UNR Students for Liberty » Random

Friday Afternoon Lulz: America. F. Yeah.

Barry Belmont — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:40:55 +0000

How to Write a Manifesto

Barry Belmont — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:21:55 +0000

Apparently I’m too Qualified?

Barry Belmont — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:15:25 +0000

During my tenure here at the University I’ve worked with some excellent people at truly wonderful jobs. [You can find out more about them here.] And I’ve always been paid quite well by my standards (after all, I wouldn’t agree to do the job if they were shortchanging me). However, now that I’m a faculty member I get paid ridiculously well: let’s call it somewhere in the ball park of $3x per hour. Which suggests that my time is worth something to somebody.

Now, for the past year or so, I worked three jobs simultaneously, and two of them were as technical editors for engineering departments. These two positions were apparently required to match one another’s contractual obligations to me for a slew of state and federal reasons: something around the area of $1x per hour (an amount I considered more than generous).

However, now that I am making three times the amount at my current job, I am no longer allowed to work at my technical editing job, even though I have stated time and time again that I am more than willing to work for $1X an hour. The people in charge of the payroll stuff say it is for my own protection, claiming the rules are in place so that I am not “abused” financially. They even went so far as to state that I was “over-qualified” for the position according to the income that I am currently making.

So unfortunately for both me and a department of engineering here on campus, I ‘legally’ cannot edit academic papers. These rules, likely in place for the best of intentions, have merely caused a loss on both sides of the market, making everyone just that much less prosperous. The gap that exists between suppliers and demanders in a market is more often caused by the good intentions of ill-informed people than by the ‘greedy’ parties on either side. Just because I want experience, money, and to foster relationships with my colleagues and just because my former bosses want tight prose, professional typesetting, and well-rounded papers should not in the least make either of us criminals.

In fact it mostly will just drive the market underground. Unless of course any engineers (or highly, highly intelligent other people) want a sweet free job editing papers?

Analog Dilemma: A Site

Barry Belmont — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 06:15:27 +0000

With a new year, comes a new blog. I’m branching out a bit beyond the bounds of libertarianism and as such feel I need to branch out a bit beyond the bounds of this website. So I hope I can entice a few of you to come over and check out a side project of mine.

The Rise of Corporate Bullshit

Barry Belmont — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 19:20:58 +0000

I’m telling you this Ngram viewer from Google is awesome. This comes from the Not Exactly Rocket Science blog over at Discover magazine.

…also if you’re interested in tracking the rise of the Rickroll…check out the trending of the words “never gonna give you up.”

Let’s Imagine…

Barry Belmont — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:03:14 +0000

Let’s imagine a world where there is no such thing as an objective truth about any topic of political philosophy. What would such a world look like? I pose this question not out of ridicule (or at the very least, not solely out of ridicule) against those who would support its lines of reasoning, but rather to highlight that indeed objective (if, provisional) truths on a whole realm of political charged topics do exist.*

The World

There is no yes, there is no no, at least not as legitimate postulates. There is no right, there is no wrong, at least not as far as conclusions can be drawn. There is no agreement or disagreement, at least not in any meaningful sense.

The world is grey with ambivalence. Though the skies rain, whether this is good for the agricultural market for the coming year, no one can say. Graphs (of drab grey) point both up and down to signify gains and to categorize losses, for markets are tied to political truth, of which nothing can be objectively stated.

As one market leans on another and another on another, we see that there is nothing to be known of economics, not really. Not when one can use that data to point to implications on public policy. Quantitive analysis, qualitative analysis, it all can be determined, all a figment of some giants imagination. Though, who’s to say the giant is right? We must doubt our own illusions are illusions.

Secretaries and accountants take the day off, what is there to do if there is so little for people to know, to decide upon? If tax policy is merely a matter of opinion, having no truth in the actual world, why not throw our loose change in the air with our pocket lint? It will all trickle down with the rain, feeding everybody.

Human rights, global warming, tort reform — words splayed meaningless by The Man (though he may be a woman). You see it really all is just a matter of opinion.

In fact, what is there for any of us to be really right about? You have your opinion — and that’s cool man (or maybe woman) — and I’ve got mine and they’re really not so different. They both line of up with reality equally the same. I say orange and you say green and the waiter brings us peas and carrots. We’re both saying the same thing.

You see, there ain’t no difference between yes and no. Because there ain’t no outside for us to know. Unless of course we say there is. Cause it’ll be True For Me, and that’s all that matters right?

No truths for the world, for reality? All there is know about anything is what we know about anything. We say it out loud and suddenly, poof — R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The immunization of my words from that harsh mistress. Swaddled in my brain and protected in my voice — free as a goose wrapped in a down blanket.

As free from criticism as it is to be accepted. A thought, a truth from the only mind to think it true, planted in the world to bloom (or to die) depending on who you ask.

Which could be me. And I’d tell you I see the world a little differently. And you might disagree. And regardless of the way that world really looks, regardless of how I’ve really described it: we’d both be right.

–

*This should not be confused with me claiming to know what each of these truths are. For this discussion I merely posit that such truths are in fact real.

Mirror for Wikileaks

John Russell — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:33:04 +0000

The UNR Students for Liberty are now an official mirror for wikileaks: http://wikileaks.unrforliberty.com We are one among the thousands of other sites listed on their official list at: http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors.html I leave the rationale as to why we did this to representative Ron Paul:

The Current State of Journalism

John Russell — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 04:28:45 +0000

UN to Appoint Earth Contact for Aliens

Barry Belmont — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:56:52 +0000

Taken from news.com.au.

THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earths first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN’s little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before – and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.

During a talk Othman gave recently to fellow scientists, she said: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.

When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”

However, he thinks humanity’s first encounter with any intelligent aliens is more likely to be via radio or light signals from a distant planet than by beings arriving on Earth. And, he suggests, even if we do encounter aliens in the flesh, they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent.

To Lighten Up The Mood Around Here…

UNR Student For Liberty — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 02:07:45 +0000

Barry, somewhat awkwardly, informed me that a certain keyword, when entered into Google in the Reno area, displays our webpage on the front results.

…and it turns out if that’s not your thing, you can always check out the girls going wild…