What’s wrong with Libertarians, part 4735 in a series

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While you are obsessed with over-intellectualized issues like eminent domain abuse and over-regulation of small businesses, these guys are dealing with things that the average American can relate to, straight from the gut. Like a man’s God-given right to fight a duel, and then eat the loser. Now that’s libertarianism!

Yes, it’s a funny. But when you look at the (*cough*) high-quality people who are often the face of Libertarianism and the LP to others, it sadly hits close to home.

(from a comment at this thread)

And another comment from that same thread:

Jack:

If you want to change the LP, then become active in it, go to the party meetings, get your friends/relatives/co-workers and other people you consider sane to join, etc.

I have been active. Candidate 3 times, an the state convention, some other stuff.

By discretion I mean tossing out the wackos when they expose themselves, and without weasle words like, ‘we abhore their desire to fight duels and eat people, though we do support their right to voluntarily contract to do so”.

Please.

While I think libertarianism as a political philosophy fits best with both the good and bad aspects of human nature, I also think, as with every other philosophy, when you take it to the extreme it ceases make any sense.

Nut jobs advocating duels, incest and canibalism need to be publically ejcted from any local LP they belong to, and their affiliation loudly rejected should they claim it.

I am wondering if a new party is needed. Libertarian leaning, but with rational application to real human nature, not to some sort of idealized cyber-logical version of human nature.

Just as socialism treats people as mechanistic insects that can be used and disposed of at need, (especially when taken to it’s logical extremes of communism and fascism), libertarianism treats people as programmable boolean logic gates, that will automatically behave in certain ways when the correct initial environment is set up.

Both are irrational at the fringes. One by treating people as insects and machines, the other by treating them as computers.

The Quantum Zeno Effect

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Here’s something pretty cool…

Put a particle into an excited state. Then in a time very short compared to the lifetime of the excited state (i.e. so the probability of having decayed back to the ground state is very, very low) check to see if the particle is still in the excited state. This will collapse the wavefunction and (almost always, because you picked the timing that way) guarantee the particle is in the excited state. Rinse, lather, repeat, and you can keep the particle in the excited state indefinitely.

But what’s really cool is that you don’t have to do an active test (i.e. see if the particle is in the excited state) — a passive test works just as well. For example, you can send in a photon that can only be absorbed if the particle is in the ground state.

So you can basically keep the particle in the excited state by doing almost literally nothing — after all, in theory you could use photons that you were planning to use for something else. And since almost none of them will ever be absorbed, you can still use the photons for whatever else you were doing, but with the side-effect of keeping the particle excited.

Pretty neat.

Who says taxes are boring?

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A question from a client, related in a tax professionals’ mailing list:

Client: Our new German shepherd was playing with his rope toy upstairs and crashed through the window and fell into the tree.

Tax Pro: So you want to know if you can get any deduction for replacing the window?

Client: Actually, we were wondering if we could take any loss for the dog–he had internal injuries and torn tendons and the vet bill is going to be
$6,500.

Sweeps week at NPR?

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I made the mistake of listening to NPR today, and they were talking about the high winds plaguing Colorado today. After talking about the “hurricane-force winds” hitting CO (which turn out to actually be 30mph with gusts to 90), the reporterette doing the piece puts on her over-dramatic voice and comes out with this gem:

Differences in air pressure are causing these winds.

As opposed to what, phlogiston currents?

Fewer globies to kick around

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From Jurkowitz’s media log at the Phoenix:

The roster of those leaving the newsroom include Travel editor Wendy Fox, pop culture writer Renee Graham, feature writer Jack Thomas, op-ed page editor Nick King, editorial writer Susan Trausch, classical music critic Richard Dyer, New York bureau chief Tatsha Robertson, obit writer Tom Long, theater critic Ed Siegel, business writer Charlie Stein, music writer Steve Morse, sports media writer Bill Griffith, arts writer Maureen Dezell, and op-ed columnist Tom Oliphant.

While no tears at seeing Oliphant leave, how the heck can you have some of those others leave (like Graham, Stein, or Griffith) and still keep employing a bigot like Derrick Jackson?