Sure, Ayn Rand hates babies and poor people, but that doesn't mean she's all bad. Her philosophy, Objectivism, is pretty cohesive, and it deals with every aspect of life, including love. It's hard to believe that a nature-hating übercapitalist like Ayn Rand could love anybody, but it's true.

Her biggest novel, Atlas Shrugged, deals with love a lot. Like everything else, she sees love in economic terms: love is a transaction between two people. It sounds cold and heartless, but it's the truth. Here's what one of her characters, Francisco D'Anconia (an Objectivist) has to say about love:

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his value of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive other than his own enjoyment -- just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! -- an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire.

Ayn Rand thinks selfishness is a virtue. "Look out for number one" is her motto. How can you worry about other people and ignore yourself? She thinks that's ludicrous. And love is no exception. Would you love someone out of pity? Of course not; you would love someone whom you wanted to love. You would never love someone just for the other person's sake; you would need to be getting something out of it, too.

Francisco continues:

He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience -- or to fake -- a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer -- because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.

Ignoring Rand's chauvinism for a while, the first sentence in the above quote is the most important: a man will be drawn to a woman who reflects him. This makes sense. A man wouldn't be attracte to a woman who doesn't share some of the same values or tastes as he does. What would they even talk about? How would they get along?

I see love as being a transaction between two people. Both partners in a relationship need to get something out of that relationship, whether it's spiritual, physical, or philosophical fulfillment. I date you because there is something about you that fulfills some need I have. Maybe you're an excellent singer, or a skilled orator, or you can make houses of playing cards. There is something you have that I want, and vice-versa. You reflect some sort of ideal that I aspire to. A pretty face does not a girlfriend make. There needs to be substance, and substance such that I feel that I'm missing out on something by not being with you.

Love is selfish. And there's nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't waste my time with someone just for the sake of the other person's feelings (or whatever the reason) if I knew that I wouldn't get anything out of the relationship. My time is valuable, too, and charity has no place in relationships. In fact, to me, my own time is the most valuable and I want to be damn sure that I'm getting the most I can out of that time.

You can also put relationships in economic terms. In economics, you're making an economic profit if the value of the next-best thing you could be doing is less than the value of what you're doing right now. The value of the next-best thing is called the "opportunity cost" (for example, the opportunity cost of being at college is equal to the money I could be making working in the real world instead of being here). If I'm not making an economic profit -- that is, if I could be making more money doing something else -- then I go do something else.

A relationship is this way, as well. If I feel like I'm making what could be called "emotional profit" from a relationship, then I stay in that relationship. The alternative is dating someone else, or not dating at all. If my girlfriend is abusive and bastardy, then the emotional profit is negative and it's time to find someone else.

A relationship is also like an investment, say, the stock market. When you invest money, the only reason you give that money to someone else is because you expect all of it back and then some. In a relationship, you're turning over your emotions to someone else. The risk is that your heart will be broken (in the stock market, the risk is that you'll lose some or all of your money). But if you think that the chances of the relationship working out and your emotions getting better (i.e. more happiness) are greater than the chances of your emotions being injured, then you stay in the relationship (or you get into one in the first place). Warren Buffett is the CEO of BerkshireHathaway, and he makes a lot of money because he's good at making lots of money. He plays the stock market, but his motto is that the stock market should be a long-term investment. Sure, this month or this year, the stock market may be down, but the long-term trend is always up. You can't let a small dip in the stock market scare you into taking your money out, because you know that you plan on making money years down the road, not months. Not even one year. Lots of years. The same goes for a relationship. Though you may hit hard times, if you think there's more emotional payoff down the road, it's better to work through the problems than to simply end the relationship.

And then there was a vampire (for those of you who were bored by economics).

Posted by Mark at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First of all, Jerry Goldsmith died last week. Lovers of movie music will remember Goldsmith as the composer behind over three hundred film scores, including all of the Star Trek films, every Star Trek series since the original one, Braveheart, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, and others.

Second, comment spam is becoming ridiculous around here. Fortunately, Movable Type is set not to display comments until I approve them, and I've been dumping comments left and right. There's no version of MT-Blacklist for Movable Type 3.0 yet, but I'm hoping there will be soon.

Third, even though I've tried to keep this place free of gory personal details (lest it become a LiveJournal), this message is for all of my friends. Michelle and I broke up earlier this week. It's been difficult. I still love her as much as I ever did, but I guess I'll have to just stop somehow (I imagine it in my mind as going into the Task Manager and clicking "End Process," since it won't stop on its own). Nevertheless, she'll always be special to me, and I hope I will always be special to her. People don't date for ten months and then not have some sort of special connection. Part of her has become part of me, and vice-versa. I've always thought that exes (that's ex-lovers, not executable files), if they try, can have the best kind of friendship once the romantic relationship is over. When the sexual or romantic attraction is filtered out, the end product is a pure kind of love, an attachment between two people who have shared wonderful experiences together. That history will never go away, and it becomes a part of both people. I learned a lot from Michelle, and she from me. I wouldn't trade the last ten months for anything. Ever. It was the best time of my life and I'm glad I had the opportunity to share it with such a wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, and caring person. She was my first-ever girlfriend, and a part of me will always love her and remember her fondly.

Posted by Mark at 2:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As well it should. Yesterday, the Senate voted on whether or not it should continue floor debate of the Federal Marriage Amendment. 48 senators voted in favor of continuing debate, while 50 senators voted against continuing debate. Perennial no-shows John Kerry (D-MA) and John Edwards (D-NC) were not present to vote. (Obviously, that doesn't look good for them.) The vote was pretty well split along party lines; of the 48 senators who voted to continue debate, 45 were Republicans. Of the 50 senators who voted against continuing debate, 43 were Democrats, 6 were Republicans -- including John McCain (AZ) -- and one was Independent Jim Jeffords (VT).

While this does not mean that the bill will be scrapped, it does mean that prospects for a federal marriage amendment aren't looking so good. The constitution requires a 2/3 majority (in this case, 67 senators) in order to pass a proposed amendment and continue it to the next part of the amendment process, approval by 2/3 of the House and then ratification by 3/4 of the states via their state legislatures (in this case, 38 states). Since only 48 senators voted to even continue debating the issue, it seems that the Senate won't get the 67 required to move it on to the House.

Or, they could continue a potential vote after the time has expired in order to strong-arm other Republicans into switching sides as they did last week. On July 9, the House voted on repealing the provision of the PATRIOT Act that allows the FBI to demand records from libraries. The vote ended in a 210-210 tie, but Republicans held the vote open for 23 minutes longer than usual while it strong-armed some Republican congressmen into switching sides. Democrats shouted "Shame! Shame!" as the vote continued, while a spokesman for House majority leader Tom DeLay said, "We're more interested in catching terrorists who are trying to kill Americans than we are in leaving the Capitol in time for happy hour," implying that Democrats were more interested in getting home -- and simultaneously implying that they wanted to get home so they could get drunk -- than they were in combatting terrorism. Stuart Roy, DeLay's spokesman, is officially Truly Contemptible.

In any case, even if the Republicans do convince those six to switch sides, it's still not enough to get an amendment through. Gee, I wonder why the Founding Fathers made it so difficult to get an amendment passed. Could it be because they foresaw exactly this situation as happening? Probably. An amendment to the constitution is something that is so important, it deserves near-unanimity. I guess the argument that "most Americans" are in favor of a constitutional amendment is pretty bogus, if the Senate can be taken as a sample of America.

Posted by Mark at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Acacia Resarch Corp. is another one of those companies that has applied for -- and received -- so-called junk patents. These are patents on things that are already commonly used today, and companies like Acacia have the patents so that they can sue people and gets lots of money out of it. In this case, Acacia claims the patent on streaming video. Streaming video is probably one of the backbones of Internet multimedia, along with the JPEG image and Macromedia Flash. Acacia insists that companies which use streaming video without paying Acacia a fee are in violation of the law:

"Property rights are as important as the right to free speech," [Acacia executive vice president Robert] Berman told AVNOnline.com July 6. "For example, if someone broke into your garage and stole your SUV, and put a speaker on the top, and was driving around the neighborhood making some political statement, trying to get your SUV back wouldn't be trying to stifle free speech, it would be you trying to get your property back. If somebody is using your property, you have a right to stop them or receive a license or receive royalties."

Berman's analogy fails because everyone recognizes the legitimacy of my ownership of my SUV. A lot of people, however, don't recognize the legitimacy of Acacia's ownership of the patent on streaming video.

That, said EFF staff attorney Jason Schultz, is "possibly the most twisted and contorted analogy I have ever heard," saying it shows Acacia and similar companies -- other EFF frivolous patent candidates include Clear Channel, Nintendo, Ideaflood, Firepond, and Acceris -- conflate physical property with dreams of intellectual property.

"There's no question now that an SUV in your garage is something you own. But here there's a real question as to whether Acacia actually invented anything new or simply is claiming monopoly on technology that millions of people use every day to express themselves," Schultz told AVNOnline.com.

Lest you think that Acacia is merely exercising its rights as a patent-holder, think again. There is a systematic method to its attempts to strongarm companies into buying licenses from it. "Acacia has pursued this patent by targetting porn companies and extracting settlements in order to fund a war-chest that it is now using to sue bigger media entities -- presumably this trail ends with orgs like the BBC, CBC, and Live365," writes Cory Doctrow of Boing Boing.

Why haven't we heard about this patent before? Presumably because Acacia didn't invent streaming video technology. Like SCO, it is, perhaps, a storehouse of patents, and it makes money by getting licensing fees out of companies using that patented technology. Is SCO contributing new ideas and inventions to the world? Nope; it just makes money through litigation.

Posted by Mark at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the '90s, it seemed like suing someone was the new American Way. That kind of died out after Dateline specials on the topic rendered it ridiculous, but now suing is coming back.

For the past year or so, a company called SCO has been suing companies which use Linux on their computers without paying them a licensing fee. This includes DaimlerChrysler, Autozone, and even IBM. Thankfully, because Big Blue got sued, it can fight back, and it has a lot of influence. SCO claims that the operating system UNIX (developed by AT&T in the 1970s), which it purchased the rights to, is an integral part of the Linux operating system. As such, it is demanding royalties from companies using Linux. This despite the fact that SCO has yet to prove that there is UNIX code in Linux, and it's not like they can't do a Google search and read Linux's source code.

Slashdot today reports that a company called Intermec is claiming patents on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology: chips, readers, and tags. Apparently, no one in the industry knew who, if anyone, held the patent on RFID technology, so various companies went ahead and created their own RFID technology. But in swoops Intermec, demanding that it be able to sell licenses since it claims it owns the patents. Says an Intermec spokesperson, "If we wanted to put Matrics out of business, we would have sought injunctive relief right out of the chute [...] Our chief objective is to secure a legitimate licensing agreement with Matrics." That is, it's more lucrative in the long run to sell licenses than to ligitate Matrics, one major producer of RFID technology, out of existence.

Slashdot has noticed this behavior before. It's called "submarining" and it occurs when a company who holds a patent on a product or process conceals the fact that it has that patent so as to gain royalties from it later, after the technology has become widely accepted. In 2001, the FTC launched a probe into whether or not Sun Microsystems submarined its patents for computer memory modules while at the same time helping to set an industry standard that made that same module the industry standard! Of course, no one would have accepted that standard if he knew that Sun held the patent, but no one did know because Sun concealed the fact that it held such a patent.

With Microsoft patenting the double-click and other nonsensical garbage (recall that Amazon patented "1-click shopping" and a British company patented the hyperlink), the door is open for abuse of these patents. Can you imagine paying a ten-cent royalty for every hyperlink on your page? At least the Electronic Frontier Foundation is going on a patent-busting spree, trying to have junk patents overturned.

Posted by Mark at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As if being the author of the Inducement Act wasn't enough, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has endorsed a federal judicial nominee who, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, "wrote that wives should have a subordinate role in marriage." J. Leon Holmes was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Here are some tidbits that makes Holmes a real winner when it comes to being an objective federal judge:

• Holmes and his wife wrote an article in 1997 for Arkansas Catholic magazine entitled "Gender Neutral Language, Destroying an Essential Element of Our Faith" in which they suggested that "'the woman is to place herself under the authority of the man'" in marriage and "'is to subordinate herself to the husband.'"
• In 1980, Holmes wrote a letter to a newspaper in which he argued that "rape victims should not be allowed to have abortions because 'conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.' Holmes has since apologized for the comment."

If I'm a battered wife or a rape victim, I'll make it a point not to go in front of Judge Holmes.

Posted by Mark at 4:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I once wrote here that terrorism is the last resort of an oppressed group of people. When a group feels that it is being ignored, and attempts at diplomacy have failed, that group bypassing the government and starts instilling fear into the civilian population, hoping that the civilians will press the government to change its policies.

That's only half true now. Time magazine published in this week's issue an article about fundamentalist Muslims, entitled "Meet the New Jihad." The article talks about the goals of a new kind of terrorism, what I would call active terrorism (or "offensive terrorism") as opposed to passive, or defensive terrorism. The difference here is that the old terrorists -- the people who attacked the World Trade Center the first time, the PLO, and even al-Qaeda -- are "passive" terrorists who respond to events. The PLO responded to what it perceived as Israeli incursion onto their land. Al-Qaeda was largely protesting our policies on Israel and they wanted U.S. troops out of the Persian Gulf.

Time's article suggests that terrorists in Iraq -- the same terrorists who have been attacking U.S. troops and beheading anyone who supports the U.S. -- are becoming more active:

Their goal now, say the militants interviewed, is broader than simply forcing the U.S. to leave. They want to transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who will form the next wave of recruits for al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. [...] And now the conditions are ripening for the insurgents to turn their armed struggle into a political movement that aims to exploit the upheaval and turn parts of Iraq into Taliban-style fiefdoms.

The terrorists, apparently, are taking advantage of the confusion and turmoil in Iraq to institute an Islamic state there. No longer are they merely responding to perceived U.S. incursion; rather, they are attempting to use terrorism as a political force to create their own country. What we have seen in Iraq is not a message to the U.S. to "get out," but an attempt to force the U.S. out and take the country while it is is still weak, making it easy to install a fundamentalist regime into power.

What this means is that Iraq could easily fall into the time-honored tradition of civil war, as the forces of Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi battle the forces of Iyad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister. Who will prevail depends on who has U.N. peacekeeping forces on its side (hopefully, Iraq's government will). It also depends on who is doing some international snooping to infiltrate and break up terrorist cells around the world (hopefully, the CIA is).

The terrorists, though, seem hell-bent on getting power in the world. Do they feel that the U.S. is a bad influence? Do they yearn for the days of the Islamic Empire throughout the world? The old Islamic Empire was by no means a strong-arm force; it was a force of learning and culture that preserved Western European traditions and texts -- until the Christians pushed them out and attacked them in Jerusalem.

These are extremists, fundamentalist "crazies" who don't represent mainstream Islam. Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, most of North Africa, Pakistan -- these are all Muslim countries that don't want to take over the world. Even the PLO, dominated by Muslims, just wants land back. The crazies led by Zarqawi do want to take over the world, it seems.

Dick Cheney has suggested that we are all safer now that Saddam Hussein is out of power. I submit that we're worse off. First of all, people weren't being beheaded every other day when Saddam was in charge. Second, while Saddam didn't like the U.S., his thirst for control over Iraq outweighed any U.S. hatred he had. Saddam would never have allowed a terrorist group to thrive in Iraq if it presented any challenge to his power. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"? Not for Saddam. While he was a brutal dictator, he didn't present much of a threat to the international community. This new breed of terrorists does present such a threat, and the absence of a strong authority like Saddam's allows them to exist unabated. Ironically, it is this group of crazies that present a real threat to the U.S. Perhaps allowing Saddam to stick around wouldn't have been so bad, after all. The alternative is certainly much worse.

The Time article's final sentence is a chilling prophecy of what may be in store for the next twenty years: "Asked what the jihadists will do if U.S. forces finally pull out, one of Abdullah's comrades offers this answer: 'We will follow them to the U.S.'"

Posted by Mark at 2:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't think a lengthy discussion of Fahrenheit 9/11 is in order. Instead, I'll point out some problems with Moore's arguments:

According to a transcript of the film, Moore takes issue with the so-called Saudi flights, in which several prominent Saudi businessmen and members of the Bin Laden family were quickly shuttled out of the United States. Moore suggests in the film, as well as in his book, Dude, Where's My Country?, that the Saudis contacted their friends the Bushes for help on getting out of the country. A strange request, yes, and I certainly don't believe Prince Bandar's explanation that "his majesty felt it was not fair for those innocent people to be subjected to any harm." Nevertheless, Moore's claims about the Saudi flights are not wholly consistent with fact.

Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, when asked, "Did the authorities do anything when the bin Ladens tried to leave the country?" replies, "No, they were identified at the airport, they looked at their passports, and they were identified."

The bipartisan 9/11 Comission's Staff Statement #10 reports different events:

No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until September 13, 2001. After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace.

The Saudi flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI, to ensure that people on these flights did not pose a threat to national security, and that nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country. Thirty of the 142 people on these flights were interviewed by the FBI, including 22 of the 26 people (23 passengers and 3 private security guards) on the Bin Ladin flight. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity.

The FBI checked a variety of databases for information on the Bin Ladin flight passengers and searched the aircraft. It is unclear whether the TIPOFF terrorist watchlist was checked. At our request, the Terrorist Screening Center has rechecked the names of individuals on the flight manifests of these six Saudi flights against the current TIPOFF watchlist. There are no matches.

The FBI has concluded that nobody was allowed to depart on these six flights who the FBI wanted to interview in connection with the 9/11 attacks, or who the FBI later concluded had any involvement in those attacks. To date, we have uncovered no evidence to contradict this conclusion.

The 9/11 Commission has provided a very different timeline of events. The Saudi flights and the Bin Laden did not occur simultaenously, and indeed, not immediately. The Bin Laden flight did not even occur until September 20. And, contrary to what Moore and Cloonan say, the 9/11 Commission indicates that the Saudis and Bin Ladens were interrogated on their way out.

The second problem with Moore's arguments comes when he tries to get members of Congress to enlist their family members in the Army to support the war in Iraq. Michelle called this ridiculous, asking how many people out of 535 households would statistically be going to Iraq. Using the number of households from the 2000 Census -- 104,705,000 -- and the number of soldiers in Iraq -- 140,000 -- I determined that 0.715 households out of every 535 households has a family member in Iraq. The Congress's one person with a family-member in Iraq is representative of everyone else. Nevertheless, as Scott pointed out, Moore's argument is symbolic: the nation's leaders can afford to send their children to college instead of sending them to possibly die for their country, and as he later points out, the military is seen as a career option for more low-income families than for more high-income families. There are no data to support this finding, however, other than the anecdotal evidence provided by Moore.

Posted by Mark at 1:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)