I am currently mulling over the sheer generosity and heartfelt sentiment from the goose-stepping Ayn Rand Institute: U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims

The argument being that all money should come from individual donations. Only there is no donation box for Tsunami victims on the Rand website. Tsunami victims are presumably from 'primitive nations' where 'the mere fact that they needed help should not have created a claim 'as simultaneously Isolationist and Jingoist Ed Locke says of Vietnam, in another classic muddle headed Rand Institute Op Ed.

By extension, should all Iraq rebuilding money come from donations from those who were in favor of invasion? Should the invasion itself have been funded from donations? It's a nice thought, perhaps the Iraq war would have never happened if people had to put their money where their mouth is. But democracy ain't like that, you can't hold a referendum for everything.

Society is a flawed but necessary and emergent phenomenon. If there were enough followers of Rand, presumably they could declare independence and avoid taxes. But it wouldn't be long before the donation system failed and Randyland started to raise taxes. The creed of extreme libertarianism will always fail by reductio ad absurdum.

My main problem with Randys is that they like to think of themselves as members of an elite club of successful rationalists, promoting charity and voluntary donation over tax, not a cult for self-righteous, mediocre people with uncharitable instincts - a 'banality' of evil.

In a reverse form of ambulance chasing, when Moreover received $22M in funding, I received an invitation to join the Ayn Rand Institute and give them all my supposed money - which I declined graciously ('you and your cryptofascist friends can shove your invitation up your shrunken sphincters').

The Ayn Rand institute is ironic because it follows exactly the same trajectory as the appropriation of Nietzsche by Hitler (only Rand was decidedly B league as a philosopher). Like Nietzche, Rand was an atheist, or more specifically, like myself, she was an anti-theist.

Rand in Playboy: "in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason".

More ironic is that an anti-theist institute should bear all the hallmarks of a religion or ideology. Belief systems may inevitably lead to wicked people failing to have to justify their actions, but foundations such as the Rand institute, which are supposedly based upon 'reason', should surely fare better.

Apparently not. It seems that the human instinct to idolize is so strong that even a society formed around an atheist amateur philosopher will become a cult.

By deifying its leader and sanctifying its texts, bitter, intellectually challenged Rand devotees such as David Holcberg are freed to write with misanthropy terrifyingly reminiscent of Nazism.

In response to the millions of people suffering as a result of the Indonesian earthquake, David Holcberg writes:

"Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it"

Happy Holidays Mr. Holcberg.

My recent experiences with realtors show me that: most of them don't know very much about buildings; waste your time by lying in descriptions; seem to be the last people on earth to use email and digital cameras instead of time wasting phone calls and expensive on-site visits.

Realtors charge up to a quarter of what architects do, without most of the skill, service or liability. The reason that this happens is that they own the customer. By extension, if their services don't benefit customers then this will change.

Why hasn't the Internet destroyed the current hopeless realtor merry-go-round. Perhaps a listings service could be built where data can only be submitted if:

1. the realtor or seller lists a contact email(rather than them contact you, or by phone).

2. all listing have digital pictures of outside and all rooms.

3. all room sizes are listed in square foot.

4. visits can be arranged through a third party key holder rather than with the agent. (Most of the time having a realtor show you round is a waste of money. Why not distribute keys to security companies and have someone less annoying show you round.)

5. all listings allow feedback from registered users who are prospective buyers/renters.
this would allow people to rate realtors, rate properties and upload their own pictures of properties.

[The problem with 5. is that reviewing building listings has less vanity benefit than an product review, as your review won't be seen for ever. Perhaps revenge is enough of a driver to make people give bad feedback.]

NB. Here is a realtor tip that a friend told me about:

In the US it appears that some contracts require a licensed broker at both ends of a deal. Given that that can be one person - threatening to bring in a second broker results in the first reducing fees automatically because they will have their fees halved by the mere presence of another broker.

It sounds like a very magnanimous thing for Google to do - to build a virtual library of Alexandria, but there is a solid business reason as well.

One of the simplest ways to game Google is to scan out of copyright books, rare ones ideally, boost Pagerank by buying hard links, and serve Adsense against the results. This is commonly done currently, with specialist Dictionaries.

However, Pagerank only really works if you have original content, i.e. stuff that is not already on the web; slapping up a copy of the works of Shakespeare won't do. If Google scans out of copyright books, and serves them up itself, then attempts to trick Google into handing out Adsense revenue without generating any content will not work.

Google adds major libraries to its database

David Berlind has done his homework in What's wrong with RSS is also what's right with it. The first sensible piece about RSS all year.

The reality of RSS is that modules have been a failure, and that leaves RSS as a standard for headlines and links and a miscellaneous catch all called description or content.

As Berlind points out you dont always have headlines and links are sometimes ambiguous, so that leaves us looking at a rather naked emperor. But that doesn't mean to say that RSS isn't useful as a meme if not a standard.

BBC - BBC Four Documentaries - Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief

"In this first ever television history of disbelief, Jonathan Miller leads viewers on a personal journey exploring the origins of his own lack of belief and uncovering the hidden story of atheism."

via Blackbeltjones' delicious

I am going to be using this blog to collect notes for a book, so postings may sometimes seem a bit random.

The book will be about faith - a defense of atheism and an attack on ideology and blind faith, from religion to secular political doctrine and cults.

This comes at a time when the US has suffered terribly from attacks justified entirely by faith, while at the same time becoming more religious than any other developed nation.

The book will not beat about the bush, I aim to put forward the argument that faith is necessarily bad, something to be tolerated where it is itself tolerant but not to be respected.

The aim is still to write something positive, something that contains not just an argument for science over superstition, but also argues for a richer culture based upon appreciating art without having to literally believe it.