Ayn Rand didn't like physics?

I've been very busy with work and other functional duties, but this is worth a link.

Jonathan Chait has an excellent essay on Ayn Rand and the irrational beliefs of her followers on the political right. There is much worthy of discussion, from her bizarre upbringing and even more outlandish cult-like cliques through to her and modern conservatism's absurdly anti-factual beliefs regarding worth, work and taxation, but I'd love to follow up on this snippet of information:

(she considered the entire field of physics "corrupt")

Maybe the library will get the biographies referred to in the essay, but I doubt I'll have the time to follow up on Rand's physics hatred. After all, some of us have real work to do.

Leon Kass

If the name Leon Kass means anything to you, and you can master your repugnance, then read these articles:

Tough Love for the Humanities, by Serena Golden, 2009, Inside Higher Ed (News).

Kass Backwards, by Scott McLemee, 2009, Inside Higher Ed (Views).

Which amusing prompts various right-leaning crotchety academics to come out complaining how nasty, left-wing, and authoritarian academia is, and also to demonstrate how little they understand when they claim people have not understood Kass's "Wisdom Of Repugnance".

Reason as Our Guide, Elizabeth Blackburn & Janet Rowley, 2004, PLoS Biology 2(4): e116. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020116.

Clarifying The President's Council's Clarification of the Obama Stem Cell Policy, Insoo Hyun, Bioethics Forum (thehastingscenter.org), 2009.

Tortured analogy

Embattled Conservatives Look To Star Wars For Guidance [io9.com].

Items of note

I've been busy starting up a new research project that I intend to present results from at the end of May, so I haven't had time to blog much, but here are a variety of small things that attracted my attention.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the awesome doxygen source code documentation tool is now even more awesome: starting from version 1.5.5 it can now be used with Fortran! WRITE(6,'(A)') 'Praise the Parser!'

Speaking of programming: Intelligent Design Sort - it never gets old - praise the Sorter!

Pascal Boyer admits he has a problem: he is really interested in crackpots. Admittedly crackpots are a fascinating, if understudied, from a sociological point, but Boyer attempts to remedy this with his analysis of the group. He reproduces the well-known finding that a large fraction of crackpots have engineering backgrounds, but he does make some valid points (that appear obvious in hindsight, as all good analyses should), in particular: "the crackpot alternative is, almost universally, less mathematically challenging than the standard account" and "The crackpot theory is based on textbooks" with no exposure or understanding of actual research literature.

While we're on the subject of cranks, I must admit that I view most flavors of libertarianism with scorn, so I have a soft spot for those uncivil bloggers who ridicule it: Gavin M. over at Sadly, No! dissects Glenn Reynolds's libertarian conservatism and finds feudalism.

Still on the subject of cranks, PFAW dissect Orson Scott Card's absurdist bigotry using the scalpel of sarcasm.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/does-national-organization-marriage-want-overthrow-government
I still do not understand why people think "Ender's Game" was great.

Finally dispensing with the crank theme, and moving onto more serious stuff (although with a Speculative Fiction flavor), I could not agree more with the following argument (hat tip io9):

"But the one—the most absolutely key, the rock star green technology—that I champion over all others is birth control: vasectomies, IUDs, the pill, condoms. I don't care which kind you or your family prefers or finds most appropriate, I love them all. Any technology that reduces the absolute number of consumers (and particularly Americans and Europeans who consume the most) now that's a TECHNOLOGY!" — Pump Six And Other Stories author Paolo Bacigalupi, interviewed at EcoGeek.org.

If you, like me, had not previously heard of this Stanley Fish guy the NYT has added to their Opinion section, this (rather old) Slate article "The Indefensible Stanley Fish" by Judith Shulevitz will provide you with some useful background information. (Note clever segue from Speculative Fiction to tedious postmodernist analysis of Fiction.)

Finally some science! Evidence of forethought in Chimpanzees: Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science nicely summarizes the story of Santino the Chimp's premeditated ammunition collection for later attacks on Zoo visitors.

NPR

This article at Daily Kos sums up many of the reasons why I haven't bothered listening to NPR since 2004 - their excessive reliance on talking heads from (mainly right wing) Think Tanks, and their credulous acceptance of whatever the pundits say.

Please go Galt.

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings urges conservatives to do what they've started threatening to do: go Galt. I wish they would.

Hilzoy expresses (mock) puzzlement that none of them seem to have acted on the beliefs they're so eager insist are correct, rational and "objective". Its pretty obvious why they only threaten to go Galt, but never do so.

If they all did go Galt society would continue as well if not better than before, so the glorious social experiment would only serve to demolish the sophomoric fantasy they use to justify their greed and lack of compassion.

Family Values

Why those elitist coastal liberals are all about true family values.

Funny

Funny pre-election predictions.

I'm quite pleased with myself: predicted Obama getting 367 EVs, whereas the current total is 365 EVs.