Martin Radwin

What does one do in training youngsters in chemistry and physics. How many homes have the makings of a proper laboratory? Reading, writing and mathematics is basically ink on paper material. But a work-shop or laboratory is a different matter Ba'al Chatzaf That's true. College prep education in the physical sciences, especially involving lab work, is probably best done in a classroom setting, by good teachers with advanced degrees in the physical sciences they are teaching. Unfortunately, most high school students in American schools take very few (if any) classes in the physical sciences. And, due to the severe shortage of qualified high school science and math teachers, the high schools sometimes have teachers in these subjects who do not have degrees in the areas they are teaching and are not really qualified to teach these subjects. The shortage of qualified science and math teachers could be at least partially alleviated by raising their pay relative to teachers in other fields, but this is forbidden by the teachers unions, which have a stranglehold over the public schools. The teachers unions have imposed contracts with forbid merit pay for superior teachers or extra pay for teachers in subjects such as math and science where a shortage exists. In any event, none of this precludes home schooling as a main alternative. Home schoolers could still attend specialized classes in the physical sciences and other specialized subjects for which a more formal classroom setting is considered to be a superior alternative. Martin

There's nothing inherently pathological about the home schooling experience. Which is not to deny that there are pathological parents who choose to home school their kids and do a lousy job of it. John Holt wrote extensively about the subject of home schooling. His book "Teach Your Own" is an excellent introduction to the subject. He went on to start a newsletter to give guidance to parents who were interested in home schooling their kids. Holt was one of the early pioneers of the home schooling movement. He was a man of great intelligence and great compassion who truly had a love for kids and a respect for their abilities. He was a long time classroom teacher himself, so he got to see firsthand just how bad many schools are, not just public schools but even some elite private schools. He became an advocate of home schooling as an alternative to the many problems he observed in traditional educational environments. 10-15 specialized subjects? A large percentage of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Of the students who enter the California State University system, a significant percentage have to take remedial reading and math, because their reading and math skills leave them unprepared for college level work. And these represent the upper 50% of the high school graduates. Many high school students are unable to pass the high school exit exam now required for graduation in California. And this exam only requires about a 9th to 10th grade level of education to pass. And the drop out rate can be quite high, especially in the really bad inner city schools. The most important skills needed for college or for alternatives to college are competence in reading, writing, and math. It is certainly not necessary to attend school for 12 years to acquire these skills. The best way develop skill at reading is to read lots of great books. Access to a good library or bookstore should more than suffice. The best way to develop skill at writing is to do lots of writing, as well as reading the works of great writers. None of this requires classroom instruction. Basic math skills can also be learned outside of a classroom setting, as Brant pointed out. With the availability of internet classes, options for alternatives to the classroom continue to develop. Martin

You are counting on the fact that the countries whose citizens you propose to slaughter without mercy don't yet have the kinds of weapons with which they could effectively retaliate. But someday in the not too distant future, they will. Nuclear proliferation will ultimately prove to be unstoppable. And because the residents of these countries are going to have some real men just like you who are also ready to kill for their family, friends, and countrymen, and who will not forget that it was the United States that killed their families, we will all be their targets. The bloodthirsty lunacy of government officials who think just like you will get us all killed. Have a nice day. Martin I am counting on us making a preemptive attack. The next time the Wahabites do mischief on our soil, I am counting on the U.S. doing to them, what we did to the Japs back in the 1940's. If the right man is in the White House then he will go on the war path if we are attacked again. If the wrong man is in the White House he will figure we deserved what happens to us and will blubber and whine. Sort of like Jimmy Carter after our people were taken captive by the Iranians. A -real- man would have nuked Tehran. But Jimmy turned the other cheek and bit his lip. I don't want that happening again. Is Ron Paul the man to go on the warpath and kill our enemies? Ba'al Chatzaf If he comes to kill you, rise up early and slay him first -- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 72A. During the Iran hostage crisis, about 70 Americans were taken hostage at the American embassy. Of course, this was totally unprovoked on the part of the Iranians! It couldn't have anything to do with the history of US intervention in Iran, starting with the CIA led assassination in 1953 of the just elected prime minister, Mossadegh, and the installation of the brutal CIA supported dictator Pahlavi, who during his 26 year tenure, killed and tortured many thousands of Iranian citizens and presided over the creation of Savak, an Iranian secret police force similar to the Soviet Union's KGB, all with the full support of the US government. After Pahlavi was overthrown, the US government decided to grant the murderous dictator Pahlavi asylum in the United States. This was the history which led up to the seizing of the American hostages, which you neglected to mention. According to your stated ethical standards, since the US government had committed these protracted crimes against the Iranian people over so many years, and since real men defend their families against such depradations, the Iranian government should have burned the Americans alive rather than just seizing them and holding them hostage. And in response to the seizing of about 70 Americans, you advocate nuking Tehran, a city with a population of about 15 million. Most of them would presumably die in the initial blast, or in subsequent fires. Those who survived would suffer horribly radiation sickness, as happened at Hiroshima and Nakasake. What the hell, killing and horribly sickening millions of innocent men, women, and children seems like a fair retaliation for the taking of 70 hostages, doesn't it? It's good that you have made these posts and expressed your views so openly. Anyone reading them can draw their own conclusions as to your moral character. Martin

You are counting on the fact that the countries whose citizens you propose to slaughter without mercy don't yet have the kinds of weapons with which they could effectively retaliate. But someday in the not too distant future, they will. Nuclear proliferation will ultimately prove to be unstoppable. And because the residents of these countries are going to have some real men just like you who are also ready to kill for their family, friends, and countrymen, and who will not forget that it was the United States that killed their families, we will all be their targets. The bloodthirsty lunacy of government officials who think just like you will get us all killed. Have a nice day. Martin

Chris, I'm afraid I can't help you with specifics. I'm really not that knowledgeable about the details of the Afghan War. Outside of the usual sources (Wiki, Google), a good source for historical research from a libertarian perspective is the Independent Institute (www.independent.org). You can do searches on topics of interest from the Independent Institute web site, and it will give you listings of all relevant Independent Institute publications. Martin

I apologize for the misinformation. I missed the actual race itself. I listened to the post race commentary on KGO radio, where they announced that a woman had won the race for the first time. They didn't qualify this by indicating that the woman had a head start. I know that, in the bay to breakers race, the women runners start ahead of the men. But, given this fact, they should not have reported that a woman won the race. Very bad electronic journalism. But still I should have checked out the story more carefully. Martin

Osama overlooks the obvious. We are the Good Guys and he is the Bad Guy. Moral equivalence is ugly and best and contemptible at worst. Keep in mind the Big Difference. We are on the Side of Good. The Muslim Fanatics are on the side of Evil. Ba'al Chatzaf So when a handful of Muslim fanatics launch planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing several thousand Americans, they are evil. When the US government imposes sanctions on Iraq, stopping among other things the importation of water purification equipment into Iraq, killing at least a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians, many of them children, we are good. When the US launches a war of aggression against a nation that never attacked us and never seriously threatened us, when we drop cluster bombs over this nation in a showcase of "shock and awe", when we launch a war and invasion which has led to an estimated half a million Iraqi deaths (exact number unknown; we don't do body counts) and over two million Iraqi civilian refugees who have fled for their lives, leaving behind mass graves and dead bodies in the streets, when our military seizes thousands of prisoners, incarcerates them in a hellhole of prison, and tortures them, in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions, we are just so fucking good. We have a right to feel proud of the wonderful goodness we have bestowed on the people of Iraq. Even all of the hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqis should thank us for our benevolence. God bless America! Martin

Currently, our main enemy is the United States. Why? They impose brutal sanctions against Iraq which have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including huge numbers of Iraqi children. They send weapons to Israel which are used to kill, enslave, and humiliate thousands of Palestinians. They support brutal, anti-Islamic governments throughout the Arab world, including the miserably corrupt regime of the House of Saud. I am glad that we were successful in the 9/11 attacks. That may be grounds for hope. Perhaps this will teach the United States government to stop its policy of invading Muslim nations and killing Muslims. Osama bin Ladin

In the recently run Bay to Breakers, a roughly 8 mile foot race from the San Francisco Bay to the ocean, a sort of mini marathon, the race was won by a woman for the first time ever. The woman who won the race defeated an international group of male competitors. This is the first long distance male/female race that I know of that was won by a woman. This certainly is illustrative of the extent to which women are catching up to men in terms of their athletic prowess. Is there really any doubt that men and women should not be bound by any predetermined sex roles in terms of the options that should be available to them in life? Martin

Chris, Here's hoping that you beat the living crap out of that cancer. I hate cancer. The only good cancer cells are dead cancer cells. Go get em! Martin

Jonathan, thanks for once again confirming the wisdom of my decision to send my daughter to a Montessori private school. The insanity that not infrequently occurs in government schools is often such that it almost seems like a parody rather than the real thing. Martin

Best wishes Angie! I hope your meeting with Victor turns out to be everything you've dreamed of, and that it will turn out to be the first day of a long and happy life together! Martin

John, Maybe because millions of dollars are involved and this is a very controversial movie and the people who put their money in want it back with profit? Michael Michael, Good answer! For movie series like LOTR, Star Wars, Matrix, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, etc., there was little doubt that each movie in the series would be highly profitable, if not a complete blockbuster. Movies are still a business. Producers are always ready to make a sequel if they're convinced that there's money to be made. Whereas for Atlas Shrugged, there's plenty of room for doubt that even a single movie can be profitable, let alone a trilogy. It's no coincidence that it's taken so many years to get the Atlas Shrugged movie off the ground; many producers obviously have strong doubt about its commercial potential. I truly hope that Atlas Shrugged will be made into a great movie that is both faithful to the spirit of the novel and a commercial blockbuster. But I'm not convinced that it will turn out this way. Martin

A finite or limited set of instances for which a general proposition holds, does not imply the general proposition is true over the entire domain of applicable entities. Example: I show you a billion black crows. This is not sufficient to prove that all crows which, were or every will be are black. It could be I have not yet found the exceptional crow, say a crow with the gene for albinism. So induction cannot prove the truth of a universally quantified proposition -unless- the applicable domain of the proposition happens to be finite and the inducer has exhausted this domain. For example I can prove that all the coins in my pocket are quarters by emptying my pockets and showing each and ever coin from my pockets were quarters On the other hand induction can prove that a universally quantified proposition is false. All one needs is a single instance for which the general proposition does not hold. One can also establish an existentially quantified proposition by producing an instance for which it holds. Bob Kolker I suspected that this was the intended meaning. But it seems strange to me to say that "induction is not valid" because it cannot establish the absolute truth of a proposition. That's like saying that our vision is not valid because it cannot see microscopic organisms without a microscope or distant galaxies without a telescope. Induction is an essential cognitive tool for making sense of the world. It is a primary method of reasoning used by scientists for developing new theories. It is certainly valid within its domain of applicability, even while it is not a valid means of establishing the absolute truth of propositions. Martin

Thanks for posting this. I'd love to do an experiment where children who are taught with their needs in mind are compared with typical schools (controlling for class size, social demographics, etc), to see just how many children attending needs-based schools end up as 'problem' children, i.e. those with supposedly ADHD etc. I once watched a program with Tony Buzan (author of Mind Mapping) and he took a dozen failing children and taught them how to 'use their heads' with mindmaps etc. Independent psychologists tested the children's abilities before and after. Some of the children had improved so much, one psychologist admitted that if she hadn't done the testing herself, she would have been convinced the data was flawed. Teach children with the child in mind rather than simply administering crowd control, and 'problem' children don't materialise. It's incredibly dull for a mighty curious six-year-old to sit still at a desk all day. Fran, Thanks for your reply. There's probably no need to do the experiment you suggested, because the comparative data between standard government schools and good, child-centered private schools should already exist. The percentage of children labeled as ADHD and put on psychoactive drugs such as Ritalin in government schools is a matter of public record, at least for some school districts. I recall reading that this percentage is outrageously high and has hugely increased over the last couple of decades. Comparative data on good private schools should not be hard to find. As far as I know, the private Montessori school that my daughter attends has never administered such drugs to its students, and I would expect this to be true of other good, child-centered private schools as well. And I don't think that the kids going to her school are on average any different than kids attending government schools, a large percentage of whom are being given these drugs in order to control their behavior. Government schools are organized for the benefit of the school bureaucracy, administrators, and, to a lesser extent, teachers. Kids are their last priority. Martin

Yes, this is one among many examples of unholy alliances between private and governmental entities. The pharmaceutical industry undoubtedly makes big bucks off these drugs, and the government schools are obsessed with controlling the behavior of bored kids, mostly boys, who don't adapt well to being expected to sit still as their desks for hours every day. At least, the damage done via these drugs is not as bad or as irreversible as lobotomy. It's no coincidence that my wife and I decided to send our daughter to a private Montessori school, even though we live in an area that is famous for its supposedly excellent public schools. At the private Montessori school she attends, they've somehow never felt the need to administer Ritalin or any other drug to any of the kids. And the kids are doing just fine. Martin

What exactly does it mean to claim that induction is not valid? Martin

Thomas Szasz is a great libertarian hero for, among his many other achievements, exposing the evils committed by the psychiatric profession in actively participating in such abominations as lobotomy. The fact that this was such an accepted practice until fairly recently is truly horrifying. Despite the many areas in which liberty has declined in the last several generations, the fact that psychiatric justified brain mutilation is now generally recognized as the barbarism that it is shows that, in at least some important respects, liberty has greatly increased. Martin

Perhaps Atlas is just not destined to ever make it to the big screen. There have been so many false starts already, so many changes in writer, screenplay, director, producer, concept, etc. At one point, Atlas was going to be a movie, then a miniseries, then a trilogy, then back to a movie again. Attempts to turn Atlas into a movie go all the way back to Albert Ruddy. Rand herself wrote the first version of the screenplay but only finished about one third of it. I think there have been multiple screenplays written since then. Considering how a great novel like The Fountainhead translated into a mediocre movie, perhaps it's for the best that Atlas simply remain a great novel rather than a potentially mediocre to bad movie. And I say this from the perspective of someone who truly loves the novel and would love to see the story and characters translated to the big screen, but only if the movie could be at least half as great as the novel. Martin

If Steyn weren't a Canadian himself, the comment might seem nastier; since he is Canadian, however, I'd say he has a right to say it. Judith I apologize for assuming that Steyn is American without checking. It didn't occur to me that he might be Canadian, given the way he denigrated the masculinity of Canadians. I wonder if he was exempting himself from this assessment. Martin

I believe that his exact point is that they DIDN'T try to save their own lives by fighting back, but instead cowered helplessly under desks waiting to be shot. If you know someone is coming to shoot you, and you're trapped in the building and have no way to escape, don't you owe it to yourself to TRY, at least, to save yourself? Todd Beamer, where are you? Judith These were young college students, not soldiers or police officers with military training. How many people without military or police training, unarmed and taken completely by surprise, would know how to defend themselves against a crazed gunman? Steyn is speaking from a perspective of hindsight, knowing that the situation ended in tragedy. These students had to make an instantaneous decision without benefit of hindsight, and presumably without any previous combat experience. Mark Steyn also takes a gratuitous shot at the testosterone level of Canadians, based on one isolated incident. He of course would not extend such an assessment to Americans based on a single isolated incident occurring in the US. The man is a jerk. Martin

Nice, two days after the massacre at Virginia Tech and this asshole Steyn impugns the courage and manhood of its students. Why do I have the feeling that if Mark Steyn were ever in the same situation as these students, he'd be cowering under a desk somewhere in soiled panties? Mick Excellent point Mick! This is probably a case of the "chickenhawk" mentality applied to a situation involving criminal mayhem rather than a war zone. Mark Steyn would probably hide under a desk or go fleeing out the window if he were in this situation, yet dares to inpugn the courage of these students. Noone is under any moral obligation to sacrifice their own life in order to try to stop a homicidal maniac. To suggest that these students were less than fully grown men and women for trying to save their own lives is a despicable insult, uttered by a man who probably would soil his panties in such a situation. But if Steyn were as brave as a Navy Seal, his suggestion would be no less despicable. Martin

Chris, "Popular" is a relative term. Certainly, they didn't have the popularity or name recognition of celebrity rock stars or movie stars, but by the standards of intellectuals, they were pretty well know, Rand especially. During the NBI days, The Objectivist had a fairly large paid circulation (over 20,000, I think). Thousands of people took courses through NBI. And hundreds of thousands of people bought Rand's fiction and, in lesser numbers, non-fiction. Rothbard certainly had less of a popular following than Rand. There was no organized Rothbardian movement, unlike NBI. Books on economics and political/ethical theory don't generally sell as well as novels. But "Mr. Libertarian" Rothbard was quite influential in the libertarian movement. He was active in the early Libertarian Party and was a founder of the Cato Institute. Martin

Rothbard had some of the same tendencies toward authoritarianism and intolerance of dissent that infected objectivism during the NBI days and that continues to infect some of modern objectivism. Rothbard, who penned "The Ayn Rand Cult", had strong cultist tendencies himself. In a way, this is not all that surprising. Rothbard and Rand were both pioneering geniuses with large popular followings. And geniuses are not infrequently not very nice people. Martin

"If an argument *is* fallacious, does this mean we *ought* not to accept it? If so, how can this be, if it is impossible to derive an "ought" from an "is." RCR Good example. More formally. Premise - Argument A is fallacious. Conclusion - We ought not to accept it. Smuggled "ought" - "Accepting fallacious arguments is bad." Now, notice that I did not say "Accepting fallacious conclusions can lead to error." This is an observable fact - a conclusion of a different kind. But we still need "Accepting errors is bad." to reach the final "ought" conclusion. We ALWAYS need another "ought" in there. Inescapable. Bob Premise - Argument A is fallacious. Fact - Accepting fallacious conclusions can lead to error. Conclusion - We ought not to accept it. Isn't this the generally accepted meaning of the word "ought"? How many mathematicians or scientists would disagree with the conclusion that fallacious arguments ought not to be accepted, because they can lead to error? How many would insist that the proviso be added that "accepting fallacious arguments is bad"? Martin