Sooooooo, one more milestone down, about 250 experiments more to go. Better get cracking. Anyway, yay for me, blah blah blah. I’m excited.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

One more step toward a PhD…

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Tags: education, science

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When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8:3-9

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What is man, that you are mindful of him?

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Tags: science, video

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At any rate, I decided that I need to take a break this week from recording the Christianity and War Audiobook. This will give you a chance to get all caught up with everything thus far, and I’ll have a fresh podcast for you next Monday or Tuesday. For a glimpse at what life has been like here the past few weeks, see the following PHD Comic:

Actually, this isn’t quite accurate. My advisor *does* have confidence in my competence… Hehe.

By the way, here’s something else for you… A couple of people have asked me what the music is at the beginning of the podcast. That music, my friends, is by my favorite fingerstyle guitarist of all time: Michael Hedges. The song is called Ritual Dance. Incidentally, it was featured in the film August Rush, played by Kaki King (in the guise of the main character).

Michael died in a car accident in 1997, and thus the world lost one of the most innovative musicians of our time. He literally revolutionized the way guitarists practice their craft, and Michael’s work has influenced my own music quite a lot. He often was categorized as a “New Age” musician, but this is mainly because there really wasn’t a way to categorize him (and that he was on the Windham Hill label). Michael would often in response describe his music as “Heavy Mental”, “New Edge”, ““Acoustic Thrash”, “Deep Tissue Gladiator Guitar” or “Savage Myth Guitar,” amongst other terms. The wiki article says Michael was affectionately known as “The Guitarist from Another Planet.” yeah, he was a bit weird…

Here is the essential chronological discography of Michael Hedges with links to Amazon… I recommend every album but Road to Return, which is kinda kooky but has some great songs like Sister Soul and Communicate.

• Breakfast in the Field
• Aerial Boundaries (MP3) <– In my opinion, this is his best album.
• Watching My Life Go By (MP3)
• Taproot (MP3)
• Live on the Double Planet (MP3)
• Road to Return
• Oracle (MP3)
• Torched (published posthumously)
• Some compilations of his best stuff:
  • Beyond Boundaries
  • Pure Michael Hedges (MP3)
  • Platinum and Gold Collection (MP3)

You can also, of course, find many videos of him playing on Youtube. Most of them are live concert videos which prior to Youtube were extremely rare. It’s actually quite extraordinary that we have the opportunity essentially to watch and learn from the master himself whenever we want! Here’s one of my favorite songs, Aerial Boundaries, from a DVD Windham Hill made a while ago:

A toast to musical enjoyment!

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Taking the week off from recording the Christianity and War Audiobook…

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Tags: audiobook, comics, music, science

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It’s exactly 15 minutes and 30 seconds long, so I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen in. I noticed early on that I was not always clear in my pronoun references, oops! The majority of the time when I used the pronoun “they” I was referring to the government bureaucracy. Oh well, it’s still pretty good!

Please feel free to offer comments. I definitely would appreciate it! Enjoy!

Right click here to download the entire audio file. [mp3]

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My ASC 2009 talk is now available!

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Tags: ASC 2009, audio, economics, science

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• Acting in a very timely manner with my post yesterday, Nature reports that scientists are getting in line for their own part of the Obama stimulus package. And to top it off, these scientists think they should be planning the economy too: “The fact that we are invited to sit at the table with the economists when we are talking about the future of the US economy — it’s like a new day.” Pathetic.
• Republican Senator Rick Santorum continues to be an embarrassment to the decent conservatives everywhere, now even he is shilling for Obama. Quote: “There is an air of something big, something grand, something electric about to explode upon us. Barack Obama’s visage is everywhere. His relaxed and reassuring – even beatific – smile is omnipresent. So are his irrepressibly cute girls and their together mom.” Eeeewwwww.
• Lew Rockwell writes about the plane crash yesterday and the heroic pilot.
• Scott Ritsema (recent guest poster) reports that the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights has been effectively repealed by the Supreme Court, and by the SC “conservatives” no less. Will the nonsense ever stop?
• My wonderful friend Jaired writes about how the UN may try to interfere with parents and their children.

Now for some fun link goodness…

• Two of my favorite web personalities, Leo Babaua and Tim Ferriss, come together for an interview.
• Extremely geeky flash game (for my brother).

Last but not least, this is an insanely funny video of a gal who has only seen “bits and pieces” of the Star Wars trilogy trying to retell the story. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, so I laughed my socks off.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

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Speedlinking and fun stuff for January 16

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Tags: bailouts, conservatism, constitution, Obama, science, speedlinking

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My paper this year has to do with science and economics again. The talk will be called “Science and the Free Market: How the Government Distorts Scientific Research Through Public Funding.” Here’s the abstract:

Scientific advancement is said to be limited in the free market because no incentives exist to encourage fundamental research, and therefore the government should intervene by funding worthy scientific endeavors at national laboratories and universities through taxation of individuals and businesses. This assumption is not only based upon a flawed understanding of economics, but also introduces numerous problems in the production of scientific knowledge. As with all socialistic means of production, publicly-funded scientific research is subject to the Misesian calculation problem, the Hayekian knowledge problem, and perverse incentives, as well as other problems unique to scientific research such as ownership of knowledge and profits, political agendas masquerading as good science, and moral hazards and ambiguities. The conclusion is that publicly-funded research should be eliminated in favor of free market-sponsored research, and in this paper a model is proposed to answer objections to free market sponsorship.

Tune in on March 14th to the Mises Institute’s webpage and you will be able to see me give the talk live. I’ll remind you again as the time draws near.

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Austrian Scholars Conference 2009

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Tags: ASC 2009, economics, Mises Institute, science

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