Judge others, and prepare to be judged. We live in society, but how can we deal with others in a way that promotes rational, productive
Are you rational? Or do you yield often to vices such as emotionalism, bias, and dogmatism? On October 21st, 2010, William R Thomas lead an
Are you true to your values and your world-view? Integrity is the virtue of acting consistently for the sake of long-range values....
July/August 2007 -- Okay, I know, that’s a cheap pun. But this July–August 2007 issue marks the start of my third year at the helm of The
May 11, 2011 -- Yesterday, May 10, the backdated options witch-hunt began drawing to its close. A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case of Greg Reyes, the former CEO of Brocade, who was convicted of committing securities fraud by backdating options at his company. Coincidentally, Reyes was the first person to be indicted in connection with backdated options, back in 2006. Now his case bodes to be the last resolved, even as he languishes in prison. Unfortunately, the appellate court was not able to consider the most general policy questions in the Reyes case: How did the SEC come to institute an absurd rule of accounting for backdated options? Who made the decision to criminalize violations of that absurdity? And why were only a few people targeted for criminal prosecution in the matter? The legal questions that the appeals court was asked to consider included: Was there a substantive misstatement of the law in Reyes’s trial? Was there prosecutorial misconduct? Was the conviction beyond the pale, given the evidence?
April 2003 -- On April 15th the news is always full of stories about taxpayers standing in long lines at post offices to file their returns on time. Occasionally there are sidebar stories about some proposed tax cut or reform that might help the economy: stories that usually disappear by the next day’s news cycle. But perhaps tax stories would remain in the headlines—and tax policy on the front burner—if they were treated as moral and not merely economic matters. Why should we acquiesce when governments take our money? We’d be pretty upset if thugs stole our wallets at gunpoint or thieves broke into our homes and carried off our possessions. That’s because we understand that the only moral way for individuals to deal with one another is through mutual consent rather than through the initiation of force, with each individual respecting the equal rights of others.
June 2006 -- Starbucks, of all enterprises, is the latest victim of food fascists. It is ironic that the Center for Science in the Public
As the congress debates a new security bill and America faces a terrible and insidious threat, there is no more critical time to recall the
October 2004 -- On Oct. 4, 2004, the 47th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, humanity again made spaceflight history. SpaceShipOne, desig
July 2002 -- A California court's recent subtraction of "one nation, under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance distorts the ethical foundation of church and state separation. Yes, individual rights require safeguards against intrusive government, but the court's striking of a simple utterance begs the question…which rights are being safeguarded? And for whose benefit? The court decision, and the attitude that enabled it, is antithetical to an environment in which individual rights truly flourish. On the surface, the decision appears to be a victory against compulsory recitation of the Pledge (or a phrase therein). Genuine affection for the Pledge's sentiments must be chosen; forced recitation makes it a meaningless rite. In this regard, the court would have been morally justified in affirming that the Pledge should be voluntary. However, striking phrases from the Pledge, as an attempt to dispel certain ideas from the public domain, minimizes the role of individual learning and choice.
In Homer’s Iliad Trojan prince Hector is slain in combat by the Greek champion Achilles. But blinded by anger, Achilles desecrates Hector’s
October 2009 -- Is there an adult in the house? Are we all operating with one collective mind, or are there still those who possess reasonin
When Ayn Rand created a heroic American dynasty for her novel Atlas Shrugged, she based the family's fortune not on oil, or autos, or
February 2004 -- Given the fact that the title of director Denys Arcand's previous film was The Decline of the American Empire, that his new film is from Canada, in French, and that it includes images of the destruction of the World Trade Center, one would expect Oscar-nominated The Barbarian Invasions to be a not-so-thinly veiled attack on his neighbor to the south. While the attack might be there, it is subtle, and the film is morally ambiguous. In it, Arcand, intentionally or not, exposes the flaws both of leftist public policies and the moral decadence that tends to accompany them. The film opens with Remy (Remy Girard), a left-wing college professor, dying in a Canadian hospital. His ex-wife, divorced from Remy for 15 years because of his philandering, calls their estranged son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau), a financial-risk manager working in London, to return to be with his father at the end. Sebastien reluctantly agrees. Remy's daughter is out sailing in the Pacific and opts not to return. You see, Remy has placed a jolly life of seductions, mistresses, and wine ahead of his family and, indeed, his academic career.
March 2002 -- Because I live in Warsaw, I get most of my TV news from the BBC. Recently I have watched, dumbfounded and amused, at the outpouring of concern for the comfort of the Al-Qaida prisoners kept at Guantanamo Bay. They were transported shackled with bags over their heads! They sleep in open cages! Four of them have British passports! Have they all had their Miranda warnings? The fact that they are undoubtedly living in less discomfort than they freely chose to undergo in the field doesn’t seem to register. I often think that the most common error in reasoning is a kind of category error, the placing of an issue in a category it doesn’t belong in. The classic example is the “no right to shout fire in a crowded theater” issue, often cited in a free-speech context when it clearly belongs in an implied-contract context.
March 2002 -- Miss Cleo is in big trouble. In her TV commercials, in her Caribbean accent, she offers to tell her callers’ fortunes, to
On May 11, after the trial of Galleon hedge-fund founder Raj Rajaratnam (pictured below) had ended in a conviction on all counts, the U.S. A
As Atlas Shrugged Part 1 came to theaters on April 15, many wondered: will the movie be true to Ayn Rand’s ideas? Theater-goers were relieve
Ayn Rand supported a laissez-faire capitalist economic system and defended the morality of making a profit through private business.
Many people still think Ayn Rand advocated a take-what-you-want-and-damn-everyone-else kind of selfishness.
Judge others, and prepare to be judged. We live in society, but how can we deal with others in a way that promotes rational, productive
Are you rational? Or do you yield often to vices such as emotionalism, bias, and dogmatism? On October 21st, 2010, William R Thomas lead an
Are you true to your values and your world-view? Integrity is the virtue of acting consistently for the sake of long-range values....
July/August 2007 -- Okay, I know, that’s a cheap pun. But this July–August 2007 issue marks the start of my third year at the helm of The
May 11, 2011 -- Yesterday, May 10, the backdated options witch-hunt began drawing to its close. A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case of Greg Reyes, the former CEO of Brocade, who was convicted of committing securities fraud by backdating options at his company. Coincidentally, Reyes was the first person to be indicted in connection with backdated options, back in 2006. Now his case bodes to be the last resolved, even as he languishes in prison. Unfortunately, the appellate court was not able to consider the most general policy questions in the Reyes case: How did the SEC come to institute an absurd rule of accounting for backdated options? Who made the decision to criminalize violations of that absurdity? And why were only a few people targeted for criminal prosecution in the matter? The legal questions that the appeals court was asked to consider included: Was there a substantive misstatement of the law in Reyes’s trial? Was there prosecutorial misconduct? Was the conviction beyond the pale, given the evidence?
April 2003 -- On April 15th the news is always full of stories about taxpayers standing in long lines at post offices to file their returns on time. Occasionally there are sidebar stories about some proposed tax cut or reform that might help the economy: stories that usually disappear by the next day’s news cycle. But perhaps tax stories would remain in the headlines—and tax policy on the front burner—if they were treated as moral and not merely economic matters. Why should we acquiesce when governments take our money? We’d be pretty upset if thugs stole our wallets at gunpoint or thieves broke into our homes and carried off our possessions. That’s because we understand that the only moral way for individuals to deal with one another is through mutual consent rather than through the initiation of force, with each individual respecting the equal rights of others.
June 2006 -- Starbucks, of all enterprises, is the latest victim of food fascists. It is ironic that the Center for Science in the Public
As the congress debates a new security bill and America faces a terrible and insidious threat, there is no more critical time to recall the
October 2004 -- On Oct. 4, 2004, the 47th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, humanity again made spaceflight history. SpaceShipOne, desig
July 2002 -- A California court's recent subtraction of "one nation, under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance distorts the ethical foundation of church and state separation. Yes, individual rights require safeguards against intrusive government, but the court's striking of a simple utterance begs the question…which rights are being safeguarded? And for whose benefit? The court decision, and the attitude that enabled it, is antithetical to an environment in which individual rights truly flourish. On the surface, the decision appears to be a victory against compulsory recitation of the Pledge (or a phrase therein). Genuine affection for the Pledge's sentiments must be chosen; forced recitation makes it a meaningless rite. In this regard, the court would have been morally justified in affirming that the Pledge should be voluntary. However, striking phrases from the Pledge, as an attempt to dispel certain ideas from the public domain, minimizes the role of individual learning and choice.
In Homer’s Iliad Trojan prince Hector is slain in combat by the Greek champion Achilles. But blinded by anger, Achilles desecrates Hector’s
October 2009 -- Is there an adult in the house? Are we all operating with one collective mind, or are there still those who possess reasonin
When Ayn Rand created a heroic American dynasty for her novel Atlas Shrugged, she based the family's fortune not on oil, or autos, or
February 2004 -- Given the fact that the title of director Denys Arcand's previous film was The Decline of the American Empire, that his new film is from Canada, in French, and that it includes images of the destruction of the World Trade Center, one would expect Oscar-nominated The Barbarian Invasions to be a not-so-thinly veiled attack on his neighbor to the south. While the attack might be there, it is subtle, and the film is morally ambiguous. In it, Arcand, intentionally or not, exposes the flaws both of leftist public policies and the moral decadence that tends to accompany them. The film opens with Remy (Remy Girard), a left-wing college professor, dying in a Canadian hospital. His ex-wife, divorced from Remy for 15 years because of his philandering, calls their estranged son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau), a financial-risk manager working in London, to return to be with his father at the end. Sebastien reluctantly agrees. Remy's daughter is out sailing in the Pacific and opts not to return. You see, Remy has placed a jolly life of seductions, mistresses, and wine ahead of his family and, indeed, his academic career.
March 2002 -- Because I live in Warsaw, I get most of my TV news from the BBC. Recently I have watched, dumbfounded and amused, at the outpouring of concern for the comfort of the Al-Qaida prisoners kept at Guantanamo Bay. They were transported shackled with bags over their heads! They sleep in open cages! Four of them have British passports! Have they all had their Miranda warnings? The fact that they are undoubtedly living in less discomfort than they freely chose to undergo in the field doesn’t seem to register. I often think that the most common error in reasoning is a kind of category error, the placing of an issue in a category it doesn’t belong in. The classic example is the “no right to shout fire in a crowded theater” issue, often cited in a free-speech context when it clearly belongs in an implied-contract context.
March 2002 -- Miss Cleo is in big trouble. In her TV commercials, in her Caribbean accent, she offers to tell her callers’ fortunes, to
On May 11, after the trial of Galleon hedge-fund founder Raj Rajaratnam (pictured below) had ended in a conviction on all counts, the U.S. A
As Atlas Shrugged Part 1 came to theaters on April 15, many wondered: will the movie be true to Ayn Rand’s ideas? Theater-goers were relieve
Ayn Rand supported a laissez-faire capitalist economic system and defended the morality of making a profit through private business.
Many people still think Ayn Rand advocated a take-what-you-want-and-damn-everyone-else kind of selfishness.