warming alarmists or environmentalists are anti-development and anti-man. It’s a radical statement to make but conforms to reality. How many times have we heard to keep the wilderness “pure” instead of “corrupting” the earth with malls and buildings? Or consider environmentalist claim that until man hopes to rejoin the nature, we can only hope that the right kind of virus can come along. Everything man needs, from matchsticks to airplanes violates the “rights” of rocks, trees and weeds. If we are interested in uplifting humanity out of poverty, it is important that we throw global warming nonsense out of the window – and proudly assert a pro-life philosophy instead of listening to the man haters.

Some Of The Stuff Around Me.

2009-03-20T18:40:00.008+05:30

I have a few tabs open on my firefox that I dont want to write them as full posts. A lot of bloggers do their weekly round up's and stuff -- I think I understand why now.

Anyway, here is some of the stuff around me and some interesting reads I've read in the past week--

1. One of my friends participated in the Moot Court whose problem I had mentioned about earlier. I usually don't participate in these competitions because they simply don't really interest me. I mean, its the same environmental law or international law they teach in classrooms. You only just have to be polite to the Judges and that's that. For instance, take a look at my friend's story: He quoted a verse from the Quran that says that Jihad is the duty of Muslims to prove one of his points about extradition of a terrorist from an Islamic country to a civilized country. The Judges immediately jumped down this throat screaming about civilian rights and the like. In short, islamic appeasment. Anyway, what I thought was funny about the whole incident was the million dollar look on their face when my friend called out the equivalent of "the Emperor has no clothes!" in reaction to Islam. Heh!

2. I am still delving into Objectivism with the seminar and Objectivism is still quite new to me. Whatever I've read and understood so far, I completely agree with. On the net, there a few great posts that I have treated myself to which made me all the more curious about Objectivism. One of them is Greg Perkin's, D'Souza versus The New Atheists series explaining the Objectivist viewpoint on atheism. The series is one that I recommend to almost every atheist I meet in India. The post has served as a cornerstone in my understanding.

I just found another gem last night. The wider part of it was that although I had subscribed to The New Clarion, I hadn't quite taken to reading to it as frequently I do to read NoodleFood. How wrong could I be? They have put together a few of the finest writers. If you haven't heard of them already, be sure to check them out.

I just read the post "A More Fundamental Problem" by Inspector on New Clarion and am all praise for it. It clearly lays down a tough idea in simple terms why pragmatism (the theory that priciples dont matter) is irrational. I am still working my way through the chapter Reason (OPAR) in the seminar and with this read under my belt, I have a head start. Talking of the allged "moderates", the peice began by how people imagined that harm in to a certain degree was ok but a greater degree or "extreme" harm was wrong. Here's my favorite part:

"The thief may be acting on the principle of murder, but he can get away with it in his own mind because, as a Pragmatist, he doesn’t concern himself with principles. If confronted with the consequences of his actions, a Pragmatist - just like the thief that ends up killing a man in the course of a robbery - will scream that he didn’t mean it, and he couldn’t have foreseen that things would come to this. He’s right, in a twisted way: without principles, he can’t foresee what anything he does will come to.

In their blind terror, the only thing Pragmatists can do is to run screaming from any consistency at all. They know, deep down, that the only difference between themselves - the thieves - and the bloody murderers of the world is that the latter are consistent. The problem is that virtuous, principled men are consistent, also. But the pragmatist makes no distinction between the two. Without principles, he is incapable of such distinctions - he knows only that consistency, for him, is the road to a dark place he dare not visit. He is thus trapped - his only defense mechanism is also the very thing that pulls him constantly toward, and work in the service of, what he knows on some level to be evil." [Bold Added]

3. I was recently thinking about why a few of my favorite writers like Thomsa Sowell, Robert Spencer and Ayaan Hirsi Ali never took note of Objectivism even though they were sympatetic to the notion of individual rights. I did a search in my Google Reader and I found a post by Gus Van Horn that totally nailed the issue down. Here's the heart of it, I think:

"His error is a common one, in which he treats an implicitly rational, reality-oriented philosophical outlook as a given, rather than as an implicit example of just another possible ideology. My last would doubtless strike many, probably including Sowell himself, as moral relativism at first blush, but it is not. For if the rational, "adult" ideology that Sowell implicitly favors can be judged as an ideology, so must all other ideologies be examined under the cold light of reason, and compared against the facts of reality, which include the requirements for man's survival."[Bold Added]

3. Two of the other threads I am following on NoodleFood are Greg Perkin's "Challenging What Everybody Knows" and Diana's "Laws Versus Regulations".

Whew, that concludes my first "Some Of the Stuff Around Me". Weird name, huh?

Desert Island Scenarios – A Great Tool In My Bag.

2009-03-17T23:14:00.006+05:30

In my experience, I have generally found that people take a point much better when put in the context of a desert island – and I think with good reason. It is hard for anybody in my generation not to think of the hardships Tom Hanks went through in the movie Cast Away to light a fire upon the mention of a desert island. A desert island example asserts the primacy of existence view and keeps the listener anchored to reality. The listener understands that the cars and supermarkets he takes for granted in a division of labor of society will not pop out of the sky on a desert island. The islander has to take the necessary goal-directed action for him to survive. As Ayn Rand once said, "Reality confronts man with a great many "musts," but all of them are conditional; the formula of realistic necessity is: "You must, if " and the "if" stands for man's choice."

For instance, say ten people were deserted instead of just Tom Hanks, the rules established amongst men will that of a laissez faire system that does not hinder progress in any fashion. It would most likely be a government established by well intentioned men demarcating freedom whenever disputes arise trying to charter out a better course for survival.A good government. Is that an oxymoron? It's what Glenn Woiceshyn wrote in his excellent post, "What is a good government?" He takes the example of a desert island and logically gets to the fact that capitalism is the only moral and practical system on earth. Here's an excerpt:

"Imagine escaping alone from a tyrannical country and becoming shipwrecked on a desert island. All you have are some fruit and vegetable seeds in your pocket. You are young and intelligent, but without special skills.

To stay alive, you must obtain food and fresh water, and maintain a fire for warmth and cooking, which initially consumes all your time. You soon figure out how to produce your basic survival needs more efficiently -- by constructing fish traps, farming tools, an irrigation system -- thus allowing you to accumulate "savings," which buys you time and affords you insurance against unforseen setbacks, such as storms, injuries, illness.
With the time saved, you discover how to produce other goods, such as clothes, tools, a shelter, furniture, etc., for enhancing your life. You enjoy inventing new technology to increase your production, but find yourself quite limited, not to mention lonely, on your own.
Hurray! Others become shipwrecked. Each person, rather than produce all his own needs himself, focuses on producing one item efficiently, then trades his surplus production at the market for the produced goods of others.
You marvel at the production efficiency of the "division of labour," and the corresponding enhancement of everyone's life, especially when you now have tools, engines, machines, electricity, etc., to enhance production. Consequently, life is more safe, secure, comfortable and enjoyable.

You had specialized in petroleum production but some clever upstart competes with you and produces oil much more efficiently; so you switch to farming. You tell yourself that your desire to produce oil isn't a rational reason to despise or block someone's superior ability. Such reactions would not be in your rational self-interest, let alone anyone else's.

Many more become shipwrecked and specialize in various productive endeavors, thus yielding a greater quantity, variety and quality of goods and services on the market. "Immigration is good," you conclude.""

Arguments ranging from immigration to the gold standard could be made in this fashion. The reason, I think, why such examples work well is because it scales down the issues of the world to a personal level. It cancels out all the hype, popular myth and idiocy and asks the listener to think for himself. I mean the fact that movements like antitrust and environmentalism are incompatible with human life doesn't take very long to understand when there is nobody's blood to suck in the form of taxes or grants. One could then proceed to tell the listener that in fundamental terms, the relationship of a man with reality does not change – in a desert island or in a division of labor society.

I also suspect that crow epistemology is at work here. A desert island example greatly reduces the amount of perceptual data one requires in making a rational decision by scaling it down to the personal level. One has to deal with a relatively few number of concretes and is thus, easier to see through things clearly. Instead of bearing in mind a lot of details, if one wishes to communicate in essentials, I think desert island examples do an excellent job.

A Few Notes On Blogging.

2009-03-16T19:24:00.003+05:30

Its's funny how things keep coming back. I started of my blog without really naming a purpose. Blogging was ( and still quite a bit is) new to me, I don't think I really understood the context of it all for quite sometime. So, I waited to acquire some more knowledge before naming a clear purpose to my blog. I was experimenting and seeing where things would take me. Somebody in the Objectivism seminar commented in one the podcasts that Peikoff, in one of his lectures mentioned that even if a person did not fully grasp the full implication of an idea, it's better to move on. If the idea is important yet undigested, then the issue will come up in one form or the other in the future seeking clarification. I'll attest to that.

The reason for starting out was the urge to clarify the ideas I accept in the years by writing things down instead of simply blurting it out. Thanks to Diana for helping me start out. I am happy with the notes I have been taking down and clarifying a lot of ideas in Objectivism. It's great to see am making progress.

The other thing I've noticed among bloggers is their style of writing. They guys at NoodleFood, The New Clarion, Leitmotif, Rule of Reason, Gus Van Horn and others are great writers. I can only hope I will, at somepoint write as well as they do. I think I can convey an idea, but I would like to improve on my writing. I plan to take the writing course by Peikoff or Peter Schwartz soon, before I give my LSAT's. That way, my essay will improve and so will my chances of getting into a good lawschool. My personal favorite writing styles are of Edward Cline and Myrhaf. Cline for the literature and fiction combo (with great quotes), and Myrhaf for his no-nonsense, clear and subtle approach.

Another point. I was thinking about the issue a few days ago and it occured to me that being a law student, I would at sometime also like to introduce the stuff I study in class to clarify it -- like I clarify Objectivism. Lawschool in India is almost done, so I think I will use the blog as a forum to apply reason to my legal knowledge when I go to lawschool in the US. That's about a year and half from now. As of now, I want to enjoy the experience to bring up issues that stimulate me instead of making it a chore. It's a delicate balance to strike but I think with more thinking and writing practice, my ability to find a principle will become better -- and consequently will my blogging.

Indian Rock -- A New Flavor.

2009-03-14T14:54:00.004+05:30

In the past few years, I have discovered some Indian rock bands am enjoying a lot of their music. I have listened to songs by bands in three different Indian languages I don't even understand myself. This does not prevent me from enjoying their music and experiencing a whole new smack of rock music. I wish more Indian bands play some rock in their native language than simply play english music. I mean, if I wanted to listen to English music, I would prefer an American or a European band over an Indian band. I think a different language adds a distinct flavor of music to Indian rock bands and comes as an added advantage to both the listeners and the band .

Here are two of my favorite Indian rock songs in the Malayalam language. The first song is the kind of music is soothing and catchy at the same time while the second is faster and louder. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Karukara -- Avial

Nada Nada -- Avial

Being Objective -- Conciously.

2009-03-14T01:03:00.006+05:30

To be very honest, I don't find lawschool in India to be all that interesting. I think students in law school are worse of conceptually than they were at the start of their college years. I just cannot seem to ignore the fact that most students in the fag end of the course cough up such bizarre claims like "majority wins" or that there is a "right to a job" and think that they are self- evidencies and require no further proof watsoever. Some even revel in denouncing India's deregulation policies and write prolific articles in "reputed" journals about how India should "go back to its roots"and create its own "identity". The dumbest of such allegations that pisses me off the most is the claim that "majority wins". I mean, it takes a whole new level of self-control for me to stop myself from saying, "If ten out of fifteen of us agree to murder you, you should have no problems watsoever." The question simply cannot be dismissed: how has lawschool advanced college kids conceptually? Or, has it?

A few days ago, a problem for the moot court was released in college. It was concerned with the field of international law and the threat of Islam. The problem is almost taken out of reality -- an Islamic country actively funds terrorist activities against a civilized nation and the civilized nation retaliates in self-defense. After the attack on the Islamist country, international pressure mounts on a ceasefire and the issue is taken up at the International Court of Justice by both the parties.

A friend of mine told me that one of the main issues in the moot problem was that the Islamic country, which was the aggressor, had a constitution which necessitates their jurisdiction in their country. Although it had funded an attack on a foreign country, international law dictates that any country's constitution takes precedence over international law -- laws which are mutually agreed by both the parties are subordinated to domestic law. In essence, the argument was that even the Islamic country has a constitution, even the Islamic country is a sovereign entity, so one cannot simply launch an attack on their soil.

I started off by shooting a series of questions. Hadn't the Islamic country violated the right of the citizens of the other country by funding a terrorist attack? The respondent replied by saying that although it was true that they indeed did fund the attack, they still had a constitution and in case of any conflict between international law and domestic law, the domestic laws are given precedence. In other words, the constitution truimphs over international law.

I found myself asking: Is the Islamic country's "constitution" a constitution in the first place? A constitutions distinguishing characteristic from all other statutes, its essence, is that it is the only document that places a limit on government control whereas other statutes such as criminal law or the law of contracts places certain restriction on the citizens. If a "constitution" violates this fundamental principle and instead, enumerates that the government owns the lives of its citizens, how can one sanely call such a document a constitution. It is just some piece of paper, not a constitution. Moreover, to call such a document a constitution amounts to an invalid concept; where its essential distinguishing characteristic is replaced with a floating abstraction like "balancing freedoms with restrains"or "the heart of the democratic process" and so on and so forth.

It was one of those moments when I was surprised to see how differently I thought about issues than my peers who went to the same kind of schools and ended up in the same colleges in India. I was oddly surprised and elated that I was learning to apply the stuff I had learnt from Objectivism to my own journey through life. Nothing to say of the pride oozing through my head when my friend stood in full focus, listening intently, to my arguments.

Upon introspection, I realize that what I am trying to do most of the time is to try and apply reason and the tools of objectivism to the stuff around me. My goal, I realize, is to objective -- consciously. Anytime I come across any new knowledge, I try and apply the principles of epistemology in my process of cognition. It's not just limited to new knowledge. I usually have my hands full in identifying floating abstractions and stolen concepts I myself have accepted previously without any proper conceptual investigation. I find myself really enjoying the application of my mind to the particular issues around me. Its not easy but if and when you do realize why you are feeling a particular way and fix the underlying ideas, emotions almost fall in line immediately.

The ideas I have accepted are apparently "extreme" and devoid of any concern for the "public good". It's funny how I have become the guy who holds "extreme" views, when I was simply concerned with reason and its application to the issues around me. Objectivism is something I privately cherish in lawschool. When I hear stupid claims like "majority wins" or "civilian right to life of an agressor country", it is this newfound, private interest in Objectivism, in life that I treasure rigourously. As Ayn Rand wrote in The Fountainhead, "Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched."

Good Things.

2009-03-12T20:51:00.004+05:30

I have been on twitter for a few weeks now and have fallen in love the whole concept of micro-blogging. I, too, have decided to write down a few goodthings about my day. I read about the idea from Diana at NoodleFood when I was browsing through their posts.

Here's what Jean Moroney wrote about it:

"Once each day, write down three good things that happened in the last 24 hours. You can write them before going to bed or first thing in the morning. You can write them in a journal or in a calendar or on a Post-it. You can include important achievements such as winning a contract or simple pleasures such as eating a good meal. All that matters is that you write down three such items, every day.

As you can guess, the purpose of this practice is to reinforce a positive outlook and avoid feeling overwhelmed by negativity. Even on the worst of days there are a few bright spots, and bringing them to mind helps you maintain perspective.I have tried writing down a few goodthings in the past few weeks have been trying it for a few days and it really helps.

Dr. Seligman ran controlled experiments to test the technique. Not only did his subjects report being happier and more optimistic during the studies, but they liked participating so much that they continued writing down three good things each day after the experiment was over.

This little bit of thinking each day has large emotional rewards. Why? Because it strengthens two kinds of value judgments:

1) What you hold as good: Every time you decide consciously that something is good, you reinforce, clarify, and concretize what "good" means.

2) What you hold as important: Important means "entitled to attention or consideration." When you spend a little time focusing on the good in your life, you are implicitly asserting that the good is what's important.

Not bad for three minutes of thinking each day."

I am usually a little sceptical about these "esteem boosters" which pull out a kick of esteem from thin air, but I have to admit, this one seems to be bang on target. The thing that makes it great, I think, is that I am now keen on making goodthings happen to me instead of sitting back on my ass expecting to have a good time for free -- ie without any effort. For instance, I constantly find am asking myself why do I have complete a task I have set for myself. If I set a goal, and not acheive it, then what is the point of setting it itself in the first place? More importantly, what is the point of simply thinking about the philosophy of Objectivism if I don't apply it to my life, as best as i can. The concept of the goodthing on twitter is sort of an extra can of fuel to go on and ofcourse there is the awesome pleasure I feel when I do post the goodthing on twitter.

Nothing beats the satisfaction of a task done.

Another awesome treat I had last night, was the spike in traffic on my blog when Diana retweet my post on these hilarious pics. Heh! There is absolutely no downside to it.

You can follow me on twitter to read my good things and I think I can say with a certain degree of certainity now, twitter helps people know each other better.

Some Of My Insights -- Objectivity

2009-03-02T17:06:00.004+05:30

[Earlier in the series -- Some Of My Insights -- Concept-Formation]

I have been stalling this post for weeks together now and am so glad I am finally posting it. I have not covered intrincism and subjectivism because are still are a little tricky, intrincism more so than subjectivism.

So here go some of my thoughts on Objectivity after the seminar:

1. Studying the roots of the concept of "Objectivity" is important because it denotes a certain kind of relationship between the whole of concept-formation and reality. If concepts are objectively formed -- our knowledge then refers to observed fact; taking into account both existence and consciousness. On the other hand, if our concepts are arbitrarily formed, then so is the whole knowledge of mankind has accumulated. This is the implication of the validation of the term Objectivity.

In the Objectivist position, concepts don't exist "out there" as apart from the human mechanism of concept-formation or "in here" as apart from reality. Attributes such as redness, maness or tablehood do not exist in reality only or in our conceptual process only but such attributes reflect both and fall into a distinct third category which takes into account both existence and consciousness -- the object itself and the human method of classifying the object. To take Greg Perkin's wonderful example, a car collision is the result of an interaction between two cars -- but not a part of just one of cars involved in the collision. Another interesting parallel is also the stand of Objectivism on sense perception. Any entity perceived is not "out there" in reality as apart from man or "in here" in our equipment as apart from reality. The entity perceived exists in a separate third category -- "entity as perceived". However, with regard to concept-formation, there is also the element of volition involved when compared to sense perception. Since forming concepts correctly is volitional and not automatic -- man needs a method in acquiring new knowledge.

2. The concept of objectivity applies to definitions too. An essence or the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of a concept. "Essences" do not exist in existence as apart from consciousness; an essence presupposes an essence to whom? "Out there", things simply are. Thus, essentials are not arbitrary choices "in here" and "out there" but concepts refer to a volitional consciousness observing existential facts. This is why essences, too, like concepts are epistemological in nature and not metaphysical.

However, it is not mandatory that all concretes should be conceptualized. There are concepts that can be handled descriptively. Since we only conceptualize stuff that is cognitively important, there are also some concepts which are optional in nature. To take Greg Perkin's example again, a concept subsuming "a light green, medium sized, cotton t-shirt" may be of relevance to a store keeper but not to a doctor because the doctor may not find it cognitively important to define such a concept.

3. Logic is the method of non-contradictory identification. It works in two ways; it reduces any claim back to first-level concepts and then sense-perception (the hierarchical nature of knowledge) and also integrates all knowledge a person acquires (the contextual nature of knowledge) -- non-contradictorily.

4. Any new knowledge is not acquired in a vaccum of nothingness. All new knowledge that is acquired is built on already or pre-existing knowledge given any subject. For instance, a kid had to get to cat and dog before he gets to the second level concept of an animal and had to get to animal before he gets to the third level concept of organism. All knowledge is hierarchical in nature. It was only after the discovery of logic, did science emerge; as any new discovery in science presupposes the primacy of existence and logic in the least.

Making such a claim explicit helps a great deal in claryfing concepts in terms of hierarchy. Reducing any claim explicitly helps in the process of reduction -- i.e. reducing any claim back to first level concepts and then to the perceptual. Such reduction keeps us tied to reality when we form ever-higher level concepts. On the other hand, if one neglects or evades such reduction of knowledge, there is the ever seductive doctrine of rationalism which one quickly succumbs to. The doctrine of rationalism agrees with the fact that knowledge is gained in a particular pattern but starts deducing away rationalistic castles in air starting from arbitrary premises which are unconnected to reality, thus, betraying objectivity.

Another interesting implication of the fact that knowledge is hierarchical is, as Ayn Rand called it, a stolen concept. This occurs when a person uses the validity of a lower-level concept to deny the validity of the higher level concept based on the lower-level concept. To take an example from the seminar, the claim that "all property is theft" steals the concept property; that any theft has to be the theft of property! Any argument which involves a stolen concept has to be self-refuting as it uses the validity of a lower level concept to betray a higher level concept.

5. All our knowledge is relational. We look at tables as apart from chairs and similar to other tables. The concept of tablehood does not exist in a giant vacuum in our consciousness. Our knowledge is gained by the constant contrasting and comparing of various entities around us. All the relationships that a particular concept has with all the other concepts is the context of the particular concept. Suppose a student at college is taught that man has a right to a wage in class. He later reads a book by an author who says that a right signifies a course of action and not to any particular object (like wages in this case). It is essential for the student to consider both the claims and resolve the contradiction. Various questions may arise in the process. A few could be what are rights in the first place? Whether a person can have the right to violate another persons right?, etc. All such questions and relationships one draws when talking about a particular concept forms the context of the concept and are essential to maintain objectivity. Context, takes into account, both the relationships of a said concept with the other concept and the distance from the perceptual level of the concept (hierarchial nature of knowledge).

[For more on context, see one of my older posts.]

All in all, if "existence is identity, and consciousness is identification", then identity serves as the bridge between existence and consciousness. To acquire any new knowledge of the identity of any concrete, our method, to be successful, must be the volitional grasp of reality by the method of logic.

Hilarious Pictures In The Mail.

2009-02-28T16:33:00.007+05:30

I just received some totally hilarious pictures in my mail from one of my good friends. Take a look.

The following few particularly are funny because such a method of answering questions actually works in Indian Universities. I can attest to that fact. If it is a 5 or a 10 marks question -- I know many people who just twist the same sentences over and over again and actually end up scoring great marks!!

Weird but true.

Some big time dope, huh?

Pakistan restores Islamic law to pacify Swat valley.

2009-02-22T09:13:00.000+05:30

Yet another event of Pakistan sucking up to the Taliban. Pakistan has decided to reimpose Islamic law in the Swat valley to take the steam off the ongoing Taliban uprising since 2007.

Here's an excerpt:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Pakistan agreed to introduce Islamic law in Swat valley and neighbouring areas of the northwest on Monday in a bid to take the steam out of a Taliban uprising raging since late 2007.

Taliban militants in Swat, once a tourist paradise, called a 10-day ceasefire the night before the talks, and on Saturday released a Chinese engineer kidnapped five months earlier as a gesture of goodwill. (.....!!)

"After successful negotiations ... all un-Islamic laws related to the judicial system, those against the Koran and Sunnah, would be subject to cancellation and considered null and void," said NWFP's Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain, referring to the holy book of Islam and the saying and teachings of the Prophet Mohammad.

They have destroyed more than 200 girls schools in a campaign against female education, and tens of thousands of people have fled their homes to escape the violence."

Any so-called practical effort to assuade the Taliban to take the "steam-off" by reimposing Islamic law in parts of Pakistan involves mammoth context-dropping and is filled with pragmatism. The Pakistan governments effort to placate to the Taliban is much like Chamberlain's claim -- "Hitler demands Czechoslovakia, if we give in, his demand will be satisfied. The result will be peace in our time."

Such a claim treats each demand on the perceptual level never looking the range of the moment and totally disregards the fact that any knowledge is contextual.

As Peikoff writes in Objectivism: The Philosophy Of Ayn Rand, "Mr Chamberlain treated Hitler's demand as an isolated fact to be dealt with an isolated response; to do this, he had to drop an immense amount of knowledge. He did not relate Hitler's demands to the knowledge already gained about the nature of Nazism; he did not ask for causes. He did not relate the demand to his knowledge of similar demands vioced by aggressor nations and even local bullies throughout history; he did not ask for principles. He did not relate his own policy to mankind's knowledge of the results of appeasments; despite ample indications, he did not ask whether his capitualation, besides satisfying Hitler, would also embolden him, increase his resources, hearten his allies, undermine his opponents, and thus acheive the opposite of its stated purpose. Chamberlain was not concerned with any aspect of a complex situation beyond the single point he chose to consider in isolation: that he would be removing Hitler's immediate frustration."

If we substituted the words Hitler with the Taliban, and Islam with Nazism, the man nailed the problem almost 20 years ago.

What a shame nobody was listening.

Explaining Inflation.

2009-02-20T03:36:00.004+05:30

I just found an awesome video by Paul Mckeever explaining what inflation is all about in his series "Understanding Money And Banking". Its pretty rare to have things this simplified.

Be sure to watch the whole series!

The Pink Chaddi Campaign.

2009-02-16T18:59:00.004+05:30

After the recent attacks on women in pubs in Mangalore by Hindu fanatics, the story took a weird twist a few days ago.

Here is an excerpt --

KARACHI, Feb 13 (IPS) - Outraged by an attack by right-wing Hindu militants on women emerging from a pub in Mangalore, Karnataka state, activists in India have initiated a ‘Pink Chaddi’ (underwear) campaign in which they are sending pink panties to members of the Sri Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram) on Valentines’ Day.

The Pink Chaddi campaign has defiantly called for a Pub Bharo (fill-the-pubs) action on Valentines Day.

"Go to a pub wherever you are. From Kabul to Chennai to Guwahati to Singapore to LA women have signed up. It does not matter if you are actually not a pub-goer or not even much of a drinker. Let us raise a toast (it can be juice) to Indian women," Delhi-based journalist Nisha Susan, who started the campaign on Feb 5, wrote in the blog http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/ .

The move has resonated in pub-less Pakistan, where women are equally threatened by right-wing militants who claim to have Islamic sanction for curbing women’s visibility and movements in the public sphere.

Muslim extremists in Pakistan oppose the celebration of New Year and Valentine’s Day with as much fervor as their Hindu counterparts in India.

However, shops in all major Pakistani cities were reported stocking Valentine Day cards and other red and pink paraphernalia while street vendors were doing brisk business selling red roses and heart-shaped balloons.

"The reason why we picked ‘chaddi’, underwear, is because it’s also the slang word for a right-wing person," Susan explained in an audio interview to the BBC.

Regarding Muthalik’s response - he has said he will respond by sending pink ‘khaddi’ (homespun) saris to "all of us, thereby shaming us into modesty," Susan added, "that was an excellent action. It works because we’ve been non-violent, maybe we can get him to be non-violent too."

"There is of course a point to being light-hearted about this," she said. "They seem to take Valentine’s Day extremely seriously. For most people, Valentine’s Day doesn’t matter, going to pubs doesn’t matter. We’re not promoting high-consumption lifestyles... What we do object to is people using a certain dislike of high consumption lifestyles to control women’s actions.

Its not exactly an eye for an eye..but its pretty close. Also check out their blog. Here is what it has to say --

What is the Pink Chaddi Campaign?

The Pink Chaddi Campaign kicked off on 5 February 2009 to oppose the Sri Ram Sena. The campaign is growing exponentially (44,324 members at this point in the life of our Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women) and that is not surprising. Most women in this country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Of course, a lot of men have joined the group as well.

Here is we want to do with the Pink Chaddi Campaign. Join in. Be imaginative, have fun and fight back!

The current contact roster for the campaign is:

What can you do?

Step 1: It does not matter that many of us have not thought about Valentine's Day since we were 13. If ever. This year let us send the Sri Ram Sena some love. Let us send them some PINK CHADDIS.

Look in your closet or buy them cheap. Dirt-cheap. Make sure they are PINK. Send them off to the Sena.

If you don't want to mail it yourself, you can drop it off at the Chaddi Collection Points. We will be collecting across the country through this week and sending the packages on February 12. More information about Chaddi Collectors in your city soon on our blog: http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/

Step 2: Send the Pink Chaddi Campaign a photograph of the package.

Tell us how many chaddis you are sending out and inspire other women in other cities.

Step 3: On Valentine's Day we do a Pub Bharo action. Go to a pub wherever you are. From Kabul to Chennai to Guwahati to Singapore to LA women have signed up. It does not matter if you are actually not a pub-goer or not even much of a drinker. Let us raise a toast (it can be juice) to Indian women. Take a photo or video. We will put it together (more on how later) and send this as well to the Sri Ram Sena.

What happens after Valentine's Day?
After Valentine's Day we should get some of our elected leaders to agree that beating up women is ummm... AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE.

For right now, ask not what Dr VS Acharya, Home Minister of Karnataka can do for you. Ask what you can do for him. Here is his blog. Send him some love.

Nisha Susan
For the Pink Chaddi Campaign

PS. Our good friend L says we should not colour-discriminate. So if you really, really can't send pink chaddis, send those in other colours.

PPS. Both Women and Men are invited to send in their chaddi's/ pictures of chaddi's.

Religion Versus Valentines Day.

2009-02-09T19:02:00.007+05:30

Valentines day is the day when everybody takes the time to appreciate the loved ones in their lives. Couples cuddle up together celebrating earthly love and the electric passion between them. On this day, the city has so much to offer. Many weeks in advance, the shops are filled with chocolates, cards and may other ways to say I love you.

However, the story that caught my eye this valentines day was the unequivocal stand of all the religions against the celebration of valentines day.

Here is the Hindu story in Bangalore.

Bangalore: Bangalore, whose name turned into a verb with globalization and 'bangalored' came to denote the free movement of jobs, is suddenly caught up in a very ugly mess.

An outfit called the Sri Ram Sene first pulled the caveman act on young women in a pub in Mangalore – not far from this city – dragging them by the hair, slapping and pushing them around. And now approaching Valentine's Day, the same group is threatening to forcibly "marry off" couples caught celebrating romance in Bangalore.

Women drinking beer in pubs, wearing 'tight jeans' as well as public displays of affection are against Indian culture, says the Sene. Its leader Pramod Mutalik wants to put a stop to all Western cultural imports.

And now they have consistently condemned the Valentines day--

The SRS would act along these lines:

Guys and girls exhibiting public display of affection on Valentine’s Day would be forced to tie the knot immediately by Sene activists. For that, five teams would be formed. They will roam around Bangalore with video cameras and if they find young couples dating, they will force them to wed on the spot.

“The couples will be taken to a sub-registrar’s office to solemnise the marriage’’ said T S Vasanth Kumar Bhavani, Sene’s Bangalore city president.

Mutalik’s claim is that Valentine’s Day is a ‘Christian practice’.

He recently said in an interview that he and his ‘strict followers of Hindu culture’ were very much against women wearing noodle straps and tight jeans.

Firstly, I wonder whoever gave him the notion that Valentines day is a Christian practice!

The Christian Post reports --

Teens, churches and Christian organizations are sending an alternative message of abstinence and purity on the most romantic day of the year, Valentine’s Day.Across the country, youths will make a public stand on their commitment to remain sexually pure until they are married on the Day of Purity, an annual event that coincides with Valentine’s Day. This is the fifth annual Day of Purity for youth.

“We live in a culture hostile to traditional values which has produced shocking statistics on the state of our youth,” said a statement on the Day of Purity Web site. “The Day of Purity is a day on which students can make a public demonstration of their commitment to remain sexually pure, in mind and actions.”

And the Muslim story, Saudi Arabia ofcourse, has banned all red items in gift shops and among florists yet again.

(CNN) -- Saudi Arabia has asked florists and gift shops to remove all red items until after Valentine's Day, calling the celebration of such a holiday a sin, local media reported Monday."As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women, " Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, told the Saudi Gazette, an English-language newspaper......

Two years ago, a teenager was raped by seven men who found her alone with a man unrelated to her. The government sentenced the 19-year-old woman to 200 lashes and six months in prison for being in the company of a man who wasn't a family member or her husband. She was later pardoned. The seven rapists were sentenced to two to nine years in prison."

It would be unnecessary to point out the fact that it is not totally senseless for religions to take this stand given its views. Why? Here is an excerpt from a post by the editors of the The Undercurrent:

"Valentine’s Day is an inherently secular holiday. What it celebrates is not divine or platonic love, but earthly romance and passion.

The passion between lovers has always threatened the sway of religion. Religion requires humility, obedience, and self-denial—not exactly the traits exhibited by individuals enflamed by romantic devotion to their lovers. Perhaps this is why religion has always tended to regard sexual passion as a sin rather than a value to be cherished.In Saudi Arabia, Valentine’s Day is a threat because it focuses people on the passions of the here and now, rather than the empty promises of a religious after-life. A man dreaming of his lover’s lips is unlikely to be motivated to submit to Allah."

One of the other important lessons to learn from such bizarre events is that there should be a wall of Separation between religion and State. In the Hindu and the Christian societies religion merely takes the backseat and even when violence breaks out, the State protects the security of its citizens. On the contrary, when there is no such separation -- like in Saudi Arabia, the secular minorities are punished like the woman in the news item. Ayn Rand once said that the smallest minority on earth was the individual and applies appropriately here. Anytime an oppressive regime loots power in the name of God or in the name of the people, it is the individual who bear the brunt.

Update -- Outraged by an attack by right-wing Hindu militants on women emerging from a pub in Mangalore, activists in India have initiated a ‘Pink Chaddi’ (underwear) campaign in which they are sending pink panties to members of the Sri Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram) on Valentines’ Day.

Obama Controls CEO Pay -- If You Are Stimulated.

2009-02-05T01:52:00.004+05:30

When the government disregards the wall of separation between State and economy, things fuck up. That is cause and effect. One would have to live to with that. Obama disagrees, as usual.

An excerpt:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed a salary cap of $500,000 for top executives at companies that receive large amounts of bailout money, saying that some executives were being "rewarded for failure," in part with taxpayer-subsidized money.

"We all need to take responsibility," the president said as he prompted Congress once again to act on his economic stimulus program and repeated his comments that some Wall Street executives had shown "the height of irresponsibility."

"We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success, and we believe that success should be rewarded," he said. "But what gets people upset - and rightfully so - are executives being rewarded for failure, especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers."

The President thinks top executives should not be rewarded for failure. Fair enough. What the heck then is the stimulus package doing there in the first place? More importantly, this fallacy of thinking of wealth as something static is very destructive. For instance, if a mother was sitting at the dining table with five children and ready to cut the cake in front of her, each kid would wish that his brother would get a smaller piece which would leave more for him. It is out of a common pot, in this case a common cake, that the benefit is ultimately distributed from. This is the governments' method which completely divorcing effort from reward leads us straight to the tragedy of the commons. The notion that wealth merely needs to be distributed is patently false. Wealth like, the cake or any other thing should be first created before it distributed. Thus, if anybody has more of wealth, then he has deserved it by producing an equivalent amount of value worth trading for. This is justice. However, in the governments view, it is the exact opposite of justice that prevails -- where the best among many are overlooked, or even worse neglected. When Obama said, "But what gets people upset - and rightfully so - are executives being rewarded for failure, especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers." It is time to ask the question why should the taxpayers pay for the mistakes for private companies? If they deserve to fail in the market selling an inferior product, just why should an innocent tax payer have to bear the brunt of it? In a proper private company, the shareholders decide how much an executive or if he should be paid at all. But how can the government think the pay is "too much". How the heck do they know what is "too much" and what is "too little". I mean, when is there no mechanism to fix salaries based on market pressures, any arbitrary salary will do. Its like wanting to swim in the water without getting into the swimming pool!

Even if Obama is well-intentioned, the result will acheive its exact opposite. For instance, if the stimulus package is designed to protect the "major" companies from competition; save people from unemployment and retain the business a tailor or another proffessional would have existed had the person not been unemployed. Still the package would still fail. Henry Hazlitt in his book, "Economics in one Lesson" teaches that its important to look long range than the range of the moment effects. Supposing Obama actually did save the workforce, it would not change the fact that taxpayers paid for those workers to stay in employment. If they would have saved that extra tax money they gave away, they would spend it on something else that they dont have today. This makes way for employment in other sectors and new industries. No new job is created by the stimulus package, but all we are left with is an unfit subsidized company which is unable to conquer the market, but still is in business.

This is what Obama chooses to call "basic common sense", then it is the perversion of justice; innocent tax payers paying for the mistakes of private companies. When the government starts financing a private company with the taxpayers money, it goes without saying -- anything goes, especially causes that the government is propagandizing -- like CEO pay.

My Yahoo Radio Station.

2009-01-25T15:34:00.000+05:30

This is a link to my yahoo radio and anybody looking for some good adult alternative and a pinch of slow music can head to. I have rated about 300 -400 songs I have listened to. The only downside is that when am I in college I don't get to rate any songs because my college authorities have disabled flash. Music is not an "educational" endeavor and thus doesn't qualify as surfing material according to my college authorities.

Anyway, the music at my station is fairly good so, "Move it!"

A Good Philosophy Joke.

2009-01-25T15:09:00.002+05:30

This got me laughing like a psycho. I just had to post it.

An eccentric philosophy professor gave a one question final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics.

The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on his desk and wrote on the board: "Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist."

Fingers flew, erasers erased, notebooks were filled in furious fashion. Some students wrote over 30 pages in one hour attempting to refute the existence of the chair. One member of the class however, was up and finished in less than a minute.

Weeks later when the grades were posted, the student who finished in one minute got an A.

The rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an A when he had barely written anything at all.

This is what he wrote:

"What chair?"

[HT -- Noodlefood]

Is The World Going Nuts!!?

2009-01-23T20:53:00.004+05:30

Is the world going nuts!!?

I think its a very pertinent question to ask given the global warming -- animal rights agenda, government intervention and the refusal to look Islamic totalitarianism in eye.

The civilized world has blamed Israel time and again for the atrocities that Palestine should be held responsible for.

Here is a news report that caught my eyes a few days ago --

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas vowed Monday to rearm in defiance of any Israeli and international efforts to prevent the Islamist militant group from replenishing its arsenal of rockets and other weapons after the Gaza war.

"Do whatever you want. Manufacturing the holy weapons is our mission and we know how to acquire weapons," Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, told a news conference.

Calls to rearm to use ceasefires only to rearm are not new to the Hamas. It's not in vogue anymore -- blaming Israel. Really. Israel should attack Palestine and mop up the totalitarian culture with full moral certainty and rectitude. No doubt about it.

Oh, and coming back to the world going nuts -- its just another testament that ideas can change the world -- for the better or worse.

Father Zarkaria Botros on "The Perverse Sexual Habits Of The Prophet.

2009-01-23T14:20:00.004+05:30

Here's the second post in the series on the perverse sexual habits of the Prophet from Jihadwatch.

This being the continuation of Fr. Botros' examination of Muhammad's sexual morality (or lack thereof). See here for Part I. Last we left the priest and his co-host, the former noted that, "No less than 20 Islamic sources—such as the hadiths of Ahmad bin Hanbal—relay that Muhammad used to suck on the tongues of boys and girls.”

Botros proceeded to read aloud from various sources, such as a hadith relayed by Abu Hurreira (deemed an extremely reliable narrator), where Muhammad sucked on the tongues of his cousin (and future caliph) Ali’s two boys, Hassan and Hussein—they of revered Shia memory.

Next he read a hadith of Muhammad sucking on the tongue of his own daughter, Fatima. Fr Botros also added that the Arabic word for “suck” (muss) cannot, as some apologists insist, mean anything but “suck.” “After all,” added the perspicacious priest, “this is the same word used when discussing Muhammad’s 'activities' with his wives, especially his beloved child-bride, Aisha.”

With an extremely disgusted look on his face, Botros turned towards the camera and said: “Dear lady, imagine, for a moment, coming home to find your husband sucking on your daughter’s tongue? What would you do? It’s even worse: it’s your prophet—the most “morally upright” man, a man to be emulated by the world! A man who on record used to go around sucking the tongues of his wives, his daughters, and young boys: Are these the activities of the man described in the Koran as being the pinnacle of moral perfection?”

Cohost: “More!”

“Muhammad would not sleep until he kissed his daughter Fatima and nuzzled his face in her bosom [the priest provided the appropriate sources]. Dear lady! what would you say to your husband sleeping with his face in your daughter’s breast—is that the height of morality?!”

At this point, Fr Botros, looking downcast, began apologizing profusely, saying he could only imagine how all these anecdotes must be troubling for Muslims, to which the co-host reassured him: “It’s not your fault, father, but rather the fault of those Muslims recording these vile incidences. Either way: Muslims must know. More please.”

Botros continued reading more revealing hadiths, including one from the Musnad of Ahmad bin Hanbal, which records Muhammad seeing a 2-3 year old girl in her mother’s arms. Muhammad was so “impressed” by her that he said, “By Allah, if this girl reaches marrying age and I am still alive, I will surely marry her.”

Another hadith goes on to say that Muhammad ended up dying before this particular girl reached marriage age, to which the by now vexed priest, unable to contain himself, exclaimed, “Awwww! Poor prophet! He missed one!”

Botros then told viewers to keep this last hadith in mind, for “context,” as he read another hadith from the Sunan of Bin Said, which records Muhammad saying “I hugged so-and-so when she was a child and found that I greatly desired her.”

“What prophet is this you follow?!” cried the outraged Coptic priest. “Where is his morality? This is the man that Muslims follow slavishly? Use your minds!”

It was late in the night, yet Fr Botros was not done cataloging his findings regarding the prophet’s “sexual” habits (these shows are an hour and a half long). So, when he moved on to a hadith depicting Muhammad lying next to a dead woman in her grave, as well as pointing to hadith categories called “intercourse with a dead woman,” I happily turned off the satellite and called it a night—till this moment, as I am (somewhat reluctantly) revisiting my notes to prepare this report.

Some Of My Insights -- Concept-Formation.

2009-01-20T21:09:00.006+05:30

I have just finished concept formation from OPAR, and like the last time, wanted to post on my ongoing training via the podcasts of The Objectivism Seminar. Although I have to take the effort to sit down and push play (which is the hardest part), the next time i look at the screen and 40 minutes have already whizzed by!

So here come my recent insights --

Human's have the distinctive power of abstraction, differentiation and integration -- which enables us to do many things beyond the sensory perceptual level

We segregate entities into units on the basis of differentiation and integration. When an animal look at an apple -- it only has a fleeting sensation of the apple before its eyes or the higher animals may even retain a few sensation and form a precept. But that is the end of its cognition growth. Man, on the other hand, has the power of abstraction that is -- of selective focus. A man may look at an apple and can choose to selectively focus on the color or the shape of the apple instead of focusing on the entity as a whole. He can look at two apples and isolate the same distinguishing features; differentiating, for instance, between an apple and a banana and integrating two or more apples.

Language transforms concepts into concretes and gives them the status of entities and comes in especially handy we talk of higher level concepts.

We differentiate entities that are strikingly different from each other and this is a relatively easy thing to do. The question always has been -- what is the same? What is the basis for integrating a set of entities under the same concepts? Ayn Rand's seminal discovery in this regard is that entities that have similar characteristics or similar attributes are commensurable i.e. that entities having the same distinguishing feature can be measured quantitatively.

The function of concept formation is to condense vast amounts of data into a folder which we can conveniently use when the need arises in our daily course of life. To condense such data, we retain the distinguishing characteristic between two or more entities but omit to measure the intensity or the degree of the distinguishing characteristic between the entities. We understand that the degree should exist in some quantity but may exist in any quantity. We abstract (selective focus) characteristics from their measurement.

Concepts of consciousness also follow the rule of measurement omission. Here, there are two attributes to measure -- content and action(intensity). For instance, love is love -- regardless of whether one is talking about Friend A or Friend B or thought is thought regardless of what is it that one is thinking about. In other words, the content of the concept remains omitted. Another aspect that is omitted is the attribute of intensity. For instance, the concept love does not take into account whome do you love more -- your parents or your friends. The attribute of intensity -- of more or less -- of how much is not taken into account In other words, the what and the how remain omitted.

Another aspect of concept formation is definitions. Definitions, taking Peikoff's example, can best be viewed as the label to the folder -- the folder representing the concept and the label representing the definition of the concept. If we acquire any new knowledge about a particular concept, the new data will be stored in the folder which subsumes the respective concept. This is what Ayn Rand called the open ended nature of concepts -- that they subsume all the data which was known, is known and will be known about the said concept. However, a disadvantage that could arise from the open ended nature of concepts is that one will have to carry loads of information with him at any given time -- thus making it impossible to retain and summon such information whenever necessary.

This is where definitions come into play. Definitions, as mentioned earlier, serve as labels to the folder thus helping us economize a large amount of data subsumed under the concept. However, for a valid definition, it should emphasize on the fundamental characteristic of the particular involved -- and fundamental does not necessarily mean the obvious characteristic. Fundamental here refers to the distinguishing characteristic which is responsible for most of the other resulting differences. For instance, Greg in the course of the recording gave an excellent example where people earlier thought that whales were fish since they lived in the water. It was only later that biologists found that whales infact were mammals and were more similar to dogs than fish. In the present case, although it is tempting to equate whales with fish -- they differ with each other fundamentally and this difference between fish and whales puts the great divide. Fundamental in this case means that mammals do not breathe with gills, give birth to younger ones and so on. This is the fundamental similarity between whales and dogs and the fundamental difference between whales and fishes. It would thus aid us better to arrange concepts in such a fashion that distinguish fundamental differences than obvious ones to give identity to our concepts.

This does not mean that Objectivism agrees with skepticism in any fashion. Even if one groups two entities under the same concept due to obvious similarties and not the fundamental ones -- he would still be correct to the best of his knowledge if he has conformed to reality. If any new facts were found and if one had to reclassify, for example, whales as mammals instead of fish, it would not lead to any chaos in concept formation. If the old definition based on the obvious similarity conforms to facts -- then the new definition cannot contradict it. To continue with our example, the fact that whales are mammals does not alter the fact that they still live in water! At any given stage, if one correctly forms a definitions conforming to facts -- any new knowledge will not be a threat to already estabilished valid knowledge.

All in all, concepts help us in unit reduction i.e. they condense enormity of the universe using the "human" method which is the conceptual faculty.

[Next in the series: Some Of My Insights -- Objectivity]

You're My Baby By Roy Orbison

2009-01-19T01:23:00.001+05:30

This song definitely scores in my book.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

2009-01-18T21:51:00.005+05:30

I have just bought a copy of the book, Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and can't wait to dig through it. Since I've been doing a lot of blogging on Islam (almost the last 9 posts consecutively), I've been wanting to take a peak into the Islamic world and what better way than to hear an account of it first hand.

I've done some preliminary research on the book, Infidel and found it on the recommendation list of Noodlefood (if you are not subscribing to NoodleFood already, you sure are missing out on a great deal) and wanted to give it a try. I also found a video of Ayaan Harsi Ali and a review by Gina on the book.

I can't wait to get my hands on it!

Update -- I've just watched the video I've linked above and I just had to state the obvious. The woman is so ready for Objectivism. Although she said the usual stuff about human rights and democracy like Robert Spencer, they sure do lean on the side of justice and the free-market in each of their arguments. In the video, when one of the audience member started off with the usual "what's so great about democracy and people are poor here too"(democracy implying a floating abstraction as the best social system ever discovered), she replied something to the effect of "I would rather be poor and free than be a slave" and also "If you ask any person in a third world country, where would you go given a plane, most people would opt for America". Lets hope she finds Ayn Rand.

In India, We Stand Muted.

2009-01-15T20:57:00.003+05:30

In India, we stand muted.

According to this news report

Patna, Jan 15 : The author of a book that reportedly questioned Islamic tenets has been arrested and charged with hurting the sentiments of the Muslim community, police said Thursday.

Mohammed Yasin Ahmad, author of the Urdu book "Islami Surah Ya Beimani Ka Panchnama", surrendered at the Pirbahore police station Wednesday night.

Ahmad's 154-page book stirred a controversy by questioning the 10 tenets of Islam and the functioning of the Khalifas.

On Monday, Maulana Kari Abdullah Bukhari, chief cleric of the Jama Masjid in Munger district, had complained about Ahmad and his wife Nilofer Yasin, who is the publisher of the book.

"The complainant told the police that there are objectionable references to Islam in the book," Patna Superintendent of Police Anwar Hussain said.

Islamists are attacking the most basic rights of man -- the right to speak and express their views on any any matter in general -- and Islam in particular. If we concede the right to free speech, the rest will be tragedy.

The Winning Habit.

2009-01-15T19:00:00.001+05:30

[HT -- Atlasshrugs2000]

Underwriters Laboratories.

2009-01-15T15:26:00.004+05:30

Here is another example of how the free market works better by protecting individual rights. The scientists at the Underwriters Laboratory are a bunch of guys who perform a quality check on a product before it reaches the market. The quality test is done at the expense of the manufacture himself. This is another example why capitalism provides more safety to the buyer. Although in a free market, there would be no laws making it compulsory for manufactures to undergo product certification -- most manufacturers would still prefer the quality check for two reasons -- market competition and expensive lawsuits.

Any argument for capitalism should propose to outlaw the costly, inefficient government agencies which make it mandatory for manufacturers to undergo quality checks under government beauracrats. Such independent product certification will also be more reliable as they face bankruptcy and expensive lawsuits if they get it wrong. We should rid ourselves of the statist mess we put in place.

More on this here

[HT -- Noodlefood]

Israel’s Offensive In Gaza

2009-01-14T21:41:00.006+05:30

The recent attacks by Israel in the Gaza strip have received much media coverage and stirred a lot of international figures into action. However, what we saw on television were not "just the facts" but loads of context dropping and countless hi-clarity pictures which told us the stories of endless Gaza residents who were in dire need of the basic necessities of life. With lightning speed (if not clarity), the civilized world has decided to blame Israel for all the casualties that are being inflicted in the Gaza strip. It is indeed sad that the mainstream media has decided to voluntarily blind itself to facts and principles. They have been condemned Israel – a country that upholds the individual rights of its citizens – and glorified rightless people living under a notorious government in Palestine.

Here are a few facts about the crisis that one clearly needs to analyze before one pronounces his judgment upon the issue.Hamas had contested in the elections in Gaza and won with an overwhelming majority of the two-thirds of the seats it contested. Hamas is also a terrorist organization whose central belief, in their own words is "nothing is loftier or deeper in nationalism than waging Jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims." When will this Jihad end? The Hamas Charter quotes Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood: "Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors."

The civilized world's claim that a ceasefire should be negotiated has been tried previously. Given Hamas's direction, it should come of no surprise that Hamas was more than willing to break the ceasefire. Hamas had fired about 215 rockets during the six month "ceasefire" period -- aimed solely to kill civilians.

Hamas has also publicy declared that it WILL use the ceasefire only to recoup. In other words, there is no such thing as ending the aggression per se.

Given such a mess, I don't know how can anybody blame Israel for defending their civilians lives. They didn't ask for this either but what can any nation that upholds individual rights do when such fanatics -- Nazis or Islamists -- attack them with such moral certainty and rectitude? In my experience, people usually agree that a sovereign state has the right to protect the lives of its civilians but what usually seems out of place is the killing of innocent civilians (although they in fact did elected Hamas), in the hands of evil Israeli's. Lets take a step back and then answer some of these questions.

Should Israel be permitted to kill innocent civilians?

If somebody had to be blamed for the killing of civilians in Gaza -- it, without question, should be Hamas and the residents of Gaza themselves --who brought this onto themselves by electing a fanatical group. Hamas has always, as a rule tried to attack innocent civilians in Israel. What of Israel's children and civilians? Don't they qualify as civilians too? Even worse ,the Hamas has used kids as human shields and killed 40 out of its own citizens for aiding Israel. They have a long-standing habit of storing and launching its weapons from mosques and other civilian areas. It boasts about hiding its operatives in places like hospitals. Israel on the other hand, phones people and drops leaflets to warn civilians of the coming attacks -- at the cost of element of surprise. Isn't it a little fanatical to blame Israel for all the killings of civilians -- on both sides of the border?

All this said, I don't think any civilian of any aggressor country can claim a right to live. What if, for instance, Israel thought it were a better strategic position and chose to drop an atom bomb or something? Would that render Israel immoral? I wouldn't think so. A government, elected or not, is an agent of its citizens in the international sphere -- whether anyone likes it or not. This is why one should have read his books or watched TV and found out exactly what his government deserves. What else is the point of the political process? If it were a problem in their own country, we could simply say, "Let them suffer in their own misery." But when the people's agent harms a civilized country -- its people cant say --"We claim no responsibility for the terror attack by our agent on your land." It is senseless.

Aren't there more Palestinian casualties -- that is not proportionate damage!

Israel's casualties are much lesser than compared to the Palestinians simply because Israel considers it important to care about its citizens life -- which is the government's job in the first place. Hence, they have warning systems and bunkers for their citizens protection. On the other hand, Palestinians store weapons in civilian areas, use civilians as human shields and kill their own citizens for helping the Israeli army. Does it come as a surprise that the number of civilian casualties differ in such great number!!?

It is important for the media and the civilized to understand who is the thug here. Hamas is the thug because it is the true, authentic representative of Islam and is acting solely on the teachings of the Koran and other religious edicts. As historian John Lewis highlighted recently at FacingJihad, the threat of Islamic totalitarianism is against every country that upholds the individual rights of its citizens. It is these individual rights that the Islamists seek to destroy. If we wish to put up a fights againsts the Islamists, the civilized world should support Israel in an unqualified manner to keep us from reverting back to the Dark Ages -- to a time where honor killing is commonplace and where the good becomes the exception instead of the rule.

Father Zakaria Botros on "The perverse sexual habits of the Prophet" from Jihad Watch

2009-01-13T11:26:00.003+05:30

Here is another a very striking and awesome post by JihadWatch (again!)

Life TV’s Father Zakaria Botros recently ran a show dedicated to discussing the question of morality and how it is—or should be—one of the hallmarks of “prophethood.” At the start, he posed the focal question of the show: “Was Muhammad the prophet a moral man—the most upright man, worthy of being emulated by the world?”

He opened the show by relying on an Ibn Taymiyya quote, which evaluated the signs of prophethood. Taymiyya asserted that there are many false-prophets, such as Musailima “the Liar,” a contemporary of Muhammad. Taymiyya concluded that many of these so-called prophets are, in fact, “possessed,” and that the only way to determine the authenticity of any prophet is by examining his biography (sira) and deeds, and see if he be found worthy of the title.

Being that this is the first of several episodes devoted to examining the concepts of morality and prophethood (with the notion that the former reinforces the latter), the theme for this particular episode was “purity” (tahara): "Was Muhammad a 'pure' man?"—in this context, a question concerning his sexual mores (or lack thereof).

After the preliminaries, Botros looked at the camera and gave a stern warning: “This episode is for adults only! I am going to discuss many things that make me blush for shame, so please: have the women and children leave the room.”

He then asked Muslims watching to keep in mind the question “Is this the prophet I follow?” as he delineated some of Muhammad’s sexual habits.

First, from the Koran, Botros read verses unequivocally stating that Muhammad is the paragon of all virtue and morality, such as “And most surely you [Muhammad] conform (yourself) to sublime morality [68: 4].” He further quoted the ulema, such as Ibn Kathir, all insisting that Muhammad was the “Noblest of all humanity, and the greatest of prophets.”

Botros and his ex-Muslim cohost—the priest had insisted that it be a man for this particular show, lest he be too ashamed to delineate Muhammad’s sexual habits—discussed Koran 4:3, which “limits” a Muslim's wives to four, plus “what your right hands possess,” that is, slave-girls.

That was apparently not good enough for Muhammad, asserted Botros; an entire verse had to be “revealed” justifying more women for him (Koran 33:50). In fact, Father Botros has carefully compiled a list of all the women—66 are known—to have had sexual relations with Muhammad.

Botros said that was only normal: according to Sirat Al-Halabi, Muhammad can have a woman no matter what, even against her will; and if Muhammad desired a married woman, her husband would have had to divorce her. According to Ibn Sa’ad, who wrote another authoritative biographical account of Muhammad, “The prophet did not die till all women were permitted him” (see Kitab Al Tabaqat Al Kubra, v.8, 194).

The co-host, rather abruptly, interjected – “What of all those rumors that Muhammad exhibited homosexual tendencies?”

Botros dropped his face in his hands and mumbled, “So you still insist we discuss that?” The co-host was adamant, saying it was for Muslims’ own good to know everything.

Thus Botros, after profusely apologizing to his Muslim viewers, saying how embarrassing this was for him, declared: “Look! We’re merely readers here, bringing up what we have read in Islam’s own books! If Muslims don't like it, they should go and burn these books.”

The first anecdote discussed by the priest revolved around a hadith that, while some ulema say is “weak,” is, nonetheless according to Botros, present in 44 Islamic books—including some highly respected collections, such as Sunan Bayhaqi and Al Halabi.

According to this hadith, a man named Zahir, who used to declare that “the prophet loves me,” said that one day Muhammad crept unawares behind him and put him in a bear-hug. Zahir, alarmed, yelled, “Get off me!” After turning his head and discovering that it was Muhammad, he stopped struggling and proceeded to “push his back into the prophet’s chest—prayers and blessings upon him."

Another curious hadith contained in Sunan Bayhaqi and which traces to Sunan Abu Dawud (one of the six canonical hadith collections), has Muhammad lifting up his shirt for a man who proceeded to kiss his entire torso, “from his bellybutton to his armpits.”

Botros looked casually at the camera and said, “Imagine if the sheikh of Al Azhar [nearest Muslim equivalent to the pope] went around lifting his shirt for men to kiss his torso” (he proceeded to make smacking kissing noises, for effect).

Said the co-host: “Surely there’s more?”

Botros: “Indeed there is. No less than 20 Islamic sources—such as the hadiths of Ahmad bin Hanbal—relay that Muhammad used to suck on the tongues of boys and girls"...

[Stay tuned for part II of "The perverse sexual habits of the Prophet"]

Fuckkin' Cowards

2009-01-09T02:32:00.003+05:30

The above is a video of the Hamas trying to use kids as human shields to protect themselves from the Israeli army. While I hear the constant claim that Israelis are killing civilians -- it just pisses me off that these commentators never mention the Hamas targeting only civilians as a rule, while the Israelis do it out of necessity -- and in the present case, risked the element of surprise to warn the civilians. How the fuck did we get to blaming Israel for the whole problem the Hamas created in the first place!!?

A Journalist Who Can Attest To The Cause Of Terror.

2009-01-08T03:36:00.003+05:30

Here's an interesting post by JihadWatch about the story of a journalist, Sean Langan who "sneaked into Pakistan last spring to interview top Taliban "Khalifa" Siraj Haqqani and Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri. He was going to ask Osama Bin Laden's deputy if they had a nuclear bomb."

Instead, they did what we would most likely expect them do -- kidnapped them, locked them up and released him only after he said one of his son's name was Gabriel, the angel that narrated the Koran from Allah to Muhammad I am guessing.

And what's more, Taliban is clearly operating in Pakistan given the journalist account. At this point, given such overwhelming evidence, it would be nuts to claim Pakistan didn't know shit about the Mumbai blasts.

Langan, at the terror camp heard an ex-Pakistani minister on the BBC one day denying Al Qaeda operated camps inside the country.

"I had to turn up the radio to hear his denial over the sound of gunfire from all the training camps," Langan said, grinning.

I must admit, after the rude shock, I find JihadWatch very informative and awesome regarding Islamic totalitarianism.

Some Of My Insights -- Sense Perception and Volition.

2009-01-01T18:47:00.008+05:30

I have been catching up with Greg Perkin's Objectivism Seminar and the training has been really great. It's the first time I am delving into philosophy and I could not thank the guys in the seminar enough. My totally extra special thanks to Greg and Kyle for such great insights which really helped in some integrations that stuck like hell.

I am done with sense perception and volition and have just entered epistemology. I quickly wanted to jot some of my insights..you know, track my journey a bit. (Volition was and still is a pain to get straight..so expect some shakiness).

So here they come --

1. Our senses have an identity and because it does have an identity -- it is limited. Simply because we have a means of perception does not mean we cannot know reality.

2. The distinction between form and object. (On a side note, everything we ever perceive is only our form of perception, to get to the object that is literally "out there" -- we have to conceptualize, draw abstractions and the like.

3. It does not matter in what form we perceive any object (electron level or Universe level) as long as we can conceptualize. Its the reason normal people and color blind people don't hold different theories of physics. Sense perception represent only our starting points of investigation.

4. Naive realism is wrong as no sense perception can exist in objects as apart from human mechanism.

And under volition --

5. The opposite of determinism is not indeterminism but chosen.

6. There are causes for our actions but they are chosen by the individual himself.

7. Any person is free to be in focus and expend the necessary effort or can drop his mental reins and relax instead of focusing. One cannot ask for a cause as to why a person chose to be in focus or not be in focus.

[Next in the series: Some Of My Insights -- Concept-Formation]

P.S. I am extremely happy as the blog is finally serving its purpose. I started off just to put things down instead of blurting things out -- and looks like my long, just kicking off intellectual journey won't go unrecorded. Hooray!

The Best Ad Ever Made.

2008-12-26T00:15:00.000+05:30

Just Wondering..

2008-12-25T23:47:00.002+05:30

Just wondering if there is such a thing as moderate Islam. In the same breath, is there such a thing as peaceful Nazism? Even if followers of a particular philosophy do not see the danger of the philosophy -- it does not change the fundamentals of the philosophy one bit. For instance, if I irresponsibly write software that kills people, they have the right to call me vicious -- there is no is-ought gap.

Keeps me wondering whether any Muslim who has ever read the Koran evades the teachings or..i don't know, I just cannot cannot fathom how anybody could evade at such mammoth proportions by deciding to not look at the obvious.

I find it hard to believe there are 1.5 million people on Earth to whome I have to cut some slack if I cut some slack to one Muslim . Numbers don't matter -- imagine cutting a little slack to the Nazis -- there were far too many at one point in history.

For THE MAN -- Peter Schiff

2008-12-23T00:55:00.001+05:30

HT -- Noodlefood

The Mumbai Attack.

2008-12-05T15:51:00.004+05:30

Although I dont have the time to write much, I could not resist posting about the Mumbai's terror attacks. JihadWatch has an excellent post echoing exactly my views on the ghastly event.

Here's the full post --

“Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist with the Swedish National Defense College, said there are ‘very strong suspicions’ that the coordinated Mumbai attacks have a link to al-Qaida....” -- from this news article

Yes, yes. We have all heard the solemn discussions about whether or not the "Deccan Mujahideen" is a new group, or an old one, or a made-up group, and whether or not there is a "link" to Al Qaeda. And this kind of focusing on the trivial, the nearly insignificant, goes on and on and on, when the real point is this: these are Muslims. They may be from within India. Or not. They may be from Pakistan. Or not. They may have been encouraged or funded by Arab Muslims. Or not. They may have links to Al Qaeda. Or not.

What matters is that they are Muslims attacking, attempting to kill, non-Muslims, in order to obtain their aims. And their aims are to weaken -- in this particular case -- India. And they wish to weaken India in order to make the government of India appease Muslims and meet their demands, whether in Kashmir or in India proper. And once those demands, whatever they may be, are met, other demands from Muslims will be made, and will have to be met, for there is no end to this. The Jihad does not have an end point. There is not a finite goal, but rather an endless series of goals, with each success feeding triumphalism.

The only time this has not happened, in the past 1350 years, is when Muslims have been stopped, either by superior military power -- as outside of Poitiers, or when the Ottomans were repulsed twice at the Gates of Vienna, or by the clear understanding that the Infidels were overwhelmingly more powerful, militarily and economically. That, through the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, was clear to all concerned.

And though Muslims on their own, because of inshallah-fatalism, could never create advanced economies, they have become rich from oil (and gas), a manna that only an accident of geology could provide. Now they enjoy trillions of dollars which, while allowing many of them lives of incredible luxury and decadence beyond anything the Western world has experienced, also helps to fund the Jihad by paying for mosques, madrasas, armies of Western hirelings, propaganda, and campaigns of Daw'a. What's more, at the same time, and quite independently, the Western world, having forgotten its own historical experience of Islam, and its elites, political and media, having lost the ability to heed its real scholars and their cassandra warnings, instead listened to the espositos, the armstrongs, the assorted MESA-Nostra defenders-of-the-faith-and-fatah-of-Islam, and allowed into the Western midst millions of Muslims. They did this without realizing that they brought with them, undeclared, in their mental baggage, an alien and a hostile creed, one that flatly contradicts the principles -- all the principles -- of advanced Western societies.

These trillions in oil revenues, and these millions of Muslims who in an act of civilizational near-criminal negligence, have been permitted to settle deep behind what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, explain the threat of Jihad on a global scale today.

And there is no need to waste valuable time on the radio or television pondering ponderously whether the attackers are domestic or foreign, whether they are connected to Al-Qaeda or not. That may of some interest in helping to round this particular group up. But if too much time is spent on such matters, it distracts from the pedagogic task at hand: to explain to listeners and viewers that the key element here is Islam. It is Muslims pursuing, as they have a duty to pursue, Jihad. In this particular case they have chosen to do so using terrorism, but all around us other instruments, more effective because far less attention-getting, are being used toward the same goal, the same end: the removal of all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam -- everywhere.

That's why, when any "terrorism expert" -- some are good, some are not so good, some are idiotic -- proceeds to enjoy his time on the air discussing endlessly what this group should be called, what other groups it is linked to, what its "cause" is -- it's a case of missing-the-pointness that, at this point in the history of the world, is downright dangerous.

I just wish the Indian government had half the number of balls JihadWatch does.

Busy Time...And Some Gifts Ofcourse!

2008-12-05T14:35:00.002+05:30

I've have not posted for sometime now as I am interning in The Supreme Court Of India. It will be a few more weeks till I get back to writing. I travel for 2 hours everyday so am catching up with the podcasts of The Objectivism Seminar. I have just begun sense perception and still have a long way to go.

In the meanwhile, I would like to leave you some fitness gifts. A loong list of gifts I must say. Go here to check them out.

Soo True!

2008-11-17T23:37:00.002+05:30

[HT -- Indexed for being so hilarious and true as usual]

Monumental Cowardice.

2008-11-17T22:59:00.003+05:30

Here's another Islamo maniac cowardly report --

"..men on motorcycles attacked 15 girls and teachers with acid.

The men squirted the acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school Wednesday, principal Mehmood Qaderi said. Some of the girls have burns only on their school uniforms but others will have scars on their faces.

One teenager still cannot open her eyes after being hit in the face with acid."

Jihad Watch reports that "those wearing the full-length burqa to cover themselves had been left untouched."

For some hints to who commited such a ghastly act lets look at the recent past when Taliban was in power. Consider this --

"Girls were banned from schools under the rule of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamist regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Women were only allowed to leave the house wearing a body-hiding burqa and accompanied by a male family member.

Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls' schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls' school in central Logar province last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007. The Afghan government has also accused the Taliban of attacking schools in an attempt to force teenage boys into the Islamic militia."

Yet again, for the millionth time we have another instance of cowardly Muslim believers doing exactly what the Koran tells them to. Whether the Taliban did it or some other manic did it -- the one thing we cannot do is call these attacks "unislamic" like the Afghan government would have us believe. Islam explicitly believes that men are superior to women and extols women as righteous if they are subservient and obedient to their husbands. I guess education instills in women exactly the opposite.

The only ray of hope to be optimistic about is the voice of the Afghan girl, Shamsia, undergoing treatment for the burns said from her bed at Afghanistan's main military hospital in Kabul, "I'll continue my schooling even if they try to kill me. I won't stop going to school".

It's these brave voices I wish to cheer for.

The Impossibility Of a God -- Metaphysical Considerations.

2008-11-16T17:45:00.002+05:30

I have been listening to the podcasts of Greg Perkin's Objectivism Seminar -- and it has really helped in understanding Objectivism. I'm done with metaphysics, so as an exercise, I wanted to refute the existence of God on metaphysical grounds.

Can a God exist? If not, can we say with full certainty that a God does not exist?

These are the most fundamental question to answer. To start with, can a God exist? We constantly hear the claim that God exists but just in any particular form -- like in the form of a rock or a man. He is everywhere and not limited by form. In other words, God exists but exists free of all restrictions of identity. If this is the claim, then one has to consider if it's tenable.

Ayn Rand observed some 50 years ago that to be is to be something. A thing cannot literally be and not be something – anything at the same time. It is senseless. It is impossible for any entity (including God) to exist without any features or properties. If an entity has to exist, it cannot shrug off the restrictions placed by identity like shape, color, form, properties, etc. In philosophic terms, existence is identity. This is not a mere “metaphysical assumption” but an observation so basic that anybody seeking to refute it should affirm it in his arguments. It is not merely that existence has identity -- as this implies that identity is some sort of a feature of existence but that existence is identity. Identity is not an attribute of existence which may be absent in some entities while being present in the others. To exist, an entity compulsorily has to be bound by identity.

Since we have established the fact that God has to have certain properties and that the notion of an entity without any identity doesn’t make sense – it can safely be concluded that the oft-claimed notion of an infinite, limitless God is impossible in this Universe.

If a God has to have some specific attributes and properties, then can He perform any miracles? Talking of a miracle, it’s important to understand what a miracle is. It’s not merely something we don’t understand. No, then even a magicians trick would qualify as a miracle. It has to be something more. It’s not merely something we don’t understand given our current understanding of things but has to have some sort of divine intervention which makes a thing act against its identity.

As Greg Perkins puts it in his excellent post, “Why the New Atheists Can't Even Beat D'Souza: Science vs. Miracles”

“Indeed, much of what we enjoy in our modern world would have been considered miraculous in previous times, from vaccines and medications, to cars, and the Internet and on and on. Yet none of these prove or even suggest a possibility that there is a God. No, a meaningful miracle is not merely something which would violate the laws of nature as we currently understand them, but something which would be a violation of any such law we could ever discover. That is, it would have to be a violation of lawfulness itself.”

I mean, can he literally transcend the identity of things and choose for them to act otherwise? In other words, can God bypass lawfulness itself?
Before we understand if a miracle is possible, it’s important to understand the notion of causality. Causality is best understood as – the expression of identity in action. For instance, a balloon filled with Helium rises when released. A wheel rolls because its circular in nature but a cube does not. Thus, we use wheels as tyres for our cars instead of using blocks of ice or books. The thing to note here is that an entity acts in accordance to its nature – and only in accordance with its nature. In other words, an entity cannot act contrary to its identity. It is this law that tells us that we can discover the depths of the earth as things act in accordance to its identity and this is where science plays its role by understanding the identities of entities. If things did not act in accordance to its nature’s, science would be utterly useless.

This is precisely why one has to choose between science and miracles. Science stands for causality —- things act according to their natures whereas miracles stand for contradicting identities – for a thing to be literally what it is not. Accepting the idea of science itself means rejecting the basis for miracles and to accept the basis for miracles means rejecting the basis for science.

It’s either—or.

God cannot exist if existence exists; if thing’s are what they are and act accordingly – then the possibility of an infinite being unrestricted by identity is fully wiped out.

Islam: What The West Needs To Know.

2008-11-10T00:39:00.005+05:30

It's been awhile since I've seen things when my mind went blank. It's been awhile since my last void. It's come to me now -- at 1 am in the morning with a documentary. It's titled, "Islam: What The West Needs To Know." I cannot begin to tell you how much I recommend the documentary. By all reason, its fair to say one should be scared given the current scenario of the Islamic movement -- especially after considering its history.

Honestly speaking, I had never taken institutes such as Jihad Watch very seriously. I knew that Islam was posing as a threat to free speech but I didn't not see the larger picture. I did not see that they were out to take control of my life -- free speech was just the beginning. They want to take control of my life under serious, traditional Sharia law. They are out there preaching in their mosques and in their jihad training centers that freedom is evil -- that the cause of all good is evil. They are busy preaching that my mother and sister should be covered from head to toe -- or even could be taken as concubines if we choose not to believe in Islam. We should be relegated to a second class status paying ransom for our meager, brutish existence. I swear, in the name of the best within me, I am not lying or exaggerating one bit. This is what Islam has been preaching for the past 14 centuries, and is willing to in the next 14 centuries. Just for a minute consider that fatwa's against writers, painters have become a commonplace and more than 12000 attacks have occurred after 9/11.

Allegedly, Muslims are also allowed to lie when they are furthering the cause of Islam. The end justifies the means. I mean it is very moral for a Muslim intellectual to be dishonest when saying that Islam is a peaceful religion. The Koran, not just permits it, but glorifies such dishonesty. But all the Western intellectuals have decided to deal with such a dangerous threat explicitly by blindness. We have become a World full of cowards. We have become hypocrites -- such deep hypocrites that we don't have the balls to stand up for freedom but see no qualms in indulging ourselves with products of the free market. Shame on us! Shame on the politicians! Shame on the universities for such cowardice and hypocrisy.

This documentary is a must watch. It's going to scare the living hell out of you -- but it has to be watched for freedom to be defended. So be it.

Here's the trailer -- the full length video can be found at the link I've provided above --

Free Speech Forum Pisses Off Audience Members.

2008-11-03T03:00:00.003+05:30

This is disgusting.

Allegedly, the members of the audience stormed out of a panel discussion hosted by the American University's Objectivists' free speech forum. The forum sought to discuss the nature of free speech and how totalitarian Islam was a threat to free speech.

An excerpt from the news report --

"While the focus of the forum was free speech, most of the audience disapproval came from the panelists' methods of addressing Islam.

Daniel Pipes, columnist for the New York Sun and director of the Middle East forum, a think tank that defines and promotes American interests in the Middle East, warned about the dangers of 'soft jihad,' such as the creation of same-sex-only swimming pools, as well as Western governments such as Great Britain's that allowed immigrants to practice polygamy. "

Yaron Brook, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, a non-profit think tank that promotes Objectivism, said during the discussion that Western governments were not protecting their citizens' rights to free speech and used the example of booksellers that were afraid to sell Rose's newspaper with the cartoons with Muhammad depicted in them because they were afraid of their stores being bombed, attacked or boycotted.

Brook also warned of the increasing problems of self-censorship and the desire for journalists, citizens and lawmakers to be excessively politically correct.

"It's surprising to me that we even have to have this discussion [about free speech] in the U.S.," he said. "Free speech is one of the main things that the U.S. gave this civilization, not free speech 'as long as you don't offend anyone.' The government's role is to protect our right to offend."

Flemming Rose, the editor of the Danish newspaper that commissioned the series of cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in 2005, said during the forum that laws that prohibit certain types of speech like Holocaust denial laws and the current trend to ban anti-Islam speech should be abolished.

"You shouldn't criminalize opinions, even the most stupid," he said.

Sabrina Bahir, a School of International Service alumna, said she thought the things that the panelists said about Muslims were polarizing and imbalanced.

"The allegation of how totalitarianism is only exclusive to Islam and that there isn't totalitarian Judaism or Christianity I thought was very absurd," she said. "You just have to look back in history. There are 1.5 million Muslims on this earth and you can't clump them together in the same group."" (Bold Added)

This news report almost made me sick in my stomach. Imagine having such awesome panelists discussing stuff like free speech and then imagine a bunch of dicks and idiots walking out of a rational discussion and then having the audacity to scorn moral righteousness. What the fuck!!?

Apparently, Sabrina Bahir thinks that since there were 1.5 million Muslims on earth we can’t clump them together. Really? Ask them whether or not all the 1.5 million Muslims followed the Koran as a guide to their life and then talk of “clumping” them. Ask them whether or not Islam upholds the life of Muhammad as the best life any person could have. Ask them did Muhammad not personally slay hundreds of people and marry a girl named Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage at 9. These are their beliefs – the ones they not just respect, but revere – their guide to modern life. Given such a mess, I don’t understand how on earth can such a religion claim to be peaceful and right respecting.

Consider some translations of the Koran –

As translated by Yusuf Ali of the Muslim Student Association

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, great (above you all). (Koran, 4.34)

Al-Ghazali, a central figure in the allegedly non-violent Sufi wing of Islam:

[O]ne must go on jihad at least once a year . . . one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them . . . .

But Sabrina Bahir thinks we can’t "clump" them into the same group when this is what Islam stands for. Although its true that anything taken on faith has to be violent, including Christianity (link), an enlightenment happened in Christianity. I mean nobody sees a Christian jihad today. I am sure that no Christian would walk around doing his own version of jihad because Jesus asked somebody to kill infidels. It just pisses me off that there are so many people like this female who go around making statements – without even having a hint of what they are talking about. Let’s make no mistake about Islam. If facts do matter, then such passages cannot be ignored. There is no way Islam can be peaceful – precisely because it is inherently violent and because it doesn’t give a rats ass about rights. How many more attacks and fatwa’s on painters and authors do we need to see to make the point clearer?

But again, is it evidence we are concerned about?

HT: John David Lewis at Principles in Practice.

The American Dream -- As Possible As It's True.

2008-10-29T00:14:00.005+05:30

Capitalism has been vindicated -- yet again. A fascinating new memoir, Scratch Beginnings, tells the story of Adam Shepard who finished grad school and went to check if the American Dream could ever really come true.

He went to Charleston, South Carolina, with a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, $25, and a made-up tale of woe. He spent the first two months in a homeless shelter while he worked as a day laborer. He later found a permanent position with a moving company, which gave him a stable income. This allowed Shepard to buy a (very) used pickup truck, rent and furnish an apartment with a coworker, and start saving. During this time, he was on a strict budget, buying clothes at Goodwill and lunching on peanut butter crackers and Vienna sausages. In ten months, he had saved up over $5000.

Adam planned his experiment in college when he read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, which argued that only government intervention and aid could help alleviate poverty. It didnt make any sense to Shepard, and what better way to test it than a first hand experience. Seeing is believing, right.

Shepard had also met many people during those times whom he found relentlessly fascinating. He explained the differences between his approach and Ehrenreich’s in a recent interview -- “She wrote about how tough and depressing poverty is. Really? Tough and depressing? Of course it is! I wanted to believe that there were people living in these tumultuous circumstances who weren’t living the life of cyclical misery that Ehrenreich was writing about,” he said. “The economics side of Ehrenreich’s story didn’t make sense to me from the beginning and she never proved her point. To me, anyway. She lived in a hotel, ate out, didn’t look for ways to really save money.”

Although critics are quick to point out the fact that he could not have pulled it off without government help, they slip not on not just one, but on two counts. As Evan Sparks points out, that "everyone Shepard encountered at the shelter and in the bad neighborhood he later lived in was already using the same services. It wasn’t the public services that lifted Shepard out of destitution—it was his own initiative. Indeed, if spending money on government services were the best way to cure poverty, it would no longer be a problem." It makes sense -- tomorrow will be determined, not by any cosmic overseer, but by the actions one chooses to take today.

Secondly, the critics also take the liberty of assuming the fact that there will be no charitable organizations in a capitalist society. If one were ever in doubt the question, one only has to compare the plight of a beggar in Africa and in the streets of New York. Nothing more is necessary to make the point any clearer.

Although any social system cannot guarantee rationality, it can, reward rationality and punish irrationality. All that there is to realize is that a person works better when he takes the responsibility of his own life. No amount of "big" money or "big" government can change that. Not if A is A.

The Devil's Swimming Pool.

2008-10-28T04:22:00.000+05:30

This is a picture of the Victoria Falls in Southern Africa on the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is one of the largest waterfall in the World at a height of 128m. During the months of September and December, one could actually swim to the edge of the waterfall without falling off. It is thus aptly named, "The Devils Swimming Pool."

I found the picture from this great site on travel. It features a lot of places and if the author has made money by traveling..it has to be a lot of traveling. I plan to visit a lot of the places reviewed on the site in this lifetime.

No doubt about it!

Thanks, Diana!

2008-10-28T04:14:00.001+05:30

I've very recently read Diana's advice on blogging. I must say, the tips were not things I didn't know earlier, but i guess most smart things are things we already know, but just not explicitly. I kept nodding my head until I finished reading the post.

It was frickkin' awesome.I am glad we have such smart people hanging around the block!

The Official Name Change.

2008-10-28T03:49:00.000+05:30

I've decided to change the name of the blog from "Philosophy, law and life" to "Reddie Reasons". Reddy being my last name and all got me thinking about it. I started this blog to write about things instead of just blurting them out and also to develop a writing habit. I was just scrolling thorough the page and am amazed I have written so much. Well, its not much when compared to other bloggers, but what the hell..I AM WRITING! Personally, it feels great.

Anyway, I plan to do a global warming series, given the time I've spent with the environmental law bullshit. I don't know how many parts I am gonna put in it but i promise to make it great. I have approximately a few hundred students thinking global warming is man-made -- which is completely absurd. I find it hard to believe such nonsense is the normal state of affairs. I mean as a kid I always thought mistakes were mistakes, but now it’s the normal state of affairs. In fact, making sense outta things is abnormal today. It really does take a lot of courage to stare at evil and not blink if this is the state of us. I really need to make the global warming series happen!

Exams In Hibernation.

2008-10-23T01:19:00.000+05:30

Being a IVth year law student in India is tough -- for all the wrong reasons. I have my exams and am outright bored every time i pick up any study material.

For starters, here is a list of my subjects -- direct taxes which are insistent on stealing money from hard working individuals. In fact, my tax professor has a magic word phrase which he often uses to justify taxes - "Taxes are required to raise revenue". How can anyone talk of raising revenue or whatever without first discussing the functions of the State itself. Its true that a free country needs a defense, so what are we going to do about it? Do we point a gun and then ask the people to pay protection money? Atleast from what I gather in classrooms, nobody is interested in finding out the way things work.

Company Law is so full of government regulations and procedure that one would not know where to begin taking permissions. It is also spiced up with the Competition Act (the Indian version of antitrust laws)enforcing "fair" competition. We are supposed to find the pleasure of law school with the same old crap of memorizing case laws which are decided on a case by case basis which find no problem watsoever by dispensing with fundamental abstractions.

Labor law is totally insane. I think a person without a law degree would know more of any commonsensical laws about labor than any lawyer who argues in front of labor tribunal. I mean if there is a bonafide dispute between the employer and employee, the first thing to contemplate is the terms of the contract that was agreed between them. But hell, I am yet to come across the word "contract" itself. In fact, there is a specific bar on the jurisdiction of the Civil Court.Consider who can be termed as a workmen under labour law. A worker can be classified as a "workmen" under the Industrial Dispute Act, not by looking into the nature of relationship between the employer the and the employee but on considerations such as whether the worker has any friends in the labor Union to support him. Now we have like 20 case laws which we have to memorize and apply the aforesaid theory to any problem in the exams. Does it surprise people that students don't take them seriously!!?

The worse part of the whole issue is that nobody even enjoys the subject. Idiots find pleasure, not in rational inquiry, but in suspending and blurring their conceptual faculty.

And of course, the environmentalists propaganda -- Environment law. Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient truth" was screened in class showing students the myth of global warming. Forests, animal and what not are "protected" by the government. Even though we fully well know a free market system works better, we are still stuck with this shitty system of the government calling for proactive legislations instead of leaving people alone. Its clearly not evidence that we are concerned about. Intrincism runs deep in environmental propaganda and if you want to well in law school -- don't question, just obey.

Land and Agricultural laws deals with how to confiscate the land of private, honest individuals for "public" purposes. For kicks, even its constitutionality is discussed. As if it changes the fact that it is wrong to take away the right to property for any goddamn welfare scheme proposed by the ever-proactive governments. I just don't see the point that no matter what fancy names one chooses to call stealing land, it doesn't change the fact that the beneficiary of such a policy is getting it for nothing -- forced charity!! Now, how difficult is that to grasp, really.

It makes complete sense that students find the classes boring. The laws proposed atleast wont work on Earth -- and thus fail to attract any attention of 21 year old kids who spend 5 hours a day listening to this shit. I don't think this is what any law student signed up for when they planned to enter law school. Nobody starts off wanting to be bored or to end up as a back bencher. I think most give into the irrationality because it easy -- so easy to quit thinking and substitute raw material for processed thought.

Gotta hit back to the lies, the books and the stillness of boredom.

Freedom Or Public Good - Deciding The Evaluative Primary.

2008-09-19T03:32:00.001+05:30

Noah Stahl presents an article in The Undercurrent titled ‘Enforcing “Constructive Behavioral Change”’ talking of a raging debate between a group of college Presidents and several other groups, among them are also the Mothers Against Drunk Driving on deciding whether the drinking age should be lowered to 18, the legally recognized age of adulthood. They argue that “twenty-one is not working” because it has “not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students.” Both sides agree on the fact that reduced drinking is good and both sides are debating whose empirical study has the correct findings. Noah Stahl writes,

“Leave aside for now the factual claims of either side and consider the nature of the debate itself. On one side is a group arguing that current laws do not “work”, citing only empirical studies as evidence for their position. On the other side is a group arguing that current laws should be left alone, citing only empirical studies as evidence for their position. In fact, both sides have the same motive (reducing drinking), but only differ on what the “research” tells us is the best way to achieve it.”

Such events only foster the evidence, that when government officials all over the world are considering “what works”, their mind immediately translates it to the question – “Which controls work?” It does not matter to them whether or not the government has the right to force an individual to bypass his highest individual judgment. It does not matter whether men can be treated as animals by asking them to blur their choices and suspend their judgment. As Stahl puts it, “But such questions would likely strike advocates of either position as bizarre – there are no rights under consideration here, only desired behaviors.”

This is a classic case which once again shows the inability of all legislators all over the world to grasp the causal link of freedom, which as a secondary consequence leads to real “public good”. Legislators are more inclined to increase the pubic good without recognizing the base that is the cause of all good: freedom. It is important to note here that a person’s hierarchy of values matter with regard to any issue. One has to evaluate what are ones moral primaries and which is the secondary. In other words, it is important to consider which value is the causal value which leads to all other desired values. Leonard Peikoff in his book on Objectivism illustrates this point with an example of a swimmer. If a swimmers goal is to swim a long distance, then he will keep his body as calm as possible, swim in straight lines and conserve his energy. If, on the other hand, the swimmers goal is to exercise, he will swim at a greater speed, zigzag in direction and expend a lot of energy. The point is that the cause, the “why?” is most important as the effect has its root in the cause. The question, “Why am I swimming?”(cause) is what governs the swimmers behavior (effect). If the cause is not enacted properly, then the effect fails too.

Man like all other things around him has an identity and his identity demands freedom to think and act accordingly until and unless his individual judgment infringes the rights of another individual. Since man needs to preserve and safeguard his life, man has to think and for this to happen, liberty in thought and action must be preserved. It is a matter of historical record of how freedom has effected in large scale “public good” which was unimaginable by our forefathers. It is this reason why Objectivists cannot talk about freedom neutrally as they understand that the essence of freedom is the rapture and glory of aiming for the skies and reaching it.

The modern world constantly provides new technologies and techniques which requires the law has to lay down a framework to preserve the rights of the parties. For instance,punishing hackers or to enforce international contracts. Since there is room to maneuver while framing such laws, it the cause of freedom that must be emphasized or lionized upon if its “public good” that legistlators seeks. From Adam Smith to the present, all laws have been drawn up to meet the public good of the people while grudgingly accepting freedom as a necessary evil. As a consequence, legislators have emphasized on the social effect and minimized the individualist cause. While cutting back on the cause, they cry for “some controls” and later for more controls and end up wondering why numerous policies fail in spite of big money put into such programs. If any law does not take into consideration the scientific morality of man based on his metaphysical nature, it is bound to fail no matter what economics or laws one wishes to implement. By divorcing broad philosophic guidance and methods and by ignoring mans basic identity, no proper goal can ever be achieved. Communist China could serve as proof of the above (link). If the cause is corrupt, then the effect necessarily will be corrupt too.

In this context, it would be appropriate to put forth the statement by Hank Rearden, the industrialist in Atlas Shrugged who is charged with the breaking of a regulation which promotes public good while minimizing the individual effect. Rearden states,

“I could say to you that you do not serve the public good-that nobody’s good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices - that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a pubic of a rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation - as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won’t. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning into some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of the society apart from my own-I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil. I would fight it with every power I posses. I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I was murdered. I would fight it in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the pubic, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!” (Bold added)

Capitalism virtue as a social system does not lie in the fact that it primarily serves the public good. Instead, its virtue rests on the cause of freedom that makes any good possible - the achievement of values. The charge that capitalism is “cruel” is true in its entirety – it forces an individual to take the responsibility of his life knowing fully well the effects of tampering with freedom.

China Takes The Rock Bottom

2008-09-09T21:42:00.002+05:30

In India, everybody loves comparing the progress of India and China given their rapid economic growth in recent years. Although India is sniveling in its own mystical, religious fantasies, it looks like China is in for a rock bottom pretty soon. John Maudlin in his recent E-letter tells us why. (link)
Its yet another reason why no matter what economics one chooses to implement, one cannot get away with the law of Identity. Man has an identity and his identity demands freedom for rational thought and action. Since this notion is apparently inconceivable in China, they sadly succeed only to fail..and fail at what proportions!

Enforcing Vegetarianism

2008-07-05T20:57:00.001+05:30

An editorial was published by The Hindu, one of India's national newspapers analyzing the recent decision of the Indian Supreme Court in Hinsa Virodhak Sangh v. Mirzapur Moti Kuresh Jamat delivered on March 14, 2008. It is particularly disturbing. The question arose when the Gujarat government by an order required the banning the selling of meat for nine days during a Jain festival. The court agreed that a right to eat whatever ones wants to eat is a matter of personal liberty protected under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. However, the Court enforced the ban saying it was a justified restriction on the ban. There are several aspects of this judgment that are disturbing.

To quote the Court 'respect for the sentiments of the Jain community, which has a sizable population in Gujarat and Rajasthan'. But numbers, sentiments and religion should be irrelevant criterion to the Judiciary while deciding upon rights. Ones only tool of analyzing such issues is obvious: reason.

The whole foundation of the modern State rests on the separation of Church and State i.e. to sever the connection between political power and Religion. It means every individual has the right to believe and practice whatever he wants unless he does not violate anybody else's rights. It also means that a White man or a Brahmin should have the right to refuse a job to a Black man or a Dalit in his organization. If the individual chooses to be irrational, the State should not interfere as long as he does not violate somebody else's right. However, in a free market, if the Black man is a good worker, the irrational individual loses out on good ability of the Black man for being a racist.

The state has no right to enforce morality, whether good or bad, upon its people. If I went around the country with a gun trying to enforce Objectivism, the law would not permit me to me to do it. Similarly, the Constitution should not permit the government to enforce their view of morality. This is the essence of the separation of private beliefs (especially religion because nothing with would be lethal than applying primitive philosophy in a modern world) and political power. The only purpose of the State is to protect the rights of the individuals, not become its annihilator. The mere fact that selling of meat offends a few people in a community during the festival violates nobody rights. The only way to violate somebody's right is by using force. Even in crimes like defamation, if one can objectively prove damage, the person who wrongfully defames another's reputation is punished. The only perpetrator of force now seems to be the agents of the State themselves.

.To quote the Court, "since India is a country of great diversity, it is absolutely essential if we wish to keep our country united to have tolerance and respect for all communities and sects."(Italics mine). The word "unity" seems to be as opposed to individual rights as it seems to imply citizens as "a family" or replaceable individuals in a society but not granting them just that status which they are: distinct individuals.

Tolerance is also wished of all the individuals other than the members of the Jain community - who should instead be tolerating selling of meat during the festival. Sanctioning intolerance is no way of furthering tolerance. Moreover, tolerance is not a major virtue. Tolerance does not mean morally sanctioning everything one considers evil, it only means respecting the rights of others even when one disagrees with the other or plain non-interference. Mere non-interference is simply a negative. Non-interference doesn't show committed one is to honesty or justice or principles as such. Non – interference does not even tell which person among the tolerating individuals is right and moral or the wrong and immoral. By no means, it can be classified as a major virtue but taking steps towards validating ones values with reason, developing character and a strive for the achievement of happiness are.

The judgment is not the first of its kind. In Om Prakash v. State of U.P. (2004), a ban on sale of any meat, fish or eggs at anytime in the year in Rishikesh was upheld by the Supreme Court. In Zoroastrian Co-operative Housing Society Limited v. District Registrar Co-operative Societies (2005) the Supreme Court upheld direct religious discrimination by allowing co-operative housing societies to restrict their membership to followers of a particular religion. The trend is disturbing.

Atheism versus Religion – Identifying And Diagnosing Real Issues.

2008-05-25T16:08:00.001+05:30

There is currently a firefight raging between religionists and the "New Atheists". The New Atheists are blaming religion for taking a large death toll from the crusades to Islamic terrorism of today. While the religionists agree that religion is in fact responsible for a deadly death toll, they quickly point out that it is the godless communist regimes that are responsible for most of the bloodshed that has ever plagued mankind. The religionists also proclaim that religions responsibility is minuscule in comparison to the slaughter of over 100 million by the atheistic regimes of the 20th century. So he contends it is obvious that "Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the mass murders of history." The New Atheists seem to be fighting a quickly losing argument.

The irony of the whole thing is that if the New Atheists had any proper grounding in philosophy, they would have blown away the religionists a long time ago. Greg Perkins blogs about the rational philosophical necessity of atheism and explains what atheism is and isn't in the Objective perspective. The post can be found here.

It's an awesome read and great food for thought.

The Power cut Affair.

2008-05-21T17:51:00.003+05:30

We were experiencing a power cut since the morning. Its 5:30pm now. I was just so tired of doing absolutely nothing. I had read The Virtue Of Selfishness for over 2 hours and the laptop had also discharged. The guy who fixes it just arrived and told us some switches had tripped and all we had to do (from the morning) was to push up the lever. The following was the only thing ringing in my head : dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb!

The power is back on now and you wouldn't believe how delighted I am. I simply can't fathom people celebrating an Earth Hour. It's completely insane. Imagine living like this – without the motor to pump water into your overhead tank, charging a cell phone would be out of question I guess (Phones obviously wont be manufactured in a total Earth Hour respecting culture). I suppose people end up taking it as a fashion. The perfect answer to them came from Keith Lockitch in his recent op–ed, "Earth Hour Sends A Deceptive Message"

"Forget one measly hour with just the lights off. How about "Earth Month," without any form of fossil fuel energy? Let those who claim that we need to stop emitting carbon dioxide try spending a month shivering in the dark without heating, electricity, refrigeration; without power plants or factories, grocery stores or hospitals; without any of the labor-saving, time-saving, and therefore life-saving products that industrial energy makes possible."

I simply love the line. Makes an awesome reply to people who have forgotten the virtue of independence a long time ago.

I LOVE ELECTRICITY and would be willing to switch places with any Westerner wanting more Earth Hours. Any day!

Exposing Altruism.

2008-05-17T11:43:00.001+05:30

The distortions in the word “selfishness” have become necessary to provide for a philosophy guided by altruism and unreason.

Altruism as such denotes a package-deal and a deadly one at that. Any philosophy is required to answer two questions in the realm of ethics–

1. 1. What are values?

2. 2. Who should be the beneficiary of those values?

In other words, value to what and value to whome? The altruist morality defaults on the first answer by answering the second. It only defines the second by answering the beneficiary can be anybody but your ownself. You dare not go to college to learn the law or how to build and then proclaim you are moral. Instead, if you did give up your ambition, how so ever big or small to serve your parents unconditionally, then you are surely moral. The problem with such a morality is apparent. Every act of morality (every act of self – sacrifice) one commits, the more bitter he is bound to get. Imagine giving up everything you cherish to attain any moral significance within you or to show off your values, the worse it is for your well – being.

This explains people’s indifference to morality. Indifference would not be the appropriate word. The correct attitude of people towards morality is a combination of cynicism and guilt. Cynicism because people knowingly don’t practice it even though they are under obligation to do so. Guilt because they don’t explicitly or implicitly reject it. In both cases, they attempt to evade the issue of morality and thus the disastrous results.

However, the altruist morality has its own solution from sleeping under a rock. If a person takes altruism seriously and consistently starts sacrificing, they reply, “Oh, come now, be practical.” They themselves don’t endorse that altruism should be practiced consistently. The moment somebody starts taking their morality seriously, the fact that its anti – life is apparent and thus their claims asking people to relax and think practically. But this is fully inconsistent with how a morality should be practiced. Any reasoning person would say, “I take morality seriously and thus I am a good person.” The glaring contradictions between the consistent application of altruism and the requirement for survival are apparent for them to take morality seriously.

Now lets consider the effects of altruism if any thinking man with respect to all other areas of life but defaults on morality and partially chooses the altruist morality. However, he chooses it not by an active, thinking mind but chooses it by defaulting on thought by taking into popular culture. The effect would be any person walking by on the street can scowl at him for acting in his self – interest for any act, any time in his life. He has neither a defense for such an attack and is inevitably guilt ridden, guilt ridden for going to college, for being productive or even saving up money ( He definitely should have given it to the poor.)

Altruism, in simple words, is best described as the sole basis for my rights is my duty to sacrifice it to my neighbor. Such is the nature of fraud involved. Altruism is thought to be in consonance with benevolence today, but the consistent application of altruism is what would make benevolence impossible. Imagine Russia when under the rule of Communism where self – interest was evil but sacrifice to the society was considered as the greatest good. In such a situation, when everybody is poverty – stricken and guilt ridden, imagine a call for charity. I guess one would say, “Be practical, cant you see, everybody is suffering. I don’t know why you should be special to get any money while we don’t.” But consider the same call for charity on the streets of New York, where each productive person acts in his own self – interest. The stark contrast of suffering and prosperity would be so great that people with the ability to help will do so. This is the greatness of an ethic of rational self – interest.

Instead of turning to the ethic of rational – self interest when men are rebelling the ethic of altruism they are also rebelling against every rational standard too. In the Fountainhead, they were depicted by people such as Lois Cook, Gordon L. Prescott, Gus Webb and the other avant-garde artists. These people, the supposed “non – conformists” are the distilled form of altruism and should not be confused with the real rebels (the rational ones). They merely represent the other side of the altruist coin.

To quote Ayn Rand, “This is said as warning against the kind of “Nietzchean egoists” who, in fact, are a product of the altruist morality and represent the other side of the altruist coin : the men who believe that any action, regardless of its nature, is good if its intended for ones own benefit. Just as the satisfaction of the irrational desires of others is not a criterion of moral value, neither is the satisfaction of ones own irrational desires. Morality is not a contest of whims”

In other words, the Nietzchean egoists like the altruists go by the beneficiary criterion of a value only. They too, like the altruists, default on answering what is a value by answering who should be the beneficiary.

Environmentalism (based on unadulterated altruism) and altruism are an attack on self – esteem. They question you, intimidating, “How dare you assert that your life is yours to live and selfishly produce values require for your survival and then proceed to call it moral.”

To fight such an evil one has to question its basis and fundamentals and the only way of doing it is by equipping oneself with the right philosophy.

A Simply Awesome Quote.

2008-05-08T16:42:00.001+05:30

“Observe the persistence, in mankind’s mythologies, of the legend about a paradise that men had once possessed, the city of Atlantis or the Garden of Eden or some kingdom of perfection, always behind us. The root of that legend exists, not in the past of the race, but in the past of every man. You still retain a sense—not as firm as a memory, but diffused like the pain of hopeless longing—that somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had learned to submit, to absorb the terror of unreason and to doubt the value of your mind, you had known a radiant state of existence, you had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe. That is the paradise which you have lost, which you seek—which is yours for the taking.”

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged pp. 968 - 969