Celebrate good times

Just a little while ago I got back from the wedding of a friend. He’s roughly the same age as me, which I would of course consider much too young. I wouldn’t consider it an instance of a rash decision by younguns that will surely backfire on them, as they had it planned out years ago and seem to know what they’re doing. My friend is something of a screwup and from a screwed up family, but his now-wife is the smart, level-headed and responsible type. I only worry that her very Christian Social Gospel aspects will rub off on him. I was pretty lousy as a friend back in high school, believing he was the jolliest person around up until he overdosed on anti-depressants I didn’t even know he was taking. Apparently the signs were obvious to all but the oblivious. At my current rate of progress I’ll reach that life stage around never. Perhaps its because I’ve been so much better off that in complacency I neglect to seek happiness through others. Ludwig von Mises said something or other about that.

Of course the big news in libertarian circles and elsewhere is D.C vs Heller. I’m conflicted about it for decentralist reasons, as discussed by Stephan Kinsella and Kevin Gutzman. The District is the most local authority, so it has the responsibility to pass laws against things like murder that are beyond Congress. However, not being part of a state it has no state constitution to enumerate its powers and add any extra limitations on those powers. I don’t expect in an antifederalist future that rural areas will have the same gun laws as urban areas, and think that residents of the latter would be more comfortable with lax laws in the former if they needed interfere with their own way of doing things. There has been lots of interesting commentary on it at places like Volokh, though speaking as a layman Scalia’s opinion can be taken straight (D.C’s quasi-state status was not at issue). The case for an individual right not limited to service in any organized militia appears convincing, but perhaps I’m not the best judge since I believed that in the first place. Breyer’s argument for “interest balancing” strikes me as ridiculous for a judge to be engaged in and renders any right moot. It’s fun to laugh at what appears to be his hypocrisy depending on which side of the culture wars a law stands on. I admit though that I didn’t read all of Stevens and Breyers’ dissents, as it was past 3 in the morning and I had to get up early for an aforementioned reason. I might get to them later, but now I have a new distraction. UPDATE: I don’t normally link to Arthur Silber because his posts are long, drama-queen ethical pornography and every once in a while I’ll even disagree with his main point! However, on Heller I’ll make an exception.

Right after I got back I found that Demonic Males had arrived. Though at least co-authored by a scientist and describing some of their own research, judging by the first chapter it’s not at all dry. Though the subtitle specifies only “apes”, it has already let out that only chimpanzees and humans display that level of aggression, offering as a contrast the chimp’s close cousin: the bonobo. I recalled reading a New Yorker article on whether the bonobos are really hippies, but I guess I’ll to wait until much later in the book for Wrangham and Peterson to discuss it. I’ve heard that when brought together in captivity the chimps beat up the bonobos, so I wonder why these doves haven’t been replaced by hawks yet. Just this morning I brought the book to the attention of Mark Crovelli after reading his Austrian-inspired a priori theory of international relations. His theory is that tax collecting and legislation enacting states are the cause of war, with democratic states especially likely to engage in it. Like Pinker I think there is good evidence that war and violence were endemic in pre-state society, but perhaps that evidence will mean little to someone who rejects a posteori reasoning when it comes to human action. That book was recommend to me by Mencius Moldbug, who also rejects positivist “social science”. We argued about that in the comments to this GNXP post about the decline of violence.

On an unrelated note, Odessa Syndicate seems to have dissappeared and have been replaced with Occidental Dissent. I have to say I miss the allusions to Stalinist/Nazi authoritarianism and the dystopian society from the film Equilibrium. Also, I have now updated the previous post about my ban from EconLog with a message from Lauren Landsburg.

 

Damn test audiences!

I am a huge fan of Richard Matheson’s horror story “I Am Legend”. The best part of it is the ending. It’s so old it won’t be a terrible spoiler to tell you that the “vampires” have evolved to a point where they have their own civilization which is not simply insanely murderous, though this is unkown to protagonist Robert Neville who goes on merrily murdering them in their sleep. He comes to be regarded as a monstrous figure to the new humanity, just as the vampires of myth were long ago. He is apprehended and executed for his crimes. Shortly after the book was written Vincent Price starred in “The Last Man on Earth”, which took the initial premise but made it into a generic zombie movie. Same thing for Charlton Heston in the Omega Man. The title doesn’t make a damn lick of sense unless you keep the original ending, so I was psyched when I heard about the latest version with Will Smith. The beginning stayed pretty faithful, but the ending just went the same old route and completely pissed me off. The question  nagged me, “Why did they use the original title and stay true to the original in the beginning?”. Now via Cracked, I know. They first filmed a completely different ending, but test audiences received it negatively, so they refilmed the lame ending we saw in theaters. The original “controversial” ending is on the dvd, and also google video (it didn’t work at the Cracked website, so I’ve got a different one below). It’s not quite as good as the book, where the vampires can actually pass as human (there is no human woman to befriend Neville, she turns out to be a vampire) but it’s an improvement.

 

What’s going on in that noggin?

I recently discussed Pinker on violence and earlier made some references to Foucault. Googling for that link I came upon this idiotic trashing of Pinker. It is asserted that Pinker’s graphs are “biased” without explaining how and accuses him of ignoring Foucault’s point about the importance of threats “institutionalizing” (or preventing) violence, when Pinker advances the same Hobbesian Leviathan hypothesis I discussed here. On the plus side this person claims Pinker has finished a new book soon to come out called “A History of Violence”. If that actually is the case, I look forward to it.

In a list of religious people put up by Walter Block I noticed the inclusion of Pete Boettke. I don’t recall Boettke mentioning religion before and was under the impression he was an atheist. In Brian Doherty’s book Radicals for Capitalism on page 437 Boettke recalls the good old days saying “The typical young IHS turk in the 1980s believed in the three A’s: anarchism, Austrianism, and atheism.” While a few of his peers have dropped the first two, Pete is still proudly Austrian (hence his blog, journal and courses) and perhaps less proudly anarchist. So I wonder about his C.S. Lewis moment. Bryan Caplan’s dissent from Austrianism has received a number of replies (not surprising given the Austrian penchant for argument), but his strident atheism is only even indirectly argued against by Larry Iannoccone. So my question to Pete is, if you were an atheist like your peers, what led you to that and what later made you decide against it?

 

Is it free speech or hate speech?

Or are you just an idiot for thinking the latter is not a subset of the former?

 

Breaking news

Robert Lindsay no longer supports Mugabe.

 

Don’t talk to the police

Video here. Also watch the police officer after him. Remember that Martha Stewart never actually got convicted of the crime she was being investigated for, just for lying by claiming she was innocent.

 

War Nerd Interview

I was directed to it via GNXP, but the public radio show had a bunch of bullshit about nerd culture I didn’t feel like listening to, and I bet others feel similarly. So, I recorded the segment with Brecher and uploaded it to my tripod site. Now if only we can get a voice sample of John Dolan to see if they’re really the same person…

Interview with “Gary Brecher” aka “the War Nerd”

In other intellectual property news, I regret to inform everybody that Google Video rejected my upload of Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil”, which is more than they could be bothered to do with “Can Dialectics Break Bricks?”. If, like me, you haven’t found the noir classic in any of your local video stores I recommend the Pirate Bay.

UPDATE: Watch Touch of Evil here.

UPDATE2: War Nerd interview on youtube. It’s just a still picture with the radio segment. I guess I can link to that rather than the mp3, but I don’t think I’ll delete it from my tripod site until I really need the space. Also, a review of the interview wondering who exactly the joke is on here by neutrino cannon.

 

What I’ve been reading

I had thought I’d have to purchase Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable, but found that it’s freely available online. I wonder if Block would defend IP piracy? I read it in pretty much one sitting and liked it (it even has funny one-panel comic strips). My objections are to the sections on the non-government counterfeiter and the litterer on public property. Sure, we can object to the government intervention that forms the background for their acts. However, given that background their acts harm others and so they are not heroes. Some months ago I got Herodutus’ Histories but left it at home while I was at school. It’s pretty good and I just finished book seven. Given the frequent references to Thucydides in the notes and its current spotlight at Voxiversity, I am considering reading up on the Pelloponnesian war after the Persian ones. Meanwhile I’ve been at part four of Der Staat for some time now and after I finish that I’ve sworn to read Public Opinion. I think part of the problem is that as long as I’m on the computer reading these I’m too tempted to read other stuff online. Any further suggestions are welcome.
UPDATE: I’ve been inspired by my own lament to finish the rest of Oppenheimer. As it progressed it began to resemble Jouvenel, but viewed from a different angle. The conclusion was disappointingly optimistic, or “Whig” as MM is putting it now. It predicted that from the constitutional/capitalist state the forces of the economic means would eventually win their long struggle with the political means and so society would evolve to statelessness. He explicitly rejects the Marxist or “proletarian”/”anarchistic” theory of revolution, which would violently destroy much of society including the beneficial stuff like division of labor. In that respect he seems to resemble Herbert Spencer, who was inspired by biological evolution (though Lamarckian rather than Darwinian), though he cites the “pre-Manchester liberals” Adam Smith and Quesnay on that point instead. Spencer only gets a nod for scoffing at racial theories. I recommend reading it together with the contrastingly pessimistic On Power.

 

One sentence review of Funny Games remake

A good cruel joke at the audience’s expense.

 

Zero-word review of Irreversible

!

 

Learn something new every day

I was reading up on Smedley Butler when I came across this. The most interesting part was the note at the end that discusses his dealings with the FBI. It seems odd that a man who had no problem associating with communist radicals could be on good terms with J. Edgar “Red Scare” Hoover, but he was. In a speech denouncing the rest of the government he said the FBI was one of the few departments “which did not smell to high heaven”. Butler had also been an ardent enforcer of Prohibition (he worked as Director of Public Safety for Philadelphia and turned over half his revenue to groups attacking politicians that hampered his efforts to enforce Probition) and declared “put the law books in cold storage and bring out the high-powered rifles and machine guns”. It also notes that he was the target of a hoax about Charles Coughlin invading Mexico. I suspect the “coup” he was asked to take part in had no more substance to it. It would seem odd that anyone would believe Butler would be willing to take part in it. It’s too his credit that he opposed pro-Republican intervention in the Spanish Civil War when many of his radical associates is, as I suppose it is that despite his dislike for FDR he would refuse to unseat him. At the same time I can’t help but think when I read Kevin Grier say “I’d rather see the craziest policies coming out of a democracy than excellent ones coming after a coup from a military junta”: why?

 

The Worst Music Ever

Listen to the whole thing (if you dare) here. Via OrgTheory.

On second thought though, I expect many would find OV by Orthrelm even more unpleasant. I’ve sat through the whole thing. TWICE. Why? I guess I’m an idiot or a masochist. On that note, length is probably important, because although I do like a lot of long songs (Thick as a Brick anyone?) I find Yowie much preferable to Orthrelm.

 

Lovable eccentrics

A commenter at Overcoming Bias pointed out a website of feminist critics, but a post I found there more interesting than any linked to was this guest post from a feminist advocating women’s separatism. The biggest laugh line is probably the distinguishing between segregation and separation. It’s about which group is oppressor versus oppressed (read: what is politically correct), kind of like how the powerless supposedly cannot be racist. Regarding her dream, I don’t think it’s going to happen. As Kissinger said “There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy”. It would have a hard time sustaining itself as well (there’s a reason there aren’t any Shakers around any more). I still applaud the secessionist impulse though and hope she forms a small community, if only to serve as an example. I’ll even agree that men cause most of the problems in the world. Men are also responsible for most of the best things in the world. Is the world on net good or bad? I invite your opinions.

I have been alerted to the existence of a blog called The Institute for Pica Studies. It is dedicated to a racist, anti-semitic reddit commenter. It’s not quite the Danimal Archive, but what is? If the Uhuru Guru and Big Effer aren’t enough for you, check it out.

A member of the Attack the System group points to Deconstructing the “Human Rights” Ideology. One person speculated due to its anti-Westernism that the author, Peter Myers, is an Australian Aboriginal. It is an attack on the Enlightenment and modernism in favor of “Confucian” values. Fans of de Maistre, Sartre and Weil find some of it appealing. I’ve personally never read of them, or even heard of the last until just now. I’m at a rate now of reading about a paragraph of Franz Oppenheimer every other day now, so it could be a while until I get to them. So many distractions. UPDATE: Apparently I was introduced to the writings of Mr. Meyer through Robert Lindsay way back when, and simply forgot.

 

Unrelated tidbits

Via the Hoover Hog, a new antinatalist blog.

Via Ilkka, several variations on Stuff White People Like. Stuff Asian People Like is interesting in light of Half Sigma’s belief that the proprietor of SWPL was Korean, but an entry like Bad Pronunciation isn’t so much about their likes as just what they do. Stuff Educated Black People Like is quite similar to SWPL, but it strikes me as a major difference that the obsession with status markers is explicit here, whereas the rampant denialism among SWPL’s targets is a major part of the joke. The addition of “educated” (previously a background assumption) opens up the door for sites on the alternative, perhaps more along the lines of Cobb’s more down-scale post Stuff Black People Like. Who will make the site on non-educated whites, Jim Goad? Will all varieties of white trash be represented? For those of you unaware, the main prototypes are the West Virginia hillbilly, Boston lunkhead, Mississippi trailer trash, Jersey guido and Bakersfield speed-freak.

Ross Douthat responds to Tyler Cowen’s request for the best American 20th century conservative books, mostly with neo-conservatives. Many readers may be tired of my constant bashing of neo-conservatives, but like Steve Sailer I actually have a fairly high opinion of the earlier generation of social scientists that critiqued the stagnant liberalism of the 70s, before their lesser progeny (and Norman Podhoretz, though he was little more than a Normal Mailer critic in the first place) became associated with insane Wilsonianism. One I had never heard of before is Edward Banfield. You can read many of his works for free here, (and on the subject of free online reading, I hereby pledge to put Bertrand de Jouvenel’s On Power online at some time during this summer). I myself became a libertarian in no small part due to the neocons and their institutions. I was reading Milton Friedman’s Chicago School insights by way of Thomas Sowell (who has to my embarrassment written a lot of hackish dreck as of late) and the Charles Murray-AEI critique of the welfare state (though I’m not sure if I read any of Murray himself). I knew nothing of Burnham, Kirk or Weaver though the influence of Nisbet might have trickled down to me. I thought that’s what conservatism was (or at least hating Clinton and the left), so I was a conservative. Then when I heard that there was another ideology called “libertarianism” and that it advocated minimal government in any sphere whether economic or private, I recognized it as what I had already believed thinking I was a conservative. UPDATE: Dissent gives a thorough explanation of the history of the term “neoconservative” here.

2Blowhards has a post on the Stiglitz assessment of the costs of the Iraq war, but the main attraction is the spat in the comments between Mencius Moldbug and Greg Cochran. My opinion is that, like always, Cochran wipes the floor with his counterpart. I plan on having a sequel to the Moldbug Transcripts up relatively shortly which will cover a lot of the same territory. Previously they went at it at 2Blowhards here. I posted Greg’s thoughts on military spending here.

Odessa Syndicate gives its mission statement. I think they had one of those earlier, but this is a clarification.

Kevin Carson has joined the blog Art of the Possible and in his first post explains the evolution of his political thought. Mona of Unqualified Offerings has also joined. Charles “Radgeek” Johnson has jumped into the fray started by Knapp & UO’s Jim Henley and expanded upon by Carson.

 

Lucky to be alive

I must have blacked out everything between the third or fourth shot of Skol on Saturday night and waking up in the hospital the next day. Apparently in between then I was brought to my dorm room, whereupon I vomited all over the floor, choked on my own vomit and stopped breathing before an ambulance carried me away. I had a lethal amount in my system and would have died if I had not been treated as quickly. I have an aunt who works as a police-officer who has taken a good many calls of this type, and in not one instance has the person survived.

Perhaps I was lucky to be unconscious during the worst of it. If I actually had died I wouldn’t have experienced the panic of my body trying to stay alive or the fear of impending death. I would have gone out happy. I’m glad I’m alive though. I don’t want to die. I want to graduate in May, I want to see Myth published and there are countless things I haven’t gotten to do that I’d like to.

I could go further and state that I’m lucky this happened at all. I’ve always been sort of out of it and generally unaware. I’ll forget to eat unless it’s at a scheduled time, when I ran track I sometimes didn’t know it was raining until someone mentioned it and two years ago when I was a freshman on Saint Patrick’s Day I shattered my elbow and only though I might have hurt my wrist a little until the next morning. On Saturday night I didn’t feel nauseous or get any other warning signs I ought to that I should stop drinking, so this was probably bound to happen eventually, only I might not have survived some other night. Now I know that I’m not capable of telling myself when to stop and the only solution is to never start again.

Being a teetotaller will certainly have some downsides. I don’t just imagine that I’m a more pleasant person when I drink, I’ve been told so. On the internet I can choose only to talk about the things I find interesting with the people I think are worth talking to, and in meatspace that’s a very small range. I’ll also have to figure out how to get to sleep early enough on Wednesday nights to get up in time for my early classes on Thursday.

A funny thing is that when I was told that people at my church were praying for me and one of the pastors there stopped by (he happened to be dropping his son off) and gave some God-talk and prayer at my hospital bed, it made me feel better. I still haven’t told any of them I’m an atheist, and that would probably have been the worst possible moment. Some people get closer to God after a near-death experience, but that didn’t happen to me. I don’t think there’s any deep reason I survived and so many others don’t, it just happens.

I’ll feel kind of out-of-place at AA, because I’ve never really felt any urge to drink and I don’t do it all that frequently. I just don’t stop when I should when I do drink. Alcoholism runs in both sides of my family, so I’m likely prone to it and would have wound up an alcoholic if I hadn’t stopped early.

I’m at home now with pneumonia and I’m not allowed to return to class until next Monday. I’ll probably be light on the blogging.