Matus1976 Blog - Philosophy, Science, Politics, Invention

A friend of mine posted this.

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

~Neil Gaiman

My comments -

I think that's a sad and very nihilistic sentiment, and not a surprising one from someone like Gaiman who makes his living focusing on angst and suffering. Love (good love), even when unrequited, is a beautiful and amazing thing. It is the embodiment of all the greatest essences of humanity: the recognition of values, a cherishing of ones own existence and of happiness, striving for a life of flourishing, and the use of reason in the recognition of values. 'True love' or, the best kind of love, is not dependant on reciprocation but is instead based on an intrinsic recognition, appreciation, and deep admiration of a persons qualities. Lives may lead people on different paths, but their essence, that which we love, remains the same. If you love someone, you love 'them' as a person, as an identity. Part of them may choose a different course in life, but this is no reason to not love. Being hurt by someone choosing a different course in life is a testament that Gaiman thinks reality and everyone else's dreams, passions, and desires ought to change entirely to satisfy each of our own whims. To scorn love so as to never be hurt by it is nihilistic Buddhism to its core - advocating never valuing anything because it's loss might cause you to suffer. Why stop at love? Why not eradicate joy and happiness as well, but the only way to do this is to never care about anything. Is this the life Gaiman advocates? Would this be a good life to live? To love a person includes wanting what is best for them for their own sake, not for yours. A flourishing fulfilling healthy relationship exists where two people who love each other and admire each other for their intrinsic qualities travel and grow together on the same course in life.

I have started up a podcast to discuss topics of interest to me. It is avaiable on iTunes and standard podcast sources or can be directly downloaded.

Matus1976-Philosophy,Politic,Science,Art
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/tscmd/tc/28132
Discussion of Philosophy (primary Aristotle / Eudaemonism and Ayn Rand / Objectivism) Politics (Objectivism, Libertarianism, anti-communism) Science (skepticism, atheism,technology) and Art (romantic realism)

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I encourage anyone who finds values in my posts to check out the podcast and also if you have something you want to say or share your understanding of, to star your own! Its quick and easy through TalkShoe.com and you can make a little extra money at it as well.

- Michael

A little bit of etymology

The first line of Homer's Iliad reads "Sing Muse of the Wrath of Achilles" The ancient Greeks had nine muses, and these muses were thought to serve as the inspiration for thought or skilled practice, and so Homer was appealing to the muses to inspire him to write of Achilles. What is someone doing when they "muse" Muse is a Greek word, and it means you are thinking about something. In Greek, the prefix "a" means 'not' or 'without' as in an "a-theist", which is someone who is without theism. Thus, "a-muse" means without thinking, an adequate description of laughing, joyful, "amusing" behavior. Ancient Greeks used the word mouseion to refer to a place or temple dedicated to the Muses, thus today a "Museum" then is a place of the products of thought or inspiration. "Music" holds the same origin in the word muse, but since antiquity has narrowed the idea of directed thought or inspiration to only one arena, that of sound.

"Liberty and Freedom, you can make a distinction between them. Liberty perhaps being political rights, freedom; not being enslaved. The ancient Athenian had only one word "Eleuthera" …and to him it was the noblest and defining character of his nation. To be free." – J. Rufus Fears – “The History of Freedom” Lecture series.

Pop culture is often a reflection of predominant philosophical themes. By the widespread use of an idea or phrasing we can often discern some of the philosophical attitudes of people that partake in these particular cultural expressions. They are of course never 100% accurate, and sometimes poor philosophical ideas are obfuscated and intentionally hidden to be presented to the mainstream culture. But in this general regard, there is a popular song by 3 Doors Down which contains the line “So you call this your free country, Tell me why it costs so much to live” and it reflects, I believe, a popular cultural sentiment. This line and sentiment infuriates me for a variety of reasons, the most important being that it wantonly confuses contradictory definitions of the word “Freedom”.

Freedom obviously has many different uses, for the purposes of this essay I will discuss the four predominant ones in English. To start with, one definition is being free from oppression (that is, no threat of having people force you to do something against your will) and another is Free as in ‘without cost’. Different languages use entirely different words to say these different concepts, it is only the fact that the English language uses this same word to mean a couple different things that this line is possible, and consequently that is even has a chance of trying to make the point it tries to make (that it should cost nothing to live) and that perhaps this language quirk is a major reason why this cultural sentiment exists at all, since it is superficially ‘clever’.

To illustrate why this is a fallacious way of thinking, let me use that exact same reversal of definitions of the word “Freedom” in a different context to illustrate how completely egregious it is to mix those two definitions conceptually. Consider the following statement.

“Of course I think black men should be free, everyone ought to have one”

Such is the betrayal of freedom (from oppression) that is permitted by mixing those definitions.

Being free from oppression is absolutely not the same thing as being free from cost, and ironically insisting that something be free from cost actually destroys freedom from oppression. Life, and existing, does have a cost, and it always will. That cost is food and water primarily, shelter secondarily, and health and medical care lastly. When we are hungry, we can not make food fall from the sky and into our mouths just by wishing it to. That food must be grown or killed, collected, processed, transported to us, and prepared for consumption. Every step of this process is complex and consumes a great deal of effort and time which other people have to put in. Whenever someone demands free (from cost) food, they are demanding that all of people, the farmers, packagers, truckers, train operators and tractor builders, fuel processors, grocery stores, etc, work for them without pay in order to provide that food free from cost.

We can not wish a heated home with running water into existence; such a thing requires the material and intellectual effort of literally thousands of people. Should everyone be provided with a heated home with running water for free (without cost)? To insist such a thing means that the thousands of laborers, builders, designers, carpenters, plumbers, contractors, etc do this work without pay.

Similarly, when we insist on free medical care, we are advocating every single medical practitioner, researcher, innovator, nurse and health aide to work for us to provide us these things for free without paying them anything.

Now let me be clear, I think as many people as possible ought to have the best health care, education, shelter and food possible. But under absolutely no circumstances is it right to advocate forced enslavement of people to provide these things. Each and every one of us has a right, fundamentally, to our own life, is it ours to live freely as we choose. No one else has any right to dictate to us or enslave us, and similarly we have no right to do that to anyone else. No one has a right to tell a farmer forcibly what he should charge for his food when it was his own mind, effort, and labor which produced it. No one has a right to tell a doctor what to charge for his services, his abilities are the product of his own effort and mind and they are not owned by anyone but himself. To force him, implicitly at the end of a gun, to charge no more than a certain amount for his services, is to tell him everyone but himself is the actual owner of his abilities; and as such his life. He is enslaved to everyone. He is a slave who is the property of “the people”

In fact, demanding a *right* to anything that is the result of someone else’s labor or mind means that the people who make those things have no rights. There can be NO RIGHTS in a society which demands the enslavement of all the producers and providers. No one EVER has a right to enslave. A right can not be just when it comes from the enslavement of everyone else, or even one single person. If you have a right to free from cost medical care, enforced by your government, it means you have a right to enslave the providers of medical care. If you have a right to education, it means you have a right to enslave the providers and producers of education. If you have a right to food, it means you have a right to enslave the producers and distributors of that food. This right to enslave is a founding element of socialism and communism, and no free from oppression society can be founded with the right to enslave embedded into its framework.

When we talk then about being free from cost, we are talking about a particular kind of freedom, which I will call material freedom. Material freedom is the acquisition of material goods with no cost to the person who has acquired them. Contrast this then to what I will call Political Freedom. Political Freedom is freedom from being forced to do something against your will by another person. These are the two types of freedom that are confused in the lyrics mentioned previously and in the popular cultural sentiment as well.

That life has a cost; the actions and efforts to sustain it, and thus could never be free (unless technology like nanotechnology literally renders food and shelter as cheap as dirt) conjures up the implicit idea from mixing these definitions of freedom; that the cost of living is similar to political oppression. That needing to work to live to provide yourself food and shelter in order to survive is no different than being forced by a captor as a slave laborer under the threat of torture and death. There is a tremendous distinction between these. Needing to partake in physical labor in order to acquire the material needs for survival is a consequence of physical reality and the laws of physics. We can not continue to exist merely by wishing to. We must act. All life requires a particular series of actions to be sustained, and every single person on this planet lives by only one of two means; providing that material existence for themselves, or looting or stealing the material means of survival from someone else. Needing to get permission from a dictator to live is a far different thing than working to grow food or build housing, or working to freely trade with someone to acquire those things. Blurring the distinction between the two in any way serves to perpetuate dictatorial rule, as it then can be hidden behind the guise of the ‘natural’ difficulties inherent in life. If the cost of living is similar to political oppression, than the fact that life requires action and effort means that political oppression must also be a part of life and dodging a dictators noose is as natural a component of survival as toiling in a field is. Who is it then that benefits most from convincing you that the lack of material freedom is the same as the lack of political freedom? Well those who seek to politically enslave you of course, or that seek to ally with you to enslave someone else under the banner of ‘rights’

The idea that needing to provide yourself the material necessities of life is a violation of freedom brings up a third common definition for freedom. I call this freedom Metaphysical Freedom. Metaphysical freedom is literal freedom of volition, it is the ability to do anything you want instantly with no effort just by wishing it, whether that is transporting yourself instantly to another continent or planet, or insisting that you do not need food to live.

Metaphysical freedom has limitations placed on it as well, and just like Material Freedom being confused with Political freedom, Metaphysical freedom is also often confused with Political Freedom. In fact the lack of Material Freedom is a consequence of the limitations forced onto us in regards to our Metaphysical Freedoms. Those limitations are, of course, the laws of physics. Life requires energy to sustain it, it requires action and effort to acquire the fuel for the energy and a perpetual and directed course of action intended to further that life. The laws of physics do not allow us to survive without eating, to work forever without rest or food, or to get a better life merely by wishing it. No one has Metaphysical Freedom, and probably no one ever will, though advances in technology will get us closer and closer to a pure metaphysical like freedom, we will likely always still require energy and effort to survive. Insisting though, that life should have no cost to it, that cost being food, shelter, and medicine, is an affront to the restrictions placed by the universe on our metaphysical freedoms. It is screaming to nature in frustration that you must follow her rules. It is screaming because your car wont start, or your investment failed, or you lover no longer loves you back. It is throwing a childish tantrum at reality, it is unproductive, useless, and nothing less than ignorant savagery. When you fail at a task or something happens to make your life more difficult, you have not been frustrated by a malevolent universe out to perpetuate human suffering and misery, you have instead corrected a misconception you held about the nature of the universe. Nature and reality exist and function in particular ways, to prosper as physical beings in a material world requires us to understand and follow the rules of material existence, not whine and wail when things do not go the way of our whims and conjur up flawed philosophical notions of metaphysical freedom.

The restrictions placed on our metaphysical freedoms by the laws of nature lead us to our final definition of freedom which I will discuss in this essay, Physical Freedom. Physical Freedom is the literal freedom of action, to move about, to speak, to do things, to work, to act on the physical world. Yet again this additional definition of freedom is frequently confused with the political freedom from oppression and the freedom from cost of materials. You might hear in conversations with anarchists that Physical Freedom ought to be identical to Political Freedom. That is, everything you are physically able to do you should be allowed to do, this includes physically brutalizing and oppressing another person. After all, if the police prevent you from oppressing someone they are in fact restricting your freedoms, but in this case they are restricting your Physical Freedoms, they are not restricting your Political Freedoms. Is it any wonder than whose interest is served by blurring the distinction between Political Freedom and Physical Freedom? Again if infringing on your ‘right’ to assault someone is an assault on freedom, than it is only those who advocate dictatorial or tyrannical rule who seek to call a system where anyone can do anything to anyone else as long as he is physically able to do it, Free. This is not Freedom in any meaningful political sense of the term.

The lack of distinction of Physical Freedom from Political Freedom often leads hardcore egalitarians and socialists to proclaim that the laws of physics themselves are a form of oppression, which of course is the only logical implication of any statement that derides the fact that it costs effort to live by providing food, and to have to deal with the physical realities of nature is a form of cruel oppression, and the people able to understand and overcome nature owe it to the people who are not able or willing, and owe it to them specifically because they are not able or willing, to shield them from the difficulties of physical existence. To make the world soft, coddling, padded, welcoming and free from anything remotely damaging to the fragile egos of these solipsists.

To summarize then, the four types of Freedom are:
Material Freedom – free from cost, cost as labor or effort or money
Physical Freedom – a literal freedom of action and movement, constrained only by the laws of physics
Metaphysical Freedom – literal volitional freedom unrestrained by the laws of physics, being able to do absolutely anything you wish instantly without effort. Includes being free from being forced to do something against your will by the laws of nature. Metaphysical freedom is a philosophical impossibility.
Political Freedom – Freedom from being forced to do something against your will by someone else.

Because of the nature of Material Freedom (that of being free from any cost or effort at acquiring the material necessities for life) any advancement in Material Freedom, when provided by government decree, necessarily bears a zero sum relationship with Political Freedom, You can not have a right to your own life if everyone else does. Any material good that is provided, that the government says everyone has a *right* to must come from the material products and effort of other people, and as such those others must be forced to work, i.e. enslaved, to provide those goods and services. If you say “I have a right to education” you are saying you have a right to force others to provide you with education, a right to enslave them. Thus, political figures like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, etc, operating under the guise of freedom are in fact seeking to forcibly enslave the majority of the population.

Is it no wonder then that every single communist nation in existence has always forbidden leaving the country? Is this not the ultimate expression of not having a right to your own life? People are not politically free in these nations, they are merely a physical tool whose only purpose is to attempt to provide equal material freedom to everyone else. Nations which do not allow people to freely leave them do not even deserve the respect of being called nations, and instead should be referred to as they truly are, prisons. Dictators and rulers of these nations, the worst of which are North Korea, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam; are in fact literal hostage takers. These nations operate under the flawed idealistic premise of material freedom as the end goal, and as a consequence have absolutely no political freedoms and are brutally oppressive, poor, and painful to live in.

Conversely, any advances in Political Freedom (including both economic and civil, which really should not be distinguished) lead directly to advances in Material Freedom, that is allowing people to rule their own lives and to discover and invent of their own accord, leads to the greatest advancements possible to man and thus the greatest reduction in the effort required to survive, implicitly speeding toward Material Freedom, though never quite completely reaching it.

I am a strong proponent of Political Freedom, that is, A life without oppression from other people. I am a strong advocate of Physical Freedom but only when it does not lead to restrictions on Political Freedom; anyone can do anything they want as long as they do not assault person or property of others. I am adamantly against Material freedom when it comes from the enslavement of the material production of those able to produce useful things, but completely for it when the free and voluntary exchange of these useful things results in people making the world an easier and more pleasant place for them to exist.

Thus, a just government would defend at all costs Political freedom both civil and economic, allow Physical Freedoms where they do not conflict with Political Freedoms, and necessarily progress more toward Material Freedom than any controlled or centralized government because of the advances made from innovators and producers which reduce the material cost of everything man needs to survive. Such a government should include a constitutional separation of church and state *as well as* a constitutional separation of business and state. While an initial incarnation of it might require taxation to sustain itself in order to provide basic infrastructure, national self defense, protect civil liberties, enforce rule of law, and final arbitration in matters of dispute, eventually a streamlined system could work on voluntary fee based system alone. Laws would allow individuals to do virtually anything they wanted as long as it did not infringe on someone else’s rights, or assault them physically or economically. Prisons would contain only violent criminals. The society would be wealthy, politically free, physically free, continually approach material freedom providing for wonderful, long, healthy lives for its inhabitants.

But when we confuse the meanings of Freedoms we open ourselves up to promulgating dictatorial rule in the name of an abstract and harmful ideal of ‘freedom’ which is in fact a literal enslavement of the vast majority of the population. Words are the only means by which we can convey ideas and as such are extremely powerful tools, we must always choose our words wisely and there is no more important area to be aware of the meanings of words than when it is in regards to the freedom (political and physical) of sentient beings.

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In the late 50's as Chairman Mao Ze Dong solidified power in "Revolutionary China" he sought to increase the standing of China on the international scene. To do this, China had to sell it's primary domestic product; food. Of course in China most people producing food consumed the food they were producing. The communist party of China issued new orders and directives, every bit of food produced by the population would be 'given' to the government, who would then re-distribute it according to who needed it, or rather, according to what would benefit the oppressive rulers the most. Mao's ruling part of China began a campaign to become one of the world's largest agricultural exporters. Farmers were forced to hand over at gun point the food they were growing while they were starving. Where they were producing more than enough food for themselves and others, now there was not even enough food to feed the population of China. People were literally working themselves to death growing and collecting their own food, and being forced to give it away. Millions and millions of people starved to death. In all, historians estimate, about 35 million Chinese peasants starved to death during this period in the absolute worst human famine to have ever occurred, yet few today know about it.

This famine was not cause by droughts or freezes, but instead by a controlled economy in the hands of a murderous dictator, in fact all of the famines experienced in the 20th century were at the hands of controlled economies

Additionally Communist party members were fans of an "alternative" science, brought about by philosophical Dialectical materialism, which asserts all growth comes from conflict, among other bad ideas, and also abandons the mechanism of heredity, genetics, in favor of a deadly Marxist pseudoscience, Lysenkoism. Lysenko and his poor science caused the famines in the Soviet Union which killed tens of millions of people, and many of these policies, despite these spectacular failures, were adopted in China promulgating Mao's famine. Later, when adopted in Cambodia, Ethiopio, and North Korea, all produced still more man-made famines. The lysenko ideas including 'conditioning' seeds to grow in cold weather by dunking them in cold water, forcing peasants to bury seedlings much deeper, and forcing peasants to cover fields with 5 times as many seeds as a field could support, on the theory that similar plants do not compete with each other for resources.

You can read more on these dreadful policies here
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine/chinese_famine.html

Beyond that, Communist party members sought to make China a world player on the industrial scene in the world and desired to capitalize on their greatest resource; manpower from physical labor. Tens of millions of farmers and peasants were ordered to leave their productive farms and build small communal "steel refractories" these refractories resembled termite mounds more than steel production furnaces and produced steel that looked more like animal droppings earning it a nickname in kind.

The single major change which ended this dreadful famine was when farmers were again allowed to produce food as they saw fit, and while they still had to provide a large quota to the government, they were allowed to keep any excess they grew and sell it. Within 5 years agricultural output in China, from 1960 – 1965, almost tripled. Production continued to climb until Chairman Mao regained much of the power he lost and instituted a "cultural revolution" where anyone eductated in the ways of the west was executed, again agriculture production plummeted as the people responsible for the radical increase were sent to prison camps or outright executed as "counter revolutionaries" Millions of educated Chinese fled the country, and chances are if you are in a western country and have some Chinese friends, their parents most likely fled the cultural revolution.

Read more here is as well
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1619

Many people in western nations have a hard time believing such statistics, assuming by de-facto that governments tend to operate well and for the benefit of the people. But government encroachment into markets does not bring about equality, increased standards of living, or a general betterment of society, it always plummets toward ineptitude, corruption, and inefficiencies. . No bureaucrat can ever respond quickly enough to rapidly changing climate and markets to get the food where it is needed, only the independent and rapid decisions of the millions of producers and distributors are capable of adjusting with lighting rapidity to great strains on products. Any politician who controls immense swaths of the economy is immediately open to corruption, where the currency de jour is not product superiority but instead influence and bribery. To the extent at which governments interfere in markets is the extent to which people in those nations suffer harder, shorter, more painful lives, and to the extent to which nations let free people make free decisions and produce the goods they desire of their own accord, and trade with each other of their own free will, is the extent to which a nation and it's people prosper and live longer, healthier, happier lives as a whole.

Beautiful image from Argentina - 3 galaxies and a comet
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0703/3772-84mcnaught_druckmuller.jpg

French Architect proposes mechanism for construction of Egyptian pyramids.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2405133.ece

Solar System planet size comparison
Great comparison of the size of all objects in our solar system larger than 200 miles in diameter, gives a conceptual understanding of the size of the sun and large gas planets compared to earth and other smaller bodies. Visually stunning.
http://kokogiak.com/solarsystembodieslargerthan200miles.html

Some quick news items

Somebody beat me to it =( Still, mine will be better, but too slow on the draw again...
http://i.n.com.com/i/ne/p/2007/34monotracer550x365.jpg

Check out this amazing Hubble image, 50,000 galaxies, be sure to load the zoomed version and explore the galaxies, 50,000 of them!
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/06/image/c/format/zoom/

On existential threats: NASA lacks funds to find killer asteroids
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/03/06/nasa.asteroids.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

"They are a threat even if they don't hit Earth because if they explode while close enough -- an event caused by heating in both the rock and the atmosphere -- the devastation from the shockwaves is still immense. The explosion alone could have with the power of 100 million tons of dynamite, enough to devastate an entire state, such as Maryland, they said."

Check out my updated essay "Humanity Needs an Insurance Policy" on AssociatedContent.com

Humanity Needs an Insurance Policy
Is Self Destruction from the Rapid Growth of Technology the Answer to the Fermi Paradox?
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/137048/humanity_needs_an_insurance_policy.html

Comment here

Damascus Blades contained carbon nanotubes!

Damascus Blades are legendary in both the history of weaponry and metallurgy. These blades were not only significantly stronger, sharper, and more flexible than any steel in blades at the time, and even now, but were aesthetically fascinating, the forming process created beautiful wood grain like patterns in the steel. Stories from the middle ages suggested that a Damascus blade could slice straight through a regular steel 2” mace ball head without a nick. Like Japanese sword making, the process for making Damascus blades were rigorous and refined over the course of centuries. The ceremonies for making them were so precise that they became essentially religious practices. One of my material books tells a horrifying part of forming a Damascus sword which required quenching the red hot blade with the blood of a living slave. First they were stabbed through ‘the fleshy part of the thigh, then through the other leg’s thigh, and then through the gut’. Ouch.

Whether or not this was part of the actual process, large scale manufacturing today still can not match the quality of these hand crafted blades of antiquity. Damascus blades helped lead the Muslim’s to victory thought he crusades, but hundreds of years ago the delicate and specific recipe for creating them was lost. It was only a mere 10 years ago that modern metallurgists were able to replicate in a lab the quality of Damascus steel. Though pattern welding has been around for a while, it only replicated the look of the blades and not their incredible structural superiority.

This interesting news reported in the New York Times science column
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/science/28observ.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
shows that some researchers in Germany, after analyzing true Damascus blades, found they contained carbon nanotubes! Nanotubes were not even identified until the late 1980’s, these tubes are made of sphere of carbon molecules, forming a pattern of interlocking pentagons and hexagons, and then with extra rings added in the middle.

Their manufacture is expensive and complex, the longest tubes to date are around 10 cm, but these fascinating carbon tubes represent the strongest material known to man, over 100 times stronger than steel. A macroscopic length of these tubes, formed into a rope, could be invisible to the naked eye yet support well over a ton of weight. Such levels of strength are still conceptually alien to us. Amazingly, the complex and delicate process used to create Damascus blades caused carbon nanotubes to form within these blades, obviously a major contributor to the strength, flexibility, and sharpness of those blades.
Damascus Steel, if it could reproduced and then mass produced would be to steel what steel was to wrought iron. Rearden Metal anyone?

Great Scientific American article on Damascus http://www.mines.edu/Academic/met/pe/faculty/eberhart/classes/down_loads/damascus.pdf

Damascus Steel images
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=damascus+steel

Wikiepedia entry on Damascus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

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Inventors make the biggest difference in the world.

Every year hundreds of millions of people die from drinking contaminated water. Technologies for cleaning and purifying water are relatively expensive, complex, and require electricity, forbidding their use in most of these countries. Global altruists push for building massive industrial infrastructure to get clean water to these people, but usually end up just funneling money into the corrupt people who are responsible for the cultural and technological stagnation of these areas in the first place. Their do-good efforts often cause more harm than good. Enter the independent, motivated, intelligent inventor. All the great advances of humanity, the things that have truly alleviated the cause of suffering, as opposed to providing only palliative care, have come not from selfless altruists trying to feel good about their contributions to the world, but from motivated intelligent optimistic people conquering nature through the use of technology and their intransigent minds. The Lifestraw is one such simple, elegant, and beautiful device. This inexpensive straw provides clean safe drinking water for up to 1 year for 1 person per straw. Manufactured at a cost of ~$2 USD, these devices could save hundreds of millions of lives per year, and do far more good for the people of the world than all the concerts, special promotions, and celebrity public service announcements combined.

Lifestraw manufacturer
http://www.lifestraw.com/en/low/low.asp

GizMag article on the LifeStraw
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/1/

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Some other interesting things…

Largest Superconductor ever built
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/06/sci_nat_enl_1164360921/html/1.stm

Slow motion of Bunker Buster bomb penetrating reinforced hanger and destroying the aircraft inside
http://www.infectiousvideos.com/index.php?p=showvid&a=playvid&sid=3402&cr=hotplay

Test firing video of a phalanx
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4897647549985392214

What is Love

Love, and emotion for that matter (in a healthy brain) is our response to our highest values. Love is the emotional price you pay for *valuing* something and seeing it expressed in another human being. All of our emotions are responses to the things we value most being expressed. When we value the health and well being of ourselves and our loved ones, we are happy to see things perpetuate those values. If you value honesty, sincerity, kindness, integrity, productiveness, etc, deeply, and you see that expressed in another person, your emotions respond properly.

Our mind, logic and reason, do not operate in conflict with our emotions, our emotions are the logical extensions of our deepest convictions. Proper relationships of love are based on admiration and respect for a person, an individual. Not a robot or a social automaton. If you value fashion and trendyness the most, you will love someone that embodies those things. If you value money and prestige the most, you will love someone that embodies those things, but in both of those cases it is very easy to find another person with more money, fame, wealth, prestige, or as is the most common case, hotter. So your emotions become fickle and easily swayed. It is any wonder than that people go from an initial high in a relationship to feeling like they are going through the mundane routines? If you are truly inspired by someone, and you admire and cherish them, and they feel the same about you, will you ever really become bored of them?

A proper loving relationship, when one values proper things and integrates them into their own self fully (e.g. valuing honesty, one must become honest, valuing rational independence, one must not be co-dependant) will blossom into an amazing and easily life long relationship full of complete admiration and respect. A proper loving relationship, since to say "I love you" one must have a clear concept of "I" and a clear concept of "you" can not come from two people who fear being alone, who don't like spending time with themselves, who perpetually seek to be distracted from dealing with their own innate boringness, it must come from two independent intelligent people sure of themselves both doing what they most want to do. A proper loving relationship comes from where the individual rational self interest of two people meet, no one giving up any part of themselves for the sake of a 'relationship' but both of them forming a profound and amazing relationship based on the thing most important to each of them.

Such relationships are rare, I have since I came to this opinion only had one of this nature in my life, and it was the most amazing by far of all the relationships I have ever had. I fully believe that the vast majority of people are in extremely unhealthy relationships, they do not hold their partners to any standards and they don't base their affection on any solid ground, while they cheat on each other, lie steal and manipulate, they chant to themselves 'but I love him! (or her)' After obfuscating the source of their original emotion, they demote love to something they are just supposed to feel and elevate feeling it for someone who does not deserve it to a status of a moral virtue!

In many cases, a significant other will spend most of their time berating their partner, in order to psychological demoralize them. It amazes me how prevalent this can be, the ‘you are not pretty, no one would want you, you are a loser, you are pathetic’ etc. Things like that stem from basing one's self esteem on other people's assessments of you. A person who does this knows what kind of control it gives them over some one, even if they don’t explicitly know it, they are aware of it at some level because it is how control is established over them. So if you don't like them, it is in fact insulting to him, so they have to insult you to compensate. They must beat you to the psychological punch before they lose their self esteem to you.

When people have a healthy basis for their own self esteem they don't need affection from other people to sustain it, since in essence needing someone else’s appraise is enslaving one's self them, just as lying to them and manipulating them is. When you know who you are and have a healthy basis for your own assessment of yourself, then when someone likes you (for the right reasons of course) then it is more a reflection of them and their qualities than it is of you and yours. You know who you are. You know what quality of a person you are if you have integrity. It becomes a scenario that when people like you, they will rise in your estimate of them. You’ll think more highly of them because they value what you value, and recognize it in you. But it's only when they like you for the things that you most like about yourself and when those things are proper. You must like about yourself your integrity, honesty, commitment to what is right and just, love of your life, your fundamental outlook on life, and they must like the same in you. If someone likes you just because you are hot or rich, well that doesn’t say too many good things about them. It’s good to be someone who can financially support themselves and to be attractive of course, but to base a relationship and affection solely on those is terrible. If someone likes you because they’d be bored otherwise, or because they’d feel lonely, well again that doesn’t say much of them. You become two parasites sucking each others life force working toward a common confusing cloudy mess.

So set yourself some standards. Look for a decent, stable person who has their own hopes and dreams and desires. Look for dreams and goals that do not create conflict with yours. Have ones of your own. Look for integrity (that is, being internally consistent) Look for honesty and sincerity. (Integrity is also being honest to ones values) Then you learn the problem with having standards, and why so many people end up compromising them. You realize quickly how few people stand up to even rudimentary ones. Why is that? Well, that’s the topic of another post, but I would blame a terrible influence of the preomdinat cultural – philosophical attitudes. Once I started really thinking about these things and really being ‘picky’ about these standards, it started to look like I will be alone for some time. Alone is not how I would prefer to be, but I would certainly dislike to a much greater extent being dishonest to myself and my highest values, and subsequently being with some psycho manipulative narcissistic nihilist.

It never ceases to surprise me that being honest and sincere and rational are things so alien to most people. Usually people think it’s ok to be dishonest as long as you can ‘get away with it’ or that no one is physically injured in the process. When I last ate at my friends restaurant, I pointed out to the waitress she missed one of my items I ordered on my bill. She acted surprised, “Wow, you’re so honest!” It’s surprising, or at least it ought to be, that she was surprised by honesty. Well, first of all I wouldn’t consciously steel from my near life long friend, but additionally there is little reason not to be honest. Not only is honesty is far more spiritually rewarding (in appropriate contexts) but it is far more pragmatically rewarding. Honesty cultivates sincere, deep, long lasting friendships and relationships that are mutually beneficial and enlightening, including business and working relationships.

So don’t sell out, too many people do. We have only one life and it is ours to enjoy, not to bow down and apologize and cave in to every jerk who wants to force us to live for them.

Compared to many modern ‘enlightened’ people who yap about how we are ‘not meant to be monogamous’ and such things the old fashioned ways are far more rational in many ways. They came about for good reasons and helped humanity survive for a long time. That’s not to say it’s all good and it couldn’t be when it’s philosophical basis was corrupt (that is, it was based on duty and obligation, not reverence to ones self and one’s deepest values) But the secular materialistic nihilistic interpretation of love, that of corrupting social trickery to keep people in check and monogamy as obligations handed down by pious tyrants is far more destructive, and both that and the old ways are much more unhealthy than the truth of the matter; that love is our response to our highest values and monogamy is not an obligation or duty that flies in the face of our ‘genetic tendencies’ toward polygamy, but instead is the highest and most profound tribute we can pay to one another. Religious indoctrinations of monogamy sought to acquire the cause of monogamy (the overwhelming desire to dedicate oneself to one person) by going through the motions of the effect, yet every wedding I have been to included both men and women present bemoaning and whining about being with the same person for the rest of their life and acting as though a wedding was a sorrowful moment of the final loss of freedom in a person’s life. Such is the only logical consequence possible when one removes the cause of an action, and goes only through the motions of it. If one feels disheartened at the prospect of perpetual monogamy and intimacy with only one person for the rest of their life, than they ought not be getting married in the first place. Pre wedding parties ought to be magnificent celebrations, not a spiritual funerals mourning the loss of single hood.

A lot of people wish for their prince charming or (what is the female equivalent, princess submissive?) to be loaded. Money, in it’s purest form, is a means to acquire values. In absence of values money has no worth. When people forget the purpose of their money, they often end up actually hurting the things they value in pursuit of more money, as they eventually associate money with a source of value and not a means to further values. The father who works long hours to buy a 4500 sq ft house and 3 SUV’s and white picket fence and Jacuzzi on the porch, if lucky, one day realizes why he never sees his wife or children. If unlucky, he just continues to live miserably perpetually wondering why the more he gets the less he feels. His pursuit of money got in the way of his pursuit of values.

When on the market for a relationship, you should always pick someone that embodies your deepest values. But look at the conceptual basis, not the particulars. Maybe they dress differently, or like a different kind of music, or have a different political viewpoint, but it is why they like those things that is important. It is the motivating principles behind their actions. Their overall outlook on the world. Someone may not have read as much or studied as much or went to school as long as you or have as much in the bank as you’d like. But they may have well been raising a family, or taking care of a sick relative, or just enjoying living, which is perfectly fine as we have no ‘debt’ to pay to the world for being alive (the last major secular remnant of original sin) Even if their political ideologies are a polar opposite, that is better than someone having no political opinions, at least the former actually cares about the world they live in the way you do, and tries to form an opinion on what makes it best; very stable solid ground for you to work from. The latter you can have no connection with. If a person of the former persuasion is intelligent, passionate, and rational, and you are as well, you will work out your differences of opinions and you will have no conflicts of interest.

Oddly, people almost always use the word love properly in every context but it’s most important one. Every time someone says “I love this car” or “I love this movie” or “I love this city” they recognize that those things are manifestations of their highest values, even if they don’t understand it explicitly. But when it comes to a person they love, forget it, most couldn’t name any of those qualities they admire or cherish. Go ahead and ask the person who loves you why they do, and ask yourself that of the person you love as well. People will spend hours complaining about their significant other, but when someone objects “well why don’t you break up with her” and they always quip, as if reflexively, “because I love her!” Yeah, but what do you mean by that? Why do you love her? Do you really love her (or him), or is it just that you don’t want to be alone and end up saying ‘eh, you’ll do’ at some point.

It is often fashionable to extol the virtues of unconditional love. Proper love, enlightening love, spiritually enlivening love, is inherently *very* conditional. Consider that if someone goes around and sleeps with everyone in sight (and what is sex after all but in it’s best the physical expression of your deepest admiration and respect for someone) people denigrate them to no end, calling them whores and gigolos and what not, yet we elevate to a moral virtue the idea of giving out love to everyone and everything, not matter what they do. Such an attitude takes any and all value it had away. To give love to anyone, to love all of humanity, means love has no meaning. Replace love with the brilliant or Olympic athlete and it becomes clear how equalizing diminishes value. If it is so wrong to give sex out unconditionally that why is it good to give love out unconditionally?

And in that theme, replace the word love with hate, which is always used in proper context, and the point is further demonstrated. If one insisted that they hated everyone for no reason we might lock them up in a mental institution. Usually people hate someone for a particular reason, that they hurt them or someone they cared about, or are just intrinsically terrible people. But we think loving anyone and everyone for no reason is morally healthy? In reality, the only people that benefit from this altruistic love are those who are least deserving of respect and admiration, and everyone else is hurt by it.

Consider then, conversely, the person who seeks sexual only relationships. Sex is inherently an intimate act. Trying to remove Sex of it’s intimacy is an absurdity. When having sex you are going through all the physical motions of deeply caring about someone, you are touching and caressing them in ways not appropriate in all other social contexts. If you find yourself sleeping with someone, and then wake up with them asking yourself “hmm, is it ok to spoon with them or is that weird?” “Hmm, can I hold hands?” Well, you just engaged in the ultimate extension of physical intimacy! And now you are skittish about holding hands and lying with your bodies close to each others! If such thoughts surface in your mind, then you know intrinsically that you weren’t at the point of sharing the deepest of all physically intimate acts with them.

So why did you sleep with them? Why do men (more often) and women seek sexual conquest? They want to feel better about themselves, returning back to the concept of basing your self value on other people’s reaction to you. The people that seek this tell themselves they just like the physical pleasure of the act, yet if that was the case masturbation would suffice. They tell themselves they just like sex, but if that was the case than prostitutes would suffice, and would willing women really have any troubles finding any random man to sleep with them? Hardly.

So clearly it is something more than the physical feeling of it and the company of a member of the opposite sex (or same, given your orientation) It is, in fact, the elevated sense of self worth that one hopes to acquire by engaging in the ultimate expression of physical intimacy. After all, the proper reason for doing such a thing is literally from mutual admiration and deep and profound respect. Seeking that from the physical expression of admiration is the ultimate form of the philosophical self deception of going through the motions of the effect to try to acquire the cause. Men seek woman who they think are morally pure and demanding, who portray an elevated sense of self respect, and who they fool themselves into thinking have made a great exception for their case. Women seek the same, spiritually, a man who will give them an elevated sense of self respect because of the status or the position of the man, what else could be the primary compulsion of women who flock to celebrities like cats in heat? The women the men seek to conquer have value because they allegedly reserve sex only for those specially unique and deserving people, thus allowing the man to convince himself that he actually is of a higher deserving stature. Both are no different than savages building runways out of bamboo poles and making radio sounds through their mouths, or society forcing monogamy on a relationships desiring of it, or someone buying a sports car that is way outside his means in order to impress his friends. They are all examples of, in Ayn Rand’s words, “going through the motions of the effect to try to acquire that which should have been the cause.”

In reality, in a healthy proper loving sexual relationship, both should be confined to only the rare instances and people that truly deserve it. To the people that express your deepest values. Love is the emotional price we pay for having values. The great thing about that kind of love, the kind of love that is based on respect and admiration, is that it is not required that it be requited. And if you think about it, should any ideal form of love require that to sustain it? If sex is the physical expression of love, then love can be sustained without it, even when your respective values drive you apart, the love is not diminished because that respect and admiration for the person remains. It does not require physical expression as sustenance, although that is an incredibly great addition. Jealousy, suspicion, paranoia, it all goes out the window. After all, would you ever want someone to be with you who didn’t actually want to be with you? Would you want someone to pretend to be your friend who didn’t really want to be? Would you really want someone you respect and admire and even cherish to sacrifice themselves, their identity, their sense of self, just so you wouldn’t be lonely? You would condemn someone you allegedly care about to self imprisonment. I don’t want friendship and especially love to be based on charity, that is insulting beyond measure.

I feel so many people are in unhealthy relationships that I hope I might get them to think a little longer and deeper about who they are and what they are doing. Remember, think about your values and integrate them fully into your life. Hold yourself up to your highest standards, and hold your significant other up to those standards as well. Do not put up with insults, manipulation, and deceit of any form or degree. Saying “no one is perfect” does not excuse people from even bothering to try. Love is our response to our highest values, love is the physiological response our bodies have toward the perception of that which we value most manifested in another person. Think about the values you base your relationships on. Convenience? Scared of being alone? Basing your self esteem on what your significant other thinks of you? Do you ever find yourself saying “you’ll do” or “well, sure he’s psycho but at least I am not alone” or “at least she hasn’t cheated on me” then you are very probably suffering from unhealthy relationship.

Consider last in all these cases who benefits from these twisted conceptions of love. Who benefits from insisting that one ought to love all fellow men? The people least deserving of it. Who suffers? Those most deserving of admiration and respect. Who benefits from insisting that love is something we have no control over? Those who don’t deserve it, those we would not love if we had any standards. We do have control over it because we have control over ourselves, our values and our integrity. The emotional response of love is a reflection of those. Who benefits from insisting that love is mysterious and magical? Again, those who don’t deserve it. Who benefits from the idea that love needs to be worked out? That relationships are hard and difficult? That marriage is work, that love is tough? The people who cause the conflicts that need to be worked out. The people who make relationships difficult by not respecting you and your individuality. Proper love is full of admiration and a deep and profound respect and cherishing, it is based on proper self esteem, self respect, and most importantly rational selfishness. I say the last because love can not be based on the absence of self, as is intrinsic behind the principles of self-less-ness. Without a self, without being able to say “I” you can not love someone. You can not have deep values and convictions and can not respond to them with emotions. To the extent that you abandon your ‘self’ is the extent at which you confuse and muddle love. Love is intrinsically and properly selfish. The proper relationship, the greatest kind of relationship, the most fulfilling, desirable and long lasting, comes from the meeting of the mutual desires of two intelligent, passionate, rational individuals with deep convictions and standards for themselves and others, not from people who abandon their passions and convictions.

The most important aspect about these comments on love and the nature of emotions, however, is that they are *right* Physical experiments prove the nature of emotions, that they are logical extensions of our deepest convictions (in healthy minds, severe physiological differences or chemical imbalances can very obviously alter the proper functioning of a system of perception, recognition and reaction that is based on physical bodies, minds, and molecules) They are not disconnected from our rational faculties, but are instead the ultimate logical extension of them. They are lighting quick calculators that assess the situation you are in and compare it to your values, thus invoking feelings of pleasure or pain. Brian scans and psychological experiments have proved as such over and over again, yet the idea remains completely outside the predominate cultural and philosophical interpretations of love. Why is that? Well that is a topic worthy of an even longer essay.

If you have found any value in these ideas on love and emotions, they come mostly from philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand and the great Aristotle, with minor contributions and extrapolations from myself and the many people I have discussed this topic with on different forums devoted to the ideas of both of these amazing people. Rand’s contributions on the nature and purpose of emotions are no doubt one of the most important contributions she made and some of the most important ideas for spiritual health of humanity.

- Michael

This past week I traveled to Phoenix and stayed there for about a week. I’ll write on the rest of my trip later, but the first few days of the trip and the primary purpose of it was to attend the 2006 Alcor Conference. Alcor, you might remember, was in the news recently as the company that allegedly houses the now cryogenically suspended body of baseball legend Ted Williams. This conference was not only about cryogenic suspension, and only two presentations dealt primarily with that topic, but it was much more so “An Inside look at the science and medicine of tomorrow” as the conference was called. Presenters and speakers included representations from other cryonics organizations, local and state government officials; who spoke on legal policies surrounding Alcor and the state of Arizona, and many prominent scientists in the fields of economics, mathematics, physics, and cryobiology.

The conference was held at the Scottsdale Marriott just outside of Phoenix, AZ. The Scottsdale Marriott was a gorgeous hotel, with an outdoor fireplace topped by lions and incredible view. At 280 a night it better be nice, but as conference attendees we were able to get a discount. Even so, I switched to a different hotel after the conference.



Given that, the conference was very professional and in an ornate hall. The first night was a reception on the water patio, near the pool and the fireplace and adorned with a fountain. We mingled at met a great number of incredibly interesting people and saw many people that we had read much from and about. The welcoming speaker was originally scheduled as the Arizona Secretary of State, who unfortunately could not make it. I believe the replacement speaker was from the local chamber of commerce who assured us of how friendly Scottsdale was to Alcor, he was intelligent and it seemed clear that he was well informed about Alcor and cryogenic suspension in general. After the welcoming speech we disbanded and mingled. Bonnie and I met Stephane and Magali from the Montreal area who were the two friendliest and most welcoming people I have met in my life. Both were Alcor members.

I also met Brenda, who was a film maker from Toronto, intent on doing a documentary on cryogenic preservation, she stated that her original intent was just to do a documentary, but after researching it herself she was now interested in signing up. I am eager to see the results of her work. The night was full of interesting and fascinating people, lawyers, bankers, retired people, engineers, people from all walks of life. These were not crazy people or socially mal adjusted people, but mostly normal people. I say mostly because they, and we, shared one major trait that the majority of the population does not. We truly love our lives, love being alive, and love all the splendor and joy the world can bring us. And in that, we are comfortable acting in accordance with our deepest values.

The next morning marked the real beginning of the conference. It started with a continental breakfast in the beautiful Arizona sun by the pool and a fountain. We all chatted and said hello to our friends we made the night before, and then moved on into the ballroom.



It looked as though about 200 – 300 people were in attendance, the ball room was fantastic. We found our seats and waited for the conference to start, the feeling was excited and electric. It was incredible to be in a room of such strongly like minded individuals.

We were welcomed by the publicist of Alcor, who relayed an overview of the conference and gave a brief history of the field of cryobiology then moved onto the first speaker.
The first speaker was Dr. Theodore Kraver, a PhD in mechanical engineering from Arizona State University and a degree in Aeronautical and Astronautically engineering from MIT. He was major player in the field of cryogenic fuel storage technology for NASA in the 60’s (rocket fuel is cryogenically cooled so the powerful gaseous full is condensed into a more manageable liquid) Dr Kraver and some associates formed the first cryogenic suspension company and he designed the suspension storage chambers which is extensive background in cryogenic fuel storage was vital to the NASA Apollo program. Dr Kraver gave a history of Cryonics in America, from the first patients and suspension technologies to the modern facilities available at Alcor and the Cryonics Institute.


Dr. James H Bedford, the first and oldest cryogenics patient surrounding by wasteful melodramatic venting of liquid nitrogen.

The following segment was a panel discussion involving Arizona State Representatives Michele Reagan (R) and Linda Lopez (D). The discussion was moderated by Alcor’s public policy consultant, Barry M. Aarons. The conversation centered around the political climate surrounding Alcor and cryogenic preservation in general. About two years ago a bill was proposed in Arizona that would have essentially placed Alcor’s cryogenic facility under the regulations of funeral parlors, which would have required either embalming or cremation of patients. Michele Reagan and Linda Lopez, of opposing political parties, centered on common ground and fought the bill; preventing it from passing. Today Linda Lopez is sponsoring an end of life options bill with specific provisions legally guarding cryogenic preservation. This discussion raised a lot of questions by the audience concerning the influence of the predominant political climate and the effects it would have on cryogenic preservation. Most were worried, justifiably in many ways, about the rise of the religious right in America. However America currently has the only political climate supportive of cryogenic suspension at all. Australia follows closely behind. As a later speaker, Brian Wowk, pointed out, it is the extreme left of Europe that has created a political structure which completely represses alternative end of life options like cryogenic suspension. In most European countries cryogenic suspension is outright illegal. One can only wonder why this allegedly intellectually superior and much more secular culture has only one Alcor member (whom we befriended) in the whole of the European Union and has made any attempts at starting a cryogenic suspension organization illegal and has made it nearly impossible for a patient, when they die, to be brought to the US for suspension. As Alcor put it, if you are a member, do NOT die in France. Desiring cryogenic suspension is absolutely not a manifestation of religion, if European culture is as strongly one of secular enlightenment as it prides itself on, the only thing that would make the concept of cryogenic suspension as alien as it is would be a deeply embedded nihilism.

The next presentation on Nanomedicine and Medical Nanorobotics was given by Robert A Freitas Jr.



This was probably the most amazing of the presentations. Dr Freitas is the Sr. Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and is the author of the “Nanomedicine” series. He is a major player in the emerging field of Nanotechnology, designing many of the currently projected molecular assembling technologies and is also a member of the Lifeboat Foundation, which I an early member of and work closely with. His presentation was the first time I have seen a clear conceptual representation of the scale of nanotechnology. His animations and lectures detailed exactly how one could make an assembly system which starts from individual carbon atoms, grabs them in diamond tips and assembles them in perfect geometric patterns in more tips and more assemblers. The assemblies are added to other assemblies, and those to others. The animation follows the journey of an individual atom through these conceptual manufacturing systems all the way to the end, where it becomes a nanotechnological computer, whose computing power probably equals that of all the computers in the world combined (nanotechnology could potentially fit computers with modern computing power into devices too small to be seen with a naked eye)

This phenomenal animation can be viewed here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqyZ9bFl_qg

Another excellent animation of a practical nanotechnology application is the Dermal Display http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt-lv6IJPxc This founding concept of this animation was developed by Robert Frietas and his presentation narrated it. The animation was created by a fellow extropian member and animator, Gina Miller.

Robert also spoke of some of the promising examples of nanomedicine, including artificial red blood cells which hold hundreds of times as much oxygen as standard red blood cells do and might allow a human to hold their breath for hours, artificial platelets which would clot blood in microseconds, even major injuries, and artificial white blood cells which could be programmed to attack specific pathogens, rendering humans immune to all unwanted bacterial and viral infections.


Respirocyte inside a blood vessel with neighboring red blood cells


A small nanorobot is show here repairing a neuron and tracing it’s neural connections.

Ultimately, the point of Robert’s presentation was to give some concrete examples of Nanotechnological applications that will be able to repair damage to the human body at the molecular and eventually atomic level. Perhaps advanced cryogenic preservation techniques will avoid molecular damage problems all together, but they are a consequence of current cryogenic preservation techniques. Robert’s presentation gave real cause for optimism in the area and for the hopes of future medical capabilities.

The next speaker to take the stage was Ralph Merkle, PhD. Ralph gave a more lighthearted conceptual overview of modern nanotechnology and societal conceptions of cryogenic suspension. He emphasized that while cryogenic suspension was indeed experimental and no one could guarantee it’s success, would one really want to be part of the control group or part of the experimental group?


An animated simulation of a molecular differential gear designed by Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle

Following that was a Cryonics Organizations Today Panel discussion featuring Tanya Jones from Alcor, Melody Maxim from Suspended Animation, and Ben Best from Cryonics Inc. There is a lot of sordid history behind cyronics organizations, and given the very limited number and predominate cultural distaste for them, one is left with a feeling of disappointment at the lack of cohesiveness. It appears that there is a lot of ‘bad blood’ between Alcor and the Cryonics Institute, but the new heads of both organizations are extending considerable effort to bring the organizations together and to share and licensed technology. I have no idea what the bad history was between these organizations and frankly couldn’t be bothered to find out. The Cryonics Institute offers less expensive cryogenic options and would not disclose any information on their vitrification process, which wouldn’t be divulged until a patent was protecting it. Alcor seems more professional in it’s presentation and function, but is more expensive. Suspended Animation is a company dedicated to the actual vitrification and preservation process, which involves replacing blood with a cryoprotectant (a liquid that prevents water from freezing) and stabilizing and cooling the body. If you are interested in getting a cryogenic suspension then choosing which storage facility to go with and whether you would like suspended animation to do the actual suspension or the respective storage facility requires considerable reasoned investigation.

The next speaker was J. Storrs Hall, PhD, who was lecturing on the type of society that awaits those revived. This was probably the least favorite of the lectures I heard and I cringed at quite a few parts. I dislike these kind of futurist expositions, in reality it is very difficult to have any idea about what the functionality of society would be like 100 or 500 years from now. Some key relevant points he made, however, were that if you were revived, it would obviously be in a society which values life intrinsically, since they wouldn’t have gone through the effort to revive you otherwise. Often people cite dystopian futures for reasons not wanting to be revived, and even though all historical trends argue against these dystopian futures (the world is getting better and better, cleaner, and people are living better and longer lives than ever before, and there are fewer wars and fewer percentages of the population starving now than ever in the history of humanity) if those futures were so dystopian, they would not revive you anyway.

Dr. Hall then went on to the ideas I don’t like, talking about uploading and copying and “transferring your consciousness” to another body, robotic or otherwise. Such a transfer, if non-invasive, would merely be a copy of you (since you obviously continue to exist, that transfer could in no possible way be a continuation of you) and if the copying mechanism was destructive, destroying the original does not make the question moot as you are still dead. I find this mentality frequently among transhumanists and extropians who are more than happy to equate copying and uploading with “you” and I am absolutely surprised at it’s presence because it is such a naïve position, especially in minds like Dr Hall’s. Later Ralph Merkle shared the same surprising sentiment, equating copies with continuations of the original and equating it to sleeping and waking up. Well, when one goes to sleep there is no logical reason to assume they were destroyed, disassembled and re-assembled. Just because something could have happened does not make it rational to act as though it did. Basic scientificl and logical principles of parsimony and Occam’s razor require interpreting the real world only on data that is required as part of the explanation. Imaging things where there is no evidence to support is irrational and extremely unscientific. Thankfully, the next lecturer challenged both on this point. Being an econonomist, and the son of one of the most famous economists (yes there are famous economists, no Paul Krugman doesn’t count) and a physicist I feel no doubt helped solidify his rational mindset.

I will end part one on that note, look for the second part of this in the near future.

Additional Information
Alcor’s home page – http://www.alcor.org
Eric Drexlers Foresight Institute – http://www.Foresight.org
Ralph Merkle’s home page - http://www.merkle.com/

The War in Iraq Is Going Either Very Well or Very Poorly... Or So-So... I Think
http://www.imao.us/archives/006418.html

“After listening to the numerous opinions on the Iraq War, it has become quite obvious that something is happening in that country. The current state of affairs will most certainly be detrimental to the Middle East's future unless it is beneficial or of no effect whatsoever. This goes doubly for Iraqis themselves. And I can say that with great certainty as it the opinion of the numerous pundits who have been to Iraq or read a book on Iraq or saw numerous news stories on Iraq as well as the numerous pundits who have listened to those pundits. While some (or many) may argue that some (or many) of those opinions are based more on biases than facts, it is important to remember that that doesn't mean those opinions are wrong. Unless they are wrong... but they may not be. So keep that in mind….”

An excellent editorial emphasizing the fallacy of those ‘Who has it all figured out’ and their direct extrapolation of their infinite knowledge to a crystal ball like assessment of the current state of world affairs. It is amazing how every cab driver, school teacher, coffee shop hippie bum, IT desk jockey (I am not exempt) “knows” exactly what will happen in Iraq, why it happened, what should have been done, what shouldn’t have been done, and what the world will be like because of it in 50 or 100 years. As this amusing and entertaining editorial emphasizes, no matter what you feel you will get plenty of information, books, news articles, media, and pundits to back you up. The war in Iraq may cause civilization to come to an end, inspiring a global jihad, or it may prevent it’s collapse through precipitating a Berlin wall like collapse of fundamentalist terror breeding states in the middle east. How do you _know_ what the outcome will be?

Lets take a step back and try to make a healthy assessment of the current state of the world and what is going on it. No one has it all figured out, the Iraq war would not have turned out perfect no matter how much planning went into it (but it could have been better?) nor do you or I know that invading Iran instead would have been better, or that invading no where would have not merely adjusted the current ‘cause celebre’ to simply something else, there always has been one, after all. US intervention during the cold war certainly seeded a lot of the animosity present in the Middle East today, but western culture in general breeds plenty of animosity on it’s own, without military presence in the holy land or historical meddling. The world, the current geo political climate, is very complex, and very large, and no single human mind can completely understand it. To come to an ‘opinion’ of the war in Iraq after reading a couple news paper articles and then proclaiming divine wisdom, is really the height of arrogance.

The are many compelling and intelligent arguments to be made for and against the war in Iraq and there are many stupid arguments on both sides. It can be quite common that people with identical values (the desire to see a safe, free world for ourselves and our children for example) can come to entirely different conclusions yet both remain completely logical. The key difference will likely be in their information sets. Some people keep their information sets confined and censored, others open and constantly adjusting. One must learn as much as possible and form as rational an opinion as possible, but one also must pick a go-no go date and finally act on their judgment. You cant perpetually deliberate on a complex decision, especially if it is one that is a matter of life and death. Yet the matter of life and death decisions are the ones that ought to be deliberated most carefully.

What line do you tread? How sure are you of your opinion? Would you stake your life on it? Your wealth? You car? You could be completely and utterly wrong, even if you perpetually aspire to always be accurate, rational, and un biased. You can stand by your own judgements if they are rational and well informed, but be carefull in condemning others for judgements different than yours, they probably know many things you do not, and vice versa, but you both probably have many common values.

Many people consider Uranium and subsequently nuclear power to be worse, over all, than coal or other fossil fuels. They claim, for various reasons, including mining, refining, storage, and disposal; that nuclear power is worse than coal, but the reality is that in all areas Uranium and Fission power far outshine coal power.

Lets take a quick look at the Energy Density of these sources of energy to start with.

Coal - ~6,150 kilowatt-hours (kWh)/ton
Uranium – 2,000,000,000 kWh/ton
Uranium, Fast Breeder reactors (up to 100x more) - 200,000,000,000 kWh/ton

Energy density is measured in power divided by mass of a material, so when we say that Coal has 6,150 Kilowatt-hours per ton, it means that one ton of coal will produce 6,150 kW for one hour, or 615 kW for 10 hours, etc. To compare this with a typical piece of home equipment, say a television, a television might consume 500W of power when in operation, if run for one hour that would be 500 watt – hours. Two televisions would then be 1 kilowatt – hour. So one ton of coal would power 12,300 televisions for 1 hour. Current energy costs (which you can read in your electric bill) hover around 10 – 15 cents per kilowatt hour.

As noted above, Uranium, per ton, produces more than 300,000 times the amount of energy that coal does. What, exactly, makes a material with 300,000 times as much energy as coal 'uneconomical' then? Is uranium 300,000 times more difficult to mine and obtain? 300,000 times more expensive to dispose of? Will it kill 300,000 times more people? The answer, of course, even combining all the complexities of nuclear power, is a resounding NO. Lets compare Uranium Fission, which generates about 15% of US power, with Coal generated power, which generated 80% of the US’s power.

Claim: Coal poses almost no hazard for human health, except when swallowed or hit on the head and therefore doesn't have to be kept safe and secured at all times.-
Certainly NOT true, the atmospheric irritants emitted by the combustion of coal and their effects include:
- Sulphur dioxide (SO2) - respiratory disorders, impaired breathing
- Nitrous oxide (NOx) - respiratory disorders, infections, pulmonary diseases
- Carbon monoxide (CO) - fatal angina, various other effects
- Ozone (O3) - respiratory disorders, impaired breathing, asthma, edema
- Particulate matter (PM10) - various toxic particle (organic matter, carbon, mineral dusts, metal oxides and sulphates and nitrate salts) effects, main
mortality factor due to fossil fuels
- Toxic substances, heavy metals - specific substance effects

All of these combustion products of fossil fuels are estimated by the WHO in its 1997 report on sustainable development, to account for 6% of the total 50 million annual global deaths. That's approximately 3 million deaths *every year* from atmospheric pollutants released from the combustion of fossil fuels. These are real people dying painful deaths every year. 3 million. Outdoor air pollution in the U.S. due to particulate pollution alone was estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1997 to cause at least 20,000 premature deaths each year. 3rd world countries, many of which cook on wood or dung fired stoves, fare much worse, and are some of the places that would benefit most from cheap electricity generated by a full fledged global nuclear infrastructure.

Claim: Coal is not suitable for deadly weapons and therefore of no value for villains of any kind, including despotic dictators -
True of course, coal has little intrinsic value to oppressive regimes, unlike Nuclear power which is a stepping stone to nuclear weapons. If 'suitability for deadly weapons' was the only consideration of what type of power source should be utilized, you could make a strong case against nuclear and for coal. However, other factors include a) cost b) number of people it kills every year d) monopolistic domination potentials etc. etc. Because Uranium fission holds 300,000 times as much energy, it is far more cost effective, makes electricity available to more people at less of a cost, and consequently directly raises their standards of living. Coal kills many people per year, not only in frequent large accidents (which happen most often in mines) but slowly and spread out over the globe. Coal and oil, because they are present in small areas in dense qualities and require little technology to utilize, easily facilitate the rise to power of oppressive regimes. Most of the worlds Oil is in the middle east, where the exports have financially supported the oppressive rulers of that region, every single one of which is a brutal oppressive dictatorship or theocracy. Luckily for many people the worlds largest coal deposits happened to be in the lands that were free-er earlier on, in the UK and in the US. The US alone has a coal field that is the size of the UK. However the vast coal fields in Europe fueled the Nazi war machine. So while it is more difficult for an individual to utilize any aspect of coal as a weapon, it’s extraordinarily easy for governments to do so, and history shows us that governments have killed far more people than individual terrorists and even wars have

Claim: The by-products of coal can be put back without any hazard for the biosphere. Coal ashes are not dangerous and does not need to be kept off our biosphere for thousands of years.-
Again, certainly NOT true. Billions of tons of harmful chemicals and radioactive uranium are dumped into the air during the process of burning coal, even in highly advanced modern coal burning plants. Additionally other heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, lead, mercury, nickel and vanadium are present in coal ash. In fact living near a coal burning power plant, even a modern hi tech one, is far more hazardous to your health than living near a nuclear power plant. The background radiation levels are always higher around coal plants than nuclear plants specifically because coal plants are allowed to dump their waste into the air, which, again, includes radioactive uranium ash. In fact a typical coal plant actually chemically burns and releases into the air more Uranium than is used in a comparable nuclear reactor, as fuel. Indeed, you could put a nuclear reactor on the smokestack of a coal plant and generate more power than the was generated from the coal. Remember, one pound of Uranium generates as much energy as more than 300,000 pounds of coal.

Claim: Even a very large malfunction in a coal fired power plant could not devastate a large area, cost millions of lives and billions of Euros (please read about the effects of Tschernobyl '86 in FSU and Europe).
Anti Nuclear advocates love to point to Chernobyl as an example of the dangers posed by nuclear reactors. However Chernobyl killed 31 people when a pressurized steam channel blew (which was not even a chemical explosion, let alone a nuclear one) and released approx 6% of the radioactive contents of the reactor. The accident resulted in 31 short term deaths, with 28 due to extremely high radiation exposures. Additionally, some 200,000 clean up workers received average exposures of twice the yearly permitted, and a few thousand more received ten times the permitted yearly doses. Of the 116,000 nearby residents evacuated, 95% received less than the average of the fist group of cleanup workers. A remaining 400,000 received significantly less than that. For the 1,116,000 total affected out of the workers, evacuees, and nearby residents, the predicted long term radiation induced cancer deaths and normally non-fatal thyroid cancers are projected to be some 3,500. Mostly later in life. A terrible toll of course, but this is about how many people are killed from the combustion products of fossil fuels every 12 hours. Most of these deaths from the Chernobyl incident could have been avoided had the Soviet government acknowledged the nuclear nature of the accident and administered the iodide pills it had all ready stockpiled for just such an incident. Additionally, this reactor would have never been built, licensed, or operated in any country that actually cared about its people, unlike the Soviet Union, which had a long track record of sacrificing millions for 'the good of the state'.

In addition to the estimated 3 million annual deaths from atmospheric pollutants many people are killed from coal mining explosions, natural gas explosions, and obviously the many wars fought over and related to Oil, which in fact runs most of the world. Here are some of the worst coal mining disasters.

- Liaoning mine disaster, Fuxin, People's Republic of China (February 14, 2005), 210 reported killed.

- Sunshine Mine disaster, Kellogg, Idaho, United States, 91 killed (May, 1972)

- Buffalo Creek flood, Logan County, West Virginia, United States, 125 killed (February 26, 1972)

- Mina de Barroterán Coal Mine disaster, Coahuila, Mexico, (March 31, 1969), 176 died. Mexico's second worst coal mine disaster.

- Luisenthal Mine disaster (near Völklingen), Germany (February 7, 1962), 299 killed

- Marcinelle, Belgium, 262 killed (August 8, 1956)

- Gresford, Wrexham, 266 killed (September 1934)

- Hillcrest mine disaster, Hillcrest, Alberta, Canada, 189 killed (June 19, 1914). Canada's worst mine disaster

- Courrières mine disaster, Courrière, France, 1099 killed (March, 1906)

- Hanna, Wyoming, United States, Union Pacific Coal Company, Mine No. 1, 234 killed (June 30, 1903)

See a full list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters#Mining_disasters

Consider also

- Dam failures and overtopping have caused thousands of deaths and massive disruption in social and economic activities with the displacement of entire towns - the Varont dam overtopping in Italy and dam failures in Gujarat and Orissa in India are three such examples, each with several thousand fatalities.

- Explosions and major fires in the oil and gas industry have involved both occupational and public fatalities and injuries. A pipeline gas leak
explosion in the Urals involved 500 fatalities.

- There are estimated to be a few hundred CO related deaths every year in the US due to faulty or inefficient fossil fuel burning home heating systems.

At this point, one might suggest that while nuclear energy production is relatively the safest form of energy, the weapons made from nuclear power have killed 100,000’s of thousands. True enough, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts killed an estimated 400,000 people. But in considering these deaths as a consequence of nuclear power, we must all consider the deaths that came from the utilization of fossil fuels. How many people have been killed by conventional explosives in all wars in all of history? How many have been killed by the military industrial segments of brutal nations that run on these fossil fuels? The Japanese invasion of Manchuria, very obviously powered by Oil, Coal, and gunpowder, saw 400,000 people killed in the infamous “Rape of Nanking” alone. In fact, all throughout history we have seen a continual rise in the number of people killed in war, both as an absolute and as a percentage of the population, until 1945, when the number plummeted. Even after the use of nuclear weapons in war, and many subsequent brutal wars, the number of war dead still continues to fall. Fortunately, Nuclear weapons have had the effect of taming wars so far.

Claim: The byproducts of Nuclear power can be used for Terrorism
Indeed, and many many things can be used for Terrorism. Oil Wells, for instance, can be set ablaze, burning self sufficiently for months or years with devastating environmental effects. A typical Liquefied Natural Gas tanker has the explosive capacity of a small nuclear bomb. How difficult does one really think it would be to detonate a single hulled tanker full of LNG which contains hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel? How many of these tankers sit unguarded in ports all over the world? Which is more rational to protect against terrorism, a few well designed and guarded nuclear power plants, which can even be moved underground, or tens of thousands of gigantic bombs in the form of gas lines, gas tanks, tankers, and fuel storage facilities? Nuclear plants generate so much power that an entire nations energy supply can come from a few dozen of them set in areas far from dense population centers and well guarded.

Consider that unused, uranium still sits in the earth undergoing fission anyway, producing radioactive elements and heat, which is part of what warms the internal parts of the earth. In fact, a host of still unexplained observations about the Earth has led some physicists to suggest the core of the earth is actually a giant nuclear fission reactor. The theory was a cover feature in Discover magazine in August 2002. http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-02/cover/

Additionally, many technological developments have occurred in nuclear reactor design, including ceramic coated uranium pellets, which keep the uranium spaced out far enough to generate a controlled amount of eat and which can not be melted by the temperatures produced, completely negating the need for any active cooling system and making ‘meltdowns’ a physical impossibility. Further, other types of reactors, called “Fast Breeder” reactors can create more fuel from the waste products of the nuclear fission reaction, so much so that some physicists estimate that up to 100 times as much energy can be generated, meaning entire nations could be run on a handful of nuclear power plants.

Coal generated power kills thousands of people every year directly, and millions of people indirectly. It is far more dangerous, hazardous, and environmentally devastating than Nuclear power; generating essentially more than 300,000 times as much pollution as a comparable amount of energy generated from Nuclear sources does. If you are concerned about global warming from man made carbon dioxide, then Nuclear power is the only way to generate power without generating green houses gases. This is why world renowned environmentalist James Lovelock cites Nuclear power as one of the key solutions to global warming and why Greenpeace founding member Patrick Moore now says he was wrong about opposing nuclear power for the past 30 years and is now a nuclear power advocate.

Compared with every other form of wide scale energy production (hydro-electric, oil, coal) Nuclear is by far the safest form of energy creation yet used by man. So where is our Nuclear infrastructure? If Nuclear power makes so much more sense, why does it not supply the majority of our energy? Instead we are dependant on Coal and imported Oil supplies from brutally oppressive and murderous terrorist sponsoring regimes all over the world, who sustain their oppression only from their global oil proceeds. The reason is that an irrational and unscientific fear of Nuclear power was promulgated by a handful of influential public figures. While a healthy scientific assessment of things is always valid, this has gone overboard and has, literally, scared millions of people to death about nuclear power. We have been scared so much with the unscientific claims of potential deaths caused by nuclear power that it has been illegal to build any new nuclear power plants in this nation since the Carter administration, all the while millions of people worldwide choke on the soot, heavy metals, and radioactive ash pumped into the air because of the scare mongering of unscientific environmentalists, who while hyping up invalid fears of the environmental impact of nuclear plants are ignoring the millions of deaths caused by the inhalation from the combustion products of fossil fuels.

We need to wake up and smell the collective radioactive ash. Nuclear power is safe, reliable, and will free the western world from the tyrannical noose of the murderously brutal middle east. A few well guarded breeder reactor plants could provide a majority of the worlds power. These same plants could electrolyze water to provide clean drinking water and hydrogen as fuel for a 'hydrogen economy' or, at least, create synthetic fuels through sabatier cells and use existing hydrocarbon infrastructures but not contribute to greenhouse gas increases, as the sabatier cell needs CO2 from the atmosphere. Implementing such at system until fusion becomes viable is the only real, viable, practical method of maintaining exceptional standards of living and a healthy environment. Reducing the global standard of living is not an option, as many millions in third world countries need energy, and lots of it, to get out of poverty. Even small increases in the costs of energy will have devastating impacts on the poverty stricken 3rd world which depends on cheap food generated from the energy intensive agricultural industry to survive The ideological intellectually dishonest endorsement of fossil fuels over nuclear power leads to millions of deaths every year, continues to perpetuate global instability through propping up murderous regimes, and destroys the environment through a flagrant un scientific hysteria. Nuclear power is clean, safe, and cheap.

Communism and moral ambiguity

Most people react with vile disdain when they see a Nazi flag, and rightly so. Nazism has killed 20 million people, an estimated 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and physically deformed people intentionally in prison camps. However, how many people share the same disdain for Communism? Even though it has killed almost ten times as many people as Nazism did, it still it is looked on by most people in a favorable light, taught by history professors with an unbiased account, considered good in theory (is Nazism good in theory?) and as of yet just incorrectly implemented.

Communism has killed 170 million people this century, according to Political Scientist, Nobel Peace Prize runner up and author of the most cited historical book, R.J Rummel. By 1950 alone that number was in the dozens of millions, many millions in China and may millions in the Soviet Union; so it was right to be very weary of it and any communist political officer of influence.

From R.J Rummels site -
For perspective on Mao's most bloody rule, all wars 1900-1987 cost in combat dead 34,021,000 -- including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered over twice as many as were killed in combat in all these wars. Think about that. One man. Only one man did that much killing. If anything should cause us to avoid anyone having such power at any cost, here it is.

Rational people in this nation were more than justified in attempting to route out communists from government positions. Cables and messages released after the fall of the Soviet Union, revealed that most of the people McCarthy accused of being communist spies actually were, including Alger Hiss. Communism is no laughing matter, as it's death toll attests. The tendency today is to A) completely downplay it's historical atrocities B) ridicule the individuals concern with it at the height of the Cold War (i.e. derogatory comments about "The Red Scare" "McArthyism" and the "Domino Theory" ) C) and laugh at how the Soviet Union fell without a single shot being fired. (never mind the millions of battle dead in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, South America, etc)

In that regard I highly recommend checking out R.J. Rummels site, Power Kills, http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html which documents murders committed by governments, left and right. Governments have killed more than 4 times the number of people that have been killed in wars this century, and the overwhelming majority of those murders were committed by communist governments.



I am a great admirer of Ayn Rand, and when she was asked what her political position was, she stated "Anti-Communist" but then recanted, refusing to define herself with a negative. She did however testify as a friendly witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee, which though not affiliated with McCarthy directly, was an effort in the same theme.

But I cant re-iterate this part of the story as well as Kelley Ross from http://www.friesian.com/rand.htm

"Another of Rand's sins against the Left and still of current interest was her willingness to testify as a "friendly witness" in the 1947 hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) on Communist infiltration of Hollywood. Rand's only complaint was that they didn't let her testify enough. She was the only person at the hearings who had actually lived under Communism, indeed been a witness to the entire Russian Revolution and Civil War, and she wanted to explain how anti-capitalist messages were included in many mainstream Hollywood movies. It may not be remembered much now that Rand got her real start in America working in Hollywood, living for many years in the San Fernando Valley. This is still of current interest because, after many years of hard feelings, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1999 finally gave an Oscar to Elia Kazan, director of such classics as On the Waterfront (1954) -- which itself was about a man fighting with his conscience over whether to expose his gangster (i.e. Communist) friends. Kazan, after leaving the Communist Party, was willing to "name names" to HUAC in 1952.

While Communism failed and fell in the real world, in the make-believe world of Hollywood Communist propaganda succeeded quite nicely, and many people still believe that the HUAC investigations were "witch hunts" for non-existent enemies or well-meaning idealists. Well meaning idealists there were, but they were not the targets of the Committee. Instead, they became the "useful idiot" liberals, in Lenin's words, who whitewashed all the real Communists and their activities. The useful idiots are still at it, though since the 60's many of them, as anti-anti-Communists, have been all but indistinguishable from their Communist friends in Vietnam, Cuba, and Nicaragua. As it turned out, the easiest way to find the Communists in Hollywood was just to subpoena all the suspects. Almost everyone who then refused to testify or took the Fifth Amendment, it happened, actually were Party members (acting on Party orders) or fellow travelers, as we know now from many sources, including the Soviet archives that also reveal the Soviet funding and direction of the Communist Party USA and its activities in Hollywood. These were not idealists but willing agents of tyranny, murder, and crimes against humanity. Rand would have no more patience now with leftists whining about "McCarthyism" than she did in 1947 with the lying and dissimulating agents of the living mass murderer Josef Stalin."

You can read Rand's HUAC testimony here -
http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/huac.htm

Given the massive amount of murders committed by Communist nations, their typical political tendency to undermine intellectually non-communist nations (the first phase of their typical plan, the last of which is typically targeted executions of intellectuals in opposition to them) and the fact that most of these people actually were communist spies, it is incredibly disingenuous to deride McCarthy and HUAC in the manner that is so common today.

Perhaps in my assessment of communism is an instance where my thinking is much more black and white than is typically espoused today, with communism viewed with much more forgiveness and diminished moral condemnation. I can certainly understand what might drive individuals to communism, especially in the ratty shit-holes and murderously oppressive right wing nationalist nations that spawned communism in many cases, even if it was with a lot of Soviet help; however in every case those far left governments killed many more then even the worst of the far right governments. While I certainly understand and empathizes with the struggles an individual must face in a situation like that, I have absolutely no tolerance for those who simply want to make slaves out of every free man on earth.

In one sad case often cited as part of the Red Scare Physicists and head of the Manhattan Project Robert J Oppenheimer was accused of being a communist spy and some former members of his team testified against him, such as Edward Teller. Oppenheimer was a very sad victim in this and I am a great admirer of him and in fact Teller as well, but his accusation and subsequent loss of security clearance shocked the scientific community. Yet there was indeed a spy at the Manhattan Project in the form of Klaus Fuchs, who handed over the plans for an atomic bomb to Henry Gold, who then handed them to the Rosenberg's. Many people claim that the information provided by Fuchs was vital in the Soviet's achievement of a nuclear bomb (although some claim it was of little use)

I suspect from discussions of communism I have had that to many people black and what thinking equates with absolutist assessments of things, like my consideration of communism as evil or wrong, while others might search through all of it for some good. But it is fallacious to assert that in all things or people there is some good, because it simultaneously asserts that in all people there must be some bad, and consequently that no matter how hard one tries to be good they could never attain that, and no matter how evil someone or something is, like Stalin, Mao, Hitler, or communism, it has some good in it. I have no doubt that Stalin was probably nice to his dog, and that a few peasants were helped out by communism, but the overwhelming majority of horrific pain and suffering that communism caused could never even remotely be blemished by whatever miniscule good that came from it.

Many people strive to find value in divergent ideas and try to examine them from every possible angle, perspective, and scale, but to any value system based on the life of an individual, communism can have *no value* whatsoever. Communism is the absolute logical extension of anti-life, anti-human, anti-mind, anti-individual, and anti-progress. My love of books and ideas would have gotten me immediately purged, hung, smashed, or sent off to a gulag in very nearly every single communist nation.

[Tan Samay's] pupils hanged him. A noose was passed around his neck; then the rope was passed over the branch of a tree. Half a dozen children between eight and ten years old held the loose end of the rope, pulling it sharply three or four times, dropping it in between. All the while they were shouting, "Unfit teacher! Unfit teacher!" until Tan Samay was dead. The worst was that the children took obvious pleasure in killing.
----A Khmer Rouge execution From R.J. Rummels Power Kills site

Simply having books *at all* was a death sentence to most people in Cambodia and in China. My love of ideas, and of self expression, would have gotten me, and probably my family, rapidly killed in these countries, if this is not a living objective embodiment of evil where *thinking* is a crime punishable by death *then what is?*

In the case of communism, gray or non-linear thinking seems to be a desire to avoid making moral judgments. When we consider again Nazism, there is no question about its moral stature. Can the same people that say they can find some good in communism legitimately say that can find no good in Nazism? Having read a great book on Hitlers rise to power I can understand how individuals in pre-Nazi Germany could have felt oppressed and overburdened by the allies of WWI, and how these people who just wanted to have a decent life for themselves could end up promulgating on of the most murderous regimes in history. I also understand how with only minor changes our modern professors non partisan lectures on the cold war they would read just like modern neo-nazi propaganda blaming the push of Germany into war on a hyper vigilant anti-German Europe and the Jews. Its all context, and from the perspective of the German people leading up to 1935 it was not their fault! But they could not have done that without deliberately avoiding passing moral judgments on their own system, without deliberately dehumanizing their victims or opponents, or avoiding at all possible costs making moral assessments. There is no possible way a German citizen could have honestly morally defended Nazi policies so the only way for this rise to power to occur was to abdicate moral absolutism to vagueness, moral relativism, and evasion. The same is absolutely true of communism, which abdicates life, mind, and self to the collective and the state.

In cases where it is a life and death issue, one *must* pass moral judgment, moral indifference or agnosticism rewards immorality, just as absolute pacifism actually rewards violent and oppressive regimes by easily succumbing to their initiations of force. It is depraved indifference.

Its always good to be vigilantly skeptical of any kind of dichotomous us vs. them thinking. The vast majority of it is baseless and arbitrary. But just because right and wrong / good and evil / and us vs. them has been hijacked by every ethnicity, nationality, special interest group, and collectivist ideal, does not mean that the concepts of right and wrong and us vs. them are invalid. There are certain fundamentals of human standards by which every culture and individual action must be judged against, and that is the respect of life and individuality. Non judgment is the height of moral relativism and means anything goes, whether it is simply a disingenuous white lie or an attempted genocide.

Yes, most forms of partisanship are worthless and arbitrary, but that does not mean that holding oneself and others to certain moral ideals and ethical basics is wrong Many African cultures mutilate young womens genitalia is this right or wrong? Many Islamic cultures stone adulterers to death, is this right or wrong? Many traditionalist Chinese cultures used to bind young womens feet was this right or wrong? Many western Christian nations still mutilate male genitalia at birth is this right or wrong?

Witness the indifference today to the brutal oppression of Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea. Witness the callous disregard for genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and today in Darfur. Witness the left, our alleged defenders of human rights, and their complete and utter indifference in most cases, or worst, opposition to, the removal of one of the most brutal dictators of our time who slaughtered gay men and women and their families, executed dissidents, and held the world hostage. Witness that same callous disregard for the deaths and flagrant violation of every human right that permeates the dictatorships and theocracies in the Arab sea of tyranny in the middle east, and that same indifference to the tens of millions of deaths from Malaria the modern environmentalism movement has spawned by banning DDT. These are the fruits of moral relativism.

There are only two ways to completely end partisanship; to abolish all ideals, ethics, and moral codes which generate an us for them attitude (the liberal multi-culturalist moral relativist approach) or to abolish one side of the us vs. them conflict. In all these scenarios, the smallest minority are the defenders of the fundamental rights of sentient beings, the advocates of objective reality, those who base ethics on life. To deny any concept of moral foundation is to side indirectly and implicitly with the most brutal and murderous side of the us vs. them conflict. One may ask when does this partisanship stop, when everyone embraces one ideology? Yes, it stops when they all embrace fundamental rights, when all the other ideologies stop murdering and enslaving people who disagree with them. When they all accept, as a component and a foundation of their ideology, a respect for individualism, for life, and for freedom. Either that or it stops when one accepts any murder, oppression, slavery or assault as just someone elses culture and equally valid. Where do you stand?

We are never hesitant in defending our right to self, individuality, and life, but are seemingly always dismissive of everyone elses to such an extent that we are hesitant to morally condemn the most anti-self, anti-individuality, and anti-life ideology ever existed on this planet. I have no doubt that nearly every single one of those 170 million people loved their lives as much as I do mine, and you do yours, where is our compassion for them? Our vigilant defense of our own self and individuality is nothing less than an extremely dogmatic ideological stand, and in this we are the essence of black and white. We must presume axiomatically that everyone deserves that same amount of respect and thus rightly and justly morally condemn those ideologies which murder, enslave, and imprison people for nothing more than living, breathing, and thinking.

I can understand peoples hesitance to make any absolute moral declarations, but just because vile anti-individualist brain washing cults hi jack absolutism morality with their own morally arbitrary pronouncements doesnt mean that a moral foundation in objective reality, life, and individuality is wrong, or that morally condemning those ideologies opposed to those things is wrong.

I am Pro-free private life, pro-individualism, pro-science, pro-reason, pro-free speech, pro-liberal democracy, pro-free economic life, pro-capitalist, pro-west, etc and I apply these values directly too all people and accept the logical consequences of my deepest values, wholly and willingly.

In a conversation with an Anarchist I was told the following:

“Just because someone is taking the free will of others, doesn't mean, in my opinion, that I have the right to take their free will (life).”
And
“The use of force to stop oppression is the same thing as the use of force to oppress. It is the will taking of another person's will through sheer force.”

Freedom is not the ‘right to do anything one wants’ which is what his statement suggests. If you find anyone who holds this as their conception of freedom I would suggest you stay the hell away, as they are indicating that they have absolutely no moral or ethical code what so ever. This conception of freedom suggests that any infringements of any actions of anyone for any reason is a violation of freedom. But it is a ‘violation’ of freedom if you prevent someone from killing your? You are, after all, stifling his free will. This mentalities suggest self defense is in fact an oppression of your attacker. Similarly, is it a violation of ‘freedom’ to stop someone from killing another person? When rational men, the founding fathers, and your ever