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Reminder: Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast Posted: 07 Jan 2011 01:00 PM PST Come join my next "Rationally Selfish" webcast! It's on Sunday morning at 8 am PT / 9 am MT / 10 am CT / 11 am ET. You can watch the webcast and join in the text chat on the web page of Rationally Selfish. Greg Perkins of Objectivist Answers will be my audio co-host once again... although you might just see him in the video this week! In the webcast, I answer questions on practical ethics and the principles of living well. Each week, I select the most popular and interesting questions from the queue. Please submit your questions, as well as vote and comment on questions that you find interesting. Happily, the question widget on Rationally Selfish is working again, but you can still use the web site of Idea Informer if you prefer that. Here are the questions that I'll answer this week: Why do you think most women typically have disdain for men who are 'too nice'? If a husband cheated on his wife, and she never knew about it, he never got anyone pregnant, and he never got any STDs, would she be harmed? If so, how? Is lying to protect one's own privacy moral or not? Many people regard lies to protect their own privacy as justifiable, even necessary. For example, a woman might tell her co-workers that she's not seeing anyone, even though she's dating the boss. She might tell those co-workers that she didn't get a hefty end-of-year bonus, even though she did. She might tell a nosy acquaintance that she didn't want children, rather than reveal her struggles with infertility. Is that wrong -- or unwise? How could the woman protect her privacy in those circumstances without lying? How can Diana and Greg 'co-exist' with their difference regarding the question of personhood at/before birth, as seen in the December 19th webcast? I ask this especially in light of the discussion in the December 28th webcast of reality being binary. One of you is wrong on the personhood issue and the issue is so fundamental, I could never tolerate a dispute at this level with a close friend. How should we act towards others with poor conceptual habits? How should one act towards others who consistently refuse to use some concepts properly? For example, those who call margarine "butter" despite the drastic difference in their chemical makeup. From Objectivist Answers: Is there a proper policy on keeping lost property? If one were to find property that had been lost, is there a proper policy which would allow the finder to keep it? The most common example is finding an envelope full of money. Is one even morally obligated to report that he has found it? (Suppose that the owner cannot be immediately located, even with a decent amount of effort.) Questions that aren't answered this week will remain in the queue for me to answer in upcoming webcasts. So please go vote on questions that you find interesting -- or submit your own question. You can listen to these webcasts later as NoodleCast audio-only podcasts by subscribing in iTunes to either the enhanced M4A format or the standard MP3 format. The live webcast is a good bit of fun, so I recommend that you stop by as your schedule permits. I appreciate the immediate feedback -- serious comments, funny comments, and follow-up questions -- in the text-based chat during the broadcast. It's a lively get-together! Also, you can support the Rationally Selfish Webcast (and Podcast) contributing to our tip jar. I suggest $5 per episode, but any amount is appreciated. If you would prefer to send a check, please send it to "Diana Hsieh; P.O. Box 851; Sedalia, CO 80135." Please write "RS Webcast" in the memo field. If you're unable to contribute financially, I'd appreciate your helping me spread the word about this webcast to anyone you think might be interested. You can, for example, "like" the Rationally Selfish Page on Facebook. See you on Sunday morning!

Hsieh Washington Times OpEd: Best Health Care Political Pull Can Buy Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:00 AM PST The January 6, 2011 Washington Times published my latest OpEd, "Best Health Care Political Pull Can Buy". My theme is that unless ObamaCare is repealed, it will foster the wrong kind of health care competition. Here's an excerpt: When President Obama signed his health care plan into law, he promised it would foster "choice and competition." Nine months later, Americans can count this as another Big Lie. Obamacare has instead reduced competition in the marketplace for health services... Yet while Obamacare is suppressing genuine marketplace competition for medical services, it is also spurring a more sinister facsimile of competition -- for political favors... (Read the full text of "Best Health Care Political Pull Can Buy".) I'd like to thank the organization Docs4PatientCare.org for helping to facilitate publishing this article -- especially Dr. Hal Scherz and Dr. Richard Armstrong. And I'd like to thank Diana Hsieh, Ari Armstrong, and Brian Schwartz for their help in editing my early drafts of this OpEd. Update: Thank you, Instapundit, for the link!

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