Guilt-free Ideas

I've started a new blog, Guilt-free Ideas, for recording some of my studies of Objectivism.

Waiting for Diogenes

Since this is the part in Atlas Shrugged right before little civil wars break out all over the country, I thought it might be helpful to pre-emptively research some super-inexpensive meals: beat this. And remember, you can always use the clapboard siding off of your newly remodeled McMansion to build a nice big bonfire for the cooking of said entrees. (Hint: start the fire with your IRA quarterly statements.)

Link shuffle

I'm updating my humble links section:

Adding: The0phrastus, a software engineer-by-day and SF writer-by-love, apparently, who reads the snot out of Aristotle and paints nice pictures, such as a stylized nude of war-winning Athena, for fun.

Adding: Artchive, an archive of high-quality scans of fine art, such as breathtaking details of Mona Lisa.

Adding: Acid Free Paper, the thoughtful posts of an Objectivist fiction writer.

Dropping: Rough Type, because although Carr is justly and intelligently critical of the fall of civilization as manifest by far too many collectivist, anti-intellectual web-biz heads, there is good reason so many consider his blog to be a firehose of hatred. (Which reminds me of a funny comic-strip frame I saw years ago, about Jean-Paul Sartre at Christmastime: "Just look at this toy elf -- it's so hateful.")

Dropping: Charles Krauthammer, because not only have I realized he's not the somewhat-principled (ouch) defender of civilization I once thought (he's just one more rationalizer of neoconservative nonsense), but today he's even suggesting that a massive energy tax would somehow be an instance of "the essence of capitalism." Smoking something, he is. PrairiePundit supplies links to all the daily analyses of war I could want anyway.

Moving: The Intellectual Activist, from my Philosophy link-section to the Politics link-section. Although this has nothing directly to do with Tracinski's recent (though some say hardly surprising) bomb that philosophy doesn't really do anything, I am working on what I want to say about that.

Why people write?

Quote of the day (meaning, the day that I found it):

Virtually every useful tutorial in the world was written by a moron-turned-expert.

McCoffee blues

New Year's Resolution-time being prime time to review dietary choices, we made the mistake this weekend of imbibing the "nutritional" information for our favorite Starbucks drinks. It is hardly surprising that most of the drinks are sugar- and fat-bombs, but the bright side is that this demotivation dovetails nicely with another resolution: to spend less money.

The only good news for fans is that, as of Wednesday, Starbucks in Portland will have no trans fats in their foods -- though I don't know if that includes the all-evil "whip" which crowns the best* Starbucks drinks.

* "Best" is used in a purely relativistic sense here, since Starbucks is incapable of making an actual latte or cappucino -- or even, some would say, a good cup of coffee. But luckily, for any of those treats, Portland is Mecca. You have not lived until you've had a Stumptown cappucino in the downtown shop that is so cool, you have to be unemployed and in a band to get in.

Real estate

3rd quarter 2006 US house price data is published here. The rise in prices continues in 45 states yet is decelerating, but the good news for us is that Oregon shows some of the best appreciations, with a 17% 12-month increase in the Portland area and a best-in-the-country 30% increase in the Bend area. Of course, it's only profit if you sell.

A site riddled with errors

Realizing today that I misspelled "principal" yesterday, I came upon a nice site that helps quickly disambiguate between words that sound similar. Just scroll to the word in question and click.