Objectiblag

On Wednesday, January 6, 2010, while doing a set of V-squats to failure (ultimately 30 reps at ~225 lbs), I developed a headache worse than any head pain I’ve ever experienced. The onset came at about the 15th rep, but it didn’t seem too terrible, even though even at that point it was reminiscent of a similar headache of the same nature that I’ve had in the past (although this time, it’s intensity and duration was much, much worse). After the 30th rep, I had to sit down and hold my head in pain, and it felt like the back of my head was going to explode (imagine something from an alien movie). After 15-20 minutes of agony, including dizziness and nausea (from the pain), I took 2 Advil (which I’ve never done for pain before). Walking and any other exertion caused the pain to worsen–I had to avoid the bounce in my step, bending over, and even turning my head from side to side. The pain pulsated with my hear beat. I tried to eat within about 30 minutes of my workout, but it wasn’t until about an hour after the onset of the headache that I was finally able to eat and the pain subsided. (Perhaps the Advil kicked in.)

Although I felt better as the evening progressed, when I awoke after about 8 hours of sleep on Thursday morning, my headache returned. I wasn’t dizzy, and I didn’t have any nausea, but the pain was still there–dull and pulsating, becoming more pronounced with any exertion (even standing up out of bed). If I didn’t do anything to exacerbate it, the pain level was at about 40% of Wednesday. I had to take a 4-hour nap after class that afternoon.

I felt substantially better on Friday, and thus decided to try a workout. Unfortunately, after only a handful of reps of the first exercise (floor presses at 185 lbs–floor presses are like bench presses, but on the floor instead of on a bench) (albeit after a few warmup sets on light weight), I felt the more excruciating pain returning, and I immediately stopped my workout. I was in pain that was about 75% of the initial pain I felt on Wednesday for the next hour.

Since then, my headache had subsided tremendously, though I still felt inklings of it when running too fast or jumping too much, but because it felt much more on its way out than Friday, I decided to try going to the gym again.

On Monday, January 11, I felt fine through my warmup set of 8 reps at 25 lbs dumbbell curls (although I did them together instead of alternating), and fine through the first 12 reps of 35-lbs dumbbell curls, and then quite suddenly, a flood gate of pain opened on the 13th rep, and I immediately stopped. As I write this, about 30 minutes after that last rep, I’m still at 75% of the Wednesday pain, with my head pulsating, feeling like it’s going to explode. I’m very slightly dizzy, and I’m having just the slightest trouble focusing my vision when I look from one thing to another. I should note that I tried especially hard to not tense up any part of my head or neck while performing the exercise, in case that contributed to the onset of the pain–obviously, that wasn’t relevant. My layman suspicion is that it’s correlated with blood pressure and/or heart rate.

My dad picked me up, and we went to the UCLA ER. The triage nurse saw me, and my blood pressure was okay (on the higher side of normal), and my heart rate and temperature were fine. I didn’t actually get admitted until about 11pm, during which time I had an opportunity to eat dinner (my appetite was fine), and my headache subsided to about 65% of the Wednesday pain. However, between 10pm and 11pm, it increased to about 85%. Also, the headache spread–first to just above my temples, then to the front of my head, and then just to my temples again.

The various superficial neurological test that the doctor performed were fine–I had no difficulty with balance, following her finger, exercising excellent motor control over everything. My blood sugar and hemoglobin was normal. They gave me about 1000mg Tylenol, which is probably the first time in my life that I took it. After about 20-30 minutes, it helped the headache (down to about 30% pain), but I started getting severely dehydrated. I drank well over a liter of water in about 15 minutes, and my mouth was extremely dry. My urine sample revealed that I was slightly ketonic, but my layman guess is that has to do with the fact that I was so dehydrated, although it’s quite possible that it’s related to my extremely low-carb diet (although I do eat a fruit a day and there’s the lactose in milk). The doctor tried to give me crackers and juice, but I refused. (After reading several accounts of people whose lives were saved by steadfast allegiance to their diet under medical emergency circumstances, I figure eating the types of foods closer to what humans evolved to eat and avoiding other stuff is probably a good idea–or at least safe.)

I also don’t think that my avoiding carbs is related, since I’ve been doing that for almost 6 months without incident (and instead, realized quite a few benefits, including a visible drop in body fat, the complete disappearance of my allergies, the disappearance of any lactose-sensitivity I had, better sleep, etc.). Also, I’ve had head pain like this before (see below).

The doctor occasionally mentioned the word “migraine”, but I don’t know enough about it to know whether that was actually my problem. On the plus side, I’m not particularly photo-sensitive. The doctor ordered an MRI, which I will be pursuing, as well as a prescription for Motrin, which I think I’ll avoid unless the pain gets unbearable again. Around 12 midnight, as they were getting ready to discharge me, my stomach started hurting, but I figured it was just due to lack of sleep. (Especially in the last several weeks, I’ve been getting excellent sleep (probably 8-10 hours nightly), typically going to bed at 7pm and waking up at 4am.) I drove home, and got into bed, and suddenly I had extreme stomach pain and became extremely nauseous. I barely made it to the bathroom in time, and I vomited a huge volume of fluid, including much of my dinner. I also tried sitting on the toilet periodically through the night, and that helped a little. After getting a few hours of sleep, I woke up again around 4, and managed to get to the bathroom in time to voimit, and it was even more than the first time I had vomited that night. I remember being astounded that my stomach could hold such a volume of liquid. I drank some water, but I was extremely dehydrated throughout the night, even until I woke up at 10am. I tried to get up, but I was so exhausted that I went back to bed, and woke up at about noon. (This is Tuesday, January 12, now.) I tried to get some reading done, but I just passed out again. It seems that no matter how much water I drink, I’m still terribly dehydrated. I’ve been urinating a normal amount, but slightly less than I would have expected for the close-to-2-liters of water I had had by about 1pm.

That brings us to the time of this writing: I’ve been awake and lucid since about 1pm, although I do feel a little foggy. I’m able to be somewhat functional, but I suspect that if I were to lay down again, I would fall asleep. My head pain is at about 20-30%, and my stomach pain is at about 30-40% of the worst stomach pain that I can imagine (which actually occurred in July 2000: the gastritis I was diagnosed with was my stomach feeling like it was being cut up by knives, thanks to chronic sleep deprivation and stress.) Although I’m a little hungry, I feel like if I were to eat anything, it would hurt my stomach. At this point, I will be contacting a general physician to get a regular checkup and scheduling an MRI with a specialist.

As for some background information:

Throughout this entire ordeal, and in general, I’ve been extremely well hydrated, and I get plenty of salt in my diet (sometimes I worry it’s too much!), and I make sure to eat a banana before my workouts (since I am prone to cramps).

I don’t typically do any cardio exercise, aside from just being generally active. From September to December, I went to the gym about 4-5 times per week to lift weights. My new routine consists of only 3 days of lifting per week. Last academic year, I was on the UCLA Triathlon team.

The most notable previous occurrence of a headache of this nature was after doing “jumpies” in Fall 2005 as part of a warmup for rowing. Jumpies are like a squat, but without added weight, and one jumps in the air. After a set of about 20, I had this type of headache, but the pain was much less, and after laying down for about an hour, it subsided completely and didn’t return, even with subsequent ordinary exertion. This is typical of all the other past occurrences.

So I realize that this is a bit late, but the thread about my status update got a bit out of hand, partially due to attributing positions to me based on the fact that other Objectivists made certain (unclear) comments. (Thank you, Sara, for helping to clarify some of that.) My purpose here is to further clarify my position…now that I’ve cooled down a bit. Also, I should mention that because I hate arguing about politics (and political-type issues), I don’t intend to respond to any further comments–unless there is some great value to me making further clarifications.

To begin with, my status update was not primarily about whether the protest got violent or was a violation of rights (although it did get violent). Nor was it primarily about the fact that I disagree with the opinions of the protestors (although that is relevant). My condemnation of the protesters was fundamentally about the style of the protest. It certainly has nothing to do with students daring to stand up for themselves or expressing an opinion that goes against the status quo. (And Christopher–why would you suggest such a thing when I myself started and run an activist organization that impugns wholesale the last two millennia of philosophy? It’s pretty unjust to accuse me of such hypocrisy.)

My problem is that the protest was utterly anti-intellectual. This is evident from the fact that group looked more like an angry mob than students rationally expressing their discontent: body language, yelling and shouting, defiance of and confrontation with the police (and the fact that the police were desperately necessary because the “mood” of the mob was incredibly threatening), advocating walking out of class and accosting those who went (this actually happened to a friend of mine), no serious intellectual arguments to back up their positions, etc.

Compare this protest to the Tea Parties–still leaving content aside. Police were not required at the Tea Party protests (to my knowledge), except, in some cases, to protect the protesters themselves. (Even if there were a few exceptions, my point is the overall trend and my own experience at a number of these protests.) The Tea Parties offered actual intellectual content–yes, emotions ran high, but they weren’t just rank emotionalism. And although some of the content may have been pretty poor (although I agree with the movement as a whole), at least the effort was to convince using argument and persuasion.

That having been said, I do not think that it is a coincidence that I disagree with the content. These students want education for free. Given the current cultural climate, it’s no surprise that many people think that education, health care, and many other services for free–they think these are rights–but nothing is “free” in the sense that it comes out of thin air. To take the education example: knowledge has to be discovered (which can be expensive, especially in the sciences), and professors, administrators, and staff need to get paid. And who is to pay for these things? These students want American citizens to be forced through taxation.

Now, Ben, you suggested that crimes of physical violence are graver than those against private property. I don’t agree with that as a rule (although I agree in many cases), but the irony of your statement is that when the government coercively taxes its citizens, it is under penalty of force, that is, physical violence (e.g., in an extreme or ultimate situation, the government coming into one’s home with guns and dragging one out to jail). (Let us set aside a discussion of government financing in the type of society I advocate, and also the notion that I somehow agree to some sort of social contract binding me to paying taxes–both are relatively sophisticated issues in political philosophy.)

These students have a severely ingrained sense of entitlement, and their protest amounts to little more than the emotionalism of a child screaming “But I want it now!”, without any regard for the actual requirements of what it takes to create education and how to make it affordable.

Speaking of making education (or health care or any other human value) affordable, why not subject it to the same conditions that made every other human value affordable in our capitalist paradise–freedom (i.e., free markets)? Like all industries subjected to the profit motive and free trade, the quality of education would go up while the price went down. This can be verified inductively by looking at countless examples throughout history or deductively through the science of economics. (And for those of you who will raise the “elasticity” objection, consider how vitally crucial things like transportation, computer access, cell phones, etc. are, and yet somehow they are still incredibly affordable.)

Returning to my criticism of my protest, I also do not think that it is a coincidence that the protest got violent, resulting in the police having to use (retaliatory) force and making arrests. Because the manner of the protest was so anti-intellectual, so emotionalist, so angry, so aggressive, it was no surprise at all that it lead to blows. Somehow, I have difficulty envisioning the Tea Party protesters in LA, amid their speeches, storming the Federal Building. The difference is quite stark.

Jon–of course I am not against boycotting (unless of course, one is in violation of a contract by so doing). One certainly has the right to avoid associating with another. However, that’s not the same as a sit-in. (Sara already indicated that it is a matter of property rights–although, the issue is unfortunately muddled when “public property” is involved.) Thankfully, a sit-in is not at issue here, even though I think that sit-ins share a certain fundamental anti-intellectual similarity with the kind of protest that occurred at UCLA.

Finally, as for name-calling and baseless accusations–a status update is not a treatise. I have only so much room to give an indication as to my status, and at that moment, it was to indicate my extreme displeasure with what happened at UCLA. Believe me, it was mild compared to what I was feeling. And really, it was mild compared to the disrespect and sarcasm that some of the commenters on the original status update showed to other commenters.

Anyway, I hope that this clears up my position. For those of you interested in some of the more philosophic points, I recommend Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. In particular, I recommend the essays “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government”.

Alex Epstein recently sent me this email, and I wanted to share it with whoever reads my blag:

Dear friend or appreciator of petroleum,

Today, August 27, 2009 is the 150th birthday of the oil industry. A century and a half ago, Edwin Drake successfully drilled the first commercial oil well. 150 years later, oil remains the lifeblood of our civilization. It fuels our ultra-mobile, globalized world. It provides the building-blocks for millions of life-enhancing petroleum products.

Yet “Big Oil” receives no appreciation. It is demonized; oil is called an “addiction” and a “pollutant” to get rid of. Thus, it should be little surprise that the anniversary of oil has gotten so little attention; for most Americans, there is little to celebrate.

To educate the public about the true value of oil, the Ayn Rand Center has created a new webpage, “Celebrating Oil’s 150th Birthday.” The quickest address to reach it is: http://tinyurl.com/defenseofoil The site features extensive written, audio, and video content on such topics as oil and economics, oil and foreign policy, and oil and the environment.

If you find the website of value, please spread the word to your friends and colleagues. In an era when all our most practical sources of energy are under attack, it is vital that we defend petroleum and the industry that produces it.

As we say on the website: OIL: UNDERSTAND IT. EMBRACE IT. DEFEND IT.

More content coming soon, including “Oil 101″: a multi-part audio course exploring the history of oil and all the major oil controversies we face today.

Feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Sincerely,
Alex Epstein

————————————–
Alex Epstein
Analyst, Ayn Rand Center
aepstein@aynrand.org
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With the recent release of Google Voice (at least in private beta), we really get a sense for how Google likes to integrate services and provide centralized management.

I can’t overstate how much I am in favor of this. However, it seems that Google has overlooked a painfully obvious way in which it can offer a huge value to its users–and how it can “steal” a huge part of Microsoft’s market-share of corporate users.

I’m not even asking for new features so much as I am asking for new ways to access existing Google services: (1) a Microsoft Exchange wrapper for Google accounts and (2) single-logon / account linking.

Now, I like web interfaces, and I realize that as a technological “culture”, we’re headed in that direction. But until web applications catch up to the power of Microsoft Outlook, I want the best of both worlds: I want to be able to access the same email/calendar/contact/tasks store whether through Google’s web access or through Outlook. I don’t want to have another program that has to run on my computer that syncs Outlook with Google. I want Outlook to connect to my Google account using the Microsoft Exchange protocol in the same way that it might connect to the Microsoft Exchange server at my office: all changes are instantaneously pushed to and from Outlook and Google, and anything done in Outlook in “offline” mode gets pushed upon re-establishing a connection to Google. (Think about how much more convenient it is for you to have Google calendar and contacts items pushed to and from your iPhone than it is to have to sync with your computer.)

Now here’s where the integration really comes in: If you’re like me, you may have multiple Google accounts. You probably started out with a Gmail account way back when, and as Google expanded their services, you also got the calendar and tasks list. But then Google came out with Google Apps for businesses/organizations, and now you have at least one of those. And as more businesses adopt Google Apps in lieu of Microsoft Exchange, it’s more and more likely that people will have multiple email addresses, contact lists, calendars, and tasks lists. What I want is to have one Google logon account–just a username and password–with which I can associate all my Google-hosted services. So imagine my Google username is LogicalArthur. I’d log in as that, and I would immediately have access to Arthur@DeltaWerx.com email/contacts/calendar/tasks, my Arthur@ClubLogic.org email/contacts/calendar/tasks, and any other Google / Google Apps accounts I might acquire in the future. When I go to my LogicalArthur email inbox, I see the Arthur@DeltaWerx.com and Arthur@ClubLogic.org email inboxes listed on the left (and how about my Google Voice inboxes as well?). When I go to the LogicalArthur calendar, I see all my calendars listed from all my accounts (in a similar fashion to how you can view multiple calendars already, but with full read/write privileges). Etc. Actually, it would be pretty awesome to be able to configure my account such that it merges the various services. So I could tell it that I only maintain one calendar or one tasks list, and it would automatically merge the services, so Arthur@DeltaWerx.com and Arthur@ClubLogic.org would share the same calendaring or tasks service, even though they’re really two different accounts. (I should be able to do the same with email and/or contacts, if that’s my preference.)

And here’s the icing on the cake: I want the option to sign into this single integrated account with Microsoft Outlook using the Exchange protocol. Each of my Google email accounts associated with my logon (whether straight Gmail or part of a Google Apps account) will be presented as separate inbox folders. It will also present multiple contact lists, multiple calendars, and multiple tasks lists–unless I decide to merge any of the services as I described above.

Google, I hope you’re listening. This would make the electronic management of my life so much easier, and I suspect many other people would similarly enjoy these features. From a technological standpoint, they’re extremely easy to implement–I just don’t personally have the skill-set (yet?) to program it.

Please do it!

I’ve finally completed and begun to distribute my cover letter and resume, which I’ve tailored to management consulting firms.

Given my somewhat nontraditional choice of pursuing business management exclusive of my legal education, I’m relying greatly on my dad’s connections to the industry. I sure hope this all pans out! I’m excited to start my real career (as against part-time IT work) and to stop being poor.

It’s incredibly geeky, but I’m super excited about recently having installed Windows 3.11 in a virtual machine (Microsoft Virtual PC 2007).

Originally, I needed to get it running for a friend / co-worker who needed to run a program that (supposedly) only runs in Windows 3.11. I figured it would be cool to get it running anyway, and I was able to install MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on top of it.

I also got Internet Explorer 5 running, but it crashes if I try to access modern web sites. Even Google doesn’t support it correctly! Now if only I could find a way to install Firefox on it…

Another cool thing is that I’m able to access a Samba (Windows) share I set up on the virtual machine, so I’m able to move files between it and my Windows Vista installation from within Windows Vista. Unfortunately, Windows 3.11 doesn’t know how to supply username and password combos to more modern Samba servers (or, at least, I don’t know how to do that).

Anygeek who wants instructions–just let me know!

In Fall 2007, I took a graduate philosophy class at UCLA (Philosophy 232), which was basically a class on cosmology, dressed up as philosophy of science.

Like the other five people in the seminar, I took an “incomplete” in the course, opting to submit my final paper (the only basis for grading in the class) sometime later, giving me a chance to really digest the material that was being presented up until the last day of class.

Quarter after quarter, I kept delaying: the professor was always easy-going, and had no problem accepting a late paper. And university policy allowed graduate students to submit a change-of-grade petition (i.e., from the “F” to which the incomplete had lapsed to a real grade) with no questions asked.

Naturally, I took extreme (and I hasten to add, inappropriate) advantage of the situation, and procrastinated until the last day I could possibly turn it in without having to stay an extra term: one month after I graduated in the semester system, at the close of Spring Quarter 2009. But hey–I finished. And surprisingly, I’m a little proud of my paper.

As you may know, fair reader, my attitude about finishing grad school has been just that: I only cared about finishing. Grades were the least of my concern, given the disdain with which I regard(ed) law. I did care more about this philosophy class–at least it tackled issues that piqued my interest (even if they weren’t properly part of philosophy). And there was still a decent amount of rational thinking that I could do about the issues. (Boy is it a grave, unjust understatement to say that the state of modern philosophy is a complete mess.) Moreover, if I ever decide to go to philosophy grad school (which I can now only imagine doing once the state of academic philosophy improves dramatically), it would be good to have a good grade.

Anyway–back to the paper: I agonized for some time in the back of my mind about some of the issues (the tangled mess) that we discussed in class and read in the course materials. And as I was preparing to actually bunker down and write the paper, I agonized overtly over issues of spacetime geometry, calling up friends and even Keith Lockitch (whose number one fan-boy I am) to bounce ideas off of. After about 8-10 hours of going through the issues over and over again, I finally made some breakthroughs talking to some pretty drunk people at Aaron Meyer’s graduation party–at 2am. (It’s not important that they were drunk–only that I was sober and kept running my mouth, helping me to make new identifications I didn’t before. Although, I suppose one could argue that to make sense of modern philosophy, one needs to impair one’s mind!)

Somehow, I managed to finish. Aside from some improvements in style and adding some more detail and/or clarification, I think it was a pretty decent paper. Miraculously, I was able to pick a “focus” that allowed me to say what I thought was true, and not just regurgitate what so-and-so thought about such-and-such. And that let me give a presentation of some of the basics of the Objectivist epistemology–something I’ve been itching to take a crack at again for some time.

So if you’re interested in questions of the precision of measurement or of the structure of spacetime geometry (e.g., is it Euclidean or not?), feel free to enjoy my paper, Epistemological Considerations Underpinning Spacetime Geometry.

2009-06-16 Addendum:
This morning, I heard back from my professor. I got an “A-” on the paper: “The paper was overly ambitious and, hence, there were quite a few places where it could have been better developed, etc.”
Translation: I didn’t recapitulate ITOE. But an “A-”? That’s the highest grade I’ve earned in 4 years, so I’m pretty happy about that.

In this week’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (Season 10, Episode 19: “Selfish”–now there’s a bad name for this episode), A.D.A. Alex Cabot put a mother on trial for failing to vaccinate her son against measles, resulting in its spread to a little girl, killing her. Although ultimately, the anti-vaccination mother was acquitted (and I’m sympathetic to this result), this episode did raise a number of interesting issues…or at least, I find them interesting because I myself am not immunized.

Let me start out with the following disclosure: my mother started to immunize me when I was born, but discontinued soon after. I’ve been given a number of reasons for this, including (supposed) bad reactions that I had and research (supposedly) proving the danger of vaccines. I think it boils down to the same faulty epistemological methods that lead my mother to believe in homeopathy. My mother is suspicious of Western medicine in general and of big pharma in particular–in her view, it’s one big conspiracy to make people sick, motivated by greed. (Yeah, right, and teachers make themselves more needed by secretly making their students dumber.)

That having been said, there is a valid issue here: one cannot be rationally faulted for not taking completely seriously the claims of a scientific community whose incentives are so severely perverted by government intrusion and regulation–and that’s to say nothing of taking seriously the claims of actual government agencies like the FDA or the CDC. It is definitely a difficult task to know whom to trust when it comes to complex scientific questions, and I therefore find completely sympathetic an honest abstention from taking medical action (e.g., vaccination). (More disclosure: I am completely unfamiliar with any science surrounding the safety of vaccines, and I don’t take SVU’s political proselytization to be scientific fact. When I’m a parent and it actually matters, I’ll inform myself about such issues.)

As was made clear in the episode of SVU, a parent who decides to forgo vaccinating their child must realize that this will entail being ever-more vigilant when it comes to protecting their child’s health. After all, the human immune system is quite powerful, and when otherwise healthy, can fight off most diseases.

There’s another issue here about medicine–a point that I want to make in the context of this post. Many of my friends give me a hard time about refusing to take medication for various ailments. There’s a very good reason for this. Symptom relief can be very dangerous: it allows one to ignore that there is a root problem and to engage in behavior that can worsen the underlying condition. For instance, if one takes headache relief medication for a headache brought on by lack of sleep, it may bring about short-term relief, but encourages bad sleeping habits in the long-run. Even if one must, given other values, be chronically sleep-deprived, better that the headache serve as a reminder that one’s health–also a high value to a rational man–is still at stake, rather than to ignore the necessity of sleep and engage in further non-sleep activities. Even catching a cold, which may not be the result of intentional behaviors like losing sleep, requires that one stay home in bed instead of taking some decongestants and putting further stress on one’s body by going about one’s normal daily routines. Just recently, I began taking an antihistamine version of Visine for some severe eye allergies. When my eyes would itch, I would rub them, resulting in further irritation and pain, and then administer a few drops into each eye. After about a week of this, I misplaced the Visine, and I realized that I had better not rub my eyes anymore, since the Visine was no longer handy to relieve the consequences of my idiotic behavior. Within a few days, I stopped rubbing my eyes, and the consequences of the initially mild allergic reaction became negligible. Moral of the story: don’t take medication to alleviate symptoms caused by dumbassery–it only encourages more of the same. That having been said, I completely acknowledge that there may be cases where symptom relief is necessary (e.g., in isolated instances or pursuant to a chronic problem that cannot be treated at root): I’m only railing against symptom relief used as a matter of course.

Back to this week’s SVU. I’m not entirely certain where I stand on the issue of whether a parent who doesn’t vaccinate their child then assumes responsibility for any diseases that are spread by their child. Let’s look at a few simpler cases. If one has AIDS and infects others with HIV, is one liable for damage caused to them? What difference does it make whether it was done intentionally, knowingly, recklessly (consciously disregarding substantial risk), negligently (disregarding a substantial risk that should have been known but wasn’t), or “innocently” (unknowingly and without even negligence)? I haven’t come to a final conclusion, but I’m disinclined to hold legally responsible someone who spread the virus “innocently” (I’ll drop the scare quotes from here on out), and I’d hold guilty one who spread it intentionally (i.e., to inflict harm), knowingly (e.g., having unprotected sex knowing one is infected), recklessly (e.g., having unprotected sex consciously disregarding the fact that one recently had unprotected sex with someone else and without first getting a clean STD screening), or negligently (e.g., having unprotected sex after recently having unprotected sex with someone else). Although all cases, innocence included, involve a non-consensual harm done to another person, I separate out the cases of innocence because of an important fact: we live in a society where we come into contact with others and we know of the possibility of diseases, including horrible ones like HIV. Living among and interacting with other humans carries the risk of infection, and as such, imposes a certain amount of responsibility on each of us. I don’t believe that ordinary, rational interactions can be classified as violations of rights. As a parallel, I wouldn’t call it a violation of rights if a person taps another person on the shoulder to get his attention, and accidentally causes him to have a heart attack from fright. (I suspect that to maintain that the innocent cases also constitutes violating individual rights would be somewhat rationalistic.) Similarly, I think that my AIDS/HIV analysis holds for all sorts of communicable diseases, even the common cold (though the compensation would likely be drastically less than for someone who had HIV trusted upon them.)

Like I said, this is all quite tentative in my own mind, but it make sense. In this day and age, it is difficult to be unaware of the risks associated with not vaccinating (setting aside the potential risks of vaccinating). Although I find myself unsympathetic to a parent who allows his obviously sick child to interact with other children, what about infected children who are still in the incubation stage of the illness? (After all, SVU said that it was 7- to 21-day incubation period for measles.) Is that even negligence? My gut tells me “no”, but I guess that’s a question for legal philosophy to figure out: just what constitutes a substantial risk in this context? And what about whoever infected the child of our anti-vaccination parent in question? Isn’t our anti-vaccination parent (or rather, the child) the victim from a certain perspective? And what of the child our anti-vaccination parent’s child infected–why didn’t that parent vaccinate his child? It seems like all parents are implicitly “on notice” that communicable diseases are out there, even if rare, and that they should be prepared to take immediate medical action if something serious arises. The fact that some other parent didn’t vaccinate his kid and he got sick isn’t an excuse to not care for one’s own child…

I’d appreciate your thought in the comments section.

In this week’s House (Season 5, Episode 22: “House Divided”), Foreman ascended one rung from hell:

He’s deaf. It’s not an identity, it’s a disability… Anything I can simulate with a three-dollar pair of earplugs is not a culture.

Overall, not a bad episode. I’m glad that House finally tackled this issue. It’s bad enough that people form cultures and identities surrounding the color of their skin (which is a pretty neutral characteristic), but over a disability? Now that’s insane.

It is admirable when someone afflicted with a disability is able to overcome it through great effort and strength of character. But to deny that it is a disability and to be proud of the condition itself (as against the achievement of overcoming it) is despicable.

It is a disability. Not being able to hear is not having a certain ability: it’s a disability. The reason that I don’t call my lack of telekinesis a disability is that the deficiency is judged by the standard of the metaphysically normal for the type of entity I am: human. But I would jump at the chance to have telekinesis, not insist that I’m part of a pelakinesis culture!

Should the lactose intolerant insist that they’re part of an andairy culture instead of getting treatment? What about the immunologically challenged? I wonder what the “cancer community” will say when a cure is finally an option for millions.

It’s bad enough that it’s commonplace within our culture to tell kids that “beauty is on the inside” and that media portrayals of beauty are wrong, essentially encouraging them to ignore their bodies for the supposed sake of their mental health. Children who can do something about their looks (and they almost always can) should be encouraged to pursue physical excellence, while reinforcing the idea their primary source of self-esteem should be their minds. Of course it’s wrong to make fun of fat girls, but the alternative is not to tell them that it’s okay to be fat. They should be encouraged to take steps to achieve a healthy body and to develop what they themselves think is beautiful (whatever the source of those ideas happens to be).

I look forward to the day when people judge themselves (and others) by rational standards.

Today in my Law & Economics class, we discussed campaign contribution limits–i.e., legal caps on how much one can contribute to a politician’s campaign.

Now, I don’t care very much about this particular issue, but it’s another good platform to illustrate certain philosophic points.

From the outset, it’s certainly an outright violation of rights to limit how an individual decides to use his money–from a certain perspective, the freedom of speech. But let’s set this aside–it’s a pretty obvious point.

I’ve heard two main arguments for capping campaign contributions: (1) wealthy individuals are able to impact elections more than poorer individuals, and (2) contributors are then able to buy certain candidates’ loyalties to influence their behavior in office.

Both arguments rely on a concern that would be non-existent in a free (capitalist) society: since a free society’s government would be barred from initiating force against its citizens, all the concerns about the wealthy “exploiting” the poor with their increased political representation disappear. No special interest groups would have any particular political power, since government regulation of individuals and businesses would not exist. Just what would one buy a candidate’s loyalty for–choosing the color of police uniforms or the naming of a city?

For the time being, in our age of altruism, collectivism, and envy, where the wealthy are villainized and punished for their success, I’m generally much more comfortable with them having more influence in politics than pathetic power-lusting mediocrities who just want to exploit the rich. I suspect that oftentimes, their activities in the political arena amount to “bribing” politicians to leave them the hell alone–hardly something to fault them for.