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skap35

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Everything posted by skap35

  1. Incorrect. Entropy is simply a measure of disorder. It doesn't matter whether the system is inanimate or not. You are probably thinking of the fact that the term "entropy" was originally introduced in thermodynamics. Here is a page that describes entropy as it applies to this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entropy.
  2. I agree that property rights should be respected here. However, the real problem I have is this. Say I had a non-profit that went around educating people on the evils of Islam. If I bought the lot across the street from the mosque and wanted to build an "educational center teaching the evils of Islam," the zoning board would turn me down instantly. I think the morally superior way to try and stop this mosque would be to put significant pressure on the zoning board to allow exactly that type of response.
  3. I know that Omaha Steaks is doing very well today. My wife keeps bugging me to start buying our meat from them. Apparently it's really top quality stuff.
  4. I know the Democrats have been making that accusation, but that just isn't logical. 1. DeMint is projected to win regardless of who won the Democrat primary. 2. This is a year when Republicans are the favorites. Given those two factors, it isn't at all logical that the Republicans would resort to such measures when the election is basically a lock. He isn't a plant. There is the possibility of voting machine malfunction, which I find hard to believe given the simplicity of the code behind voting machines. Personally I think the issue has more to do with the stupidity of Democrat voters. They didn't like the mainstream guy so they decided to vote for the no-name guy instead, without bothering to do research...
  5. I was doing some work in our SQL database at work and noticed that one of our clients has an address listed on "John Galt Blvd." I thought that was incredibly cool, so I looked up the street and found this article: http://www.inc.com/magazine/19971015/1477.html. It seems that John Galt Blvd. is full of quite a few promising companies. Looks like there is a commercial developer out there in Nebraska who knows a thing or two about business and Objectivism.
  6. :lol: HA! HA! The left plays the race card, yet again. Is anyone here honestly surprised by that?? Fortunately, they have overplayed that hand so much that the word "racist" rightfully gets nothing more than a roll of the eyes and a good laugh. The big R word is nothing but an act of desperation from the left. Rand Paul had such a powerful showing in the primary that they truly fear him.
  7. I don't completely agree with this. Of course there was a time when far fewer people had bachelor's degrees, which made it more impressive on a resume. But can you point to ANY time in history when having a bachelor's in mass communications EVER meant anything? What universities have done to get more of that government money, is to simply create a selection of fake majors. Things like mass communications, african studies, women's studies never would have existed fifty years ago because no one would spend all that cash on something so useless. All the idiots you refer to just go into these degree programs. This may dilute the value of a bachelor's degree in general, but it has had no effect at all on "real" majors. Engineering, medicine, law, and business do not produce idiots with degrees. If a university graduate builds a bridge that falls down, it will reflect poorly on the university. You can get away with handing out degrees in other fake majors, but schools won't do that as much for degrees that require a quantifiable level of competence. At my university, the freshmen class in the engineering college were all complete idiots. You could tell very quickly who would survive and who wouldn't. They had two levels of classes designed to weed out the idiots. The freshman first year track would get rid of the first round. Then they had one operating systems class that would filter out a huge number of them. I believe the dropout rate in the engineering college was something like 60%. These students would either drop out completely or go into information systems (the fake version of computer science).
  8. Instead of "stealing" the bikes, why couldn't they just run a bomb-sniffing dog up and down the streets?
  9. How is it suggesting violence? The mere existence of a militia does not imply that the members intend to get violent. Similarly, just because I own a gun doesn't mean I intend to go kill someone. I own a gun for my own protection. Those citizens want to form a militia for their own protection. I don't see anything wrong with that.
  10. Why do you have a problem with this? The second amendment is very clear on the right to form a "well regulated militia." As for the Texas comments, I don't believe that he was even serious. That was obviously just political theater.
  11. As a homeowner within the city limits, I don't have a right to improve my property unless a city bureaucrat approves of it. I'm trying to build a fence this spring and I have to go through all kinds of crap to get it done. I have to file a permit, an inspector has to approve how deep I dig the post holes, the fence can't be over six feet high, etc. Don't get me started on the idiotic restrictions I have to go through for building a shed. Why does the city care if my shed is more than five feet away from the "primary" structure? Forget what the property title states, I don't "own" my house, I just rent it from the city.
  12. We had it as assigned reading back in high school and I thought it was really good. But that was so long ago I can't for the life of me remember anything from the book. I'll have to re-read it at some point now. (Incidentally, we also had Ayn Rand (Anthem) as assigned reading in high school. You don't hear of too many public schools requiring students to read Rand... )
  13. What's truly sad is when I read Obama's quote it sounds like a good thing. But in Obama's mind I should take the above statement to be the ultimate outrage. Thanks to the Democrats, they could bully any industry of their choosing and those businesses would be effectively muzzled; it was illegal for them to even give a rebuttal to the Democrat talking points. THAT is what is un-American. But thankfully the playing field has finally been leveled. With all the Democrat talk about passing new laws to override SCOTUS, what has John McCain said about all this? Since it was his bill that was overturned, is he as "outraged" as the Democrats?
  14. Just for fun, I decided to switch to MSNBC and see how they would try to spin this. It was HILLARIOUS!!!! Chris Mathews talking about how "dems didn't lose because people don't like healthcare. The Dems lost because they weren't liberal enough." He actually said that the only way they can turn things around is if they just ram healthcare through reconciliation. And that it would convince people to vote Democrat in November. He actually thinks the way to fix this is to get EVEN MORE extreme! How out of touch can these people get?!?!
  15. This made my day! I'm watching Coakley's concession speech right now. Oh the irony...Ted Kenedy's old seat is the deciding vote that stops Obamacare!
  16. That is true. I had a professor who quoted Ayn Rand in a lecture on ethics. The course was in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, which is actually grounded in reality. Any classes I had in the College of Liberal Arts never mentioned Rand specifically, but the philosophies expressed by those professors were clearly anti-Objectivist. I think the rejection has more to do with the specific discipline and isn't necessarily academia in general. Objectivism is probably accepted much more in engineering, hard science, and business colleges than it would be in humanities. One criticism that was explained to me was that Rand is viewed as a fiction writer since most people first encounter Objectivism through Atlas Shrugged. Apparently it doesn't matter that she has a lot of nonfiction work explaining Objectivism. If you ever write a fiction book, you can't be a philosopher. That clearly doesn't hold water but that was the explanation I received.
  17. That movie was just a rip off of a Captain Planet episode. Seriously, I think I already saw that exact storyline in at least 10 other liberal movies! I did find it hilarious when But then there was the big plot hole where the And the other plot hole: Just out of principle I was rooting for the "evil" military guys the whole time. They really made absolutely NO attempt to make the storyline original. I will say that the graphics were really good though. Just seeing the trailer probably wouldn't do it justice. We saw the 3D version and it was really well done. It's a shame that the graphics had to be dragged down by such a lousy, recycled plot.
  18. His website seems to be partially down. I can get to the main page but not any of the articles. Based on the headlines on the main page, it sounds like his blog is just a giant monument to how "intelligent" he thinks he is. He thinks he's so smart because english was easy for him to learn? Oh I'm so smart because I speak French and Latin as well. He also seems to think he's morally superior to most other people because he thinks sex should only be used for reproduction and not for pleasure. Question: is he some kind of really big loser who never had a girlfriend? I find that people with that attitude about sex tend to be the type that have trouble finding women... I completely feel your pain though! I was stuck with a total douchebag roommate and, being a poor college student, I didn't have much choice but to just deal with it. At least this guy isn't damaging your property though. My roommate, knowing that I had several servers running in my room, would purposely turn off the circuit breaker before he left for the day. Another funny fact about the guy: his major goal in life was "to become a cameraman who works on the major hollywood movies. Then I can move out to California and be able to go to the 'sophisticated' parties that they have out there and pick up 'high class' girls." That's the kind of fantasy a 12 year old would have! Just like your idiot roommate, mine also thought he was very intelligent and would constantly try to lecture me about why I was a "loser" because I studied all the time and he went to parties. It's a horrible position to be stuck in, but I know exactly what you're going through. Just get out as soon as you can!
  19. Digitally Imported Radio - Trance channel http://www.di.fm/mp3/trance.pls Sometimes about this time of night I also listen to Clark Howard.
  20. This was mentioned on Fox News the other day. My understanding is that the (obviously liberal) judge threw a hissy fit because the bank refused to allow a cram down, so he just erased the entire balance.
  21. Do NOT get an associates in Java. I am a programmer and I can tell you that if you want to get a decent job as a developer, the ONLY degree that will qualify is a bachelors in Computer Science or similar engineering field. Also, as Bourcet mentioned, employers generally do not look for just one technology. If you would be happy doing things like PC repair or tech support then the associates in IT would provide better job prospects. I have hired two programmers since I started at my company and we passed over a lot of resumes that had an associates listed. At least a bachelors to get your foot in the door and a masters later on if you want to advance beyond a mid-level position. Also make sure you get into a program that isn't going to teach JUST Java. One of the most important technologies you will be REQUIRED to know as a developer is SQL. Based on your post, it sounds like you aren't able to be out of work long enough to get a bachelors. One thing you could do is get the associates in IT. Then later on get your bachelors in Computer Science. Just make sure you go to a community college that will transfer easily to your local 4-year university.
  22. [rant] Hey, this is America. In this country if you can't pay for something yourself, you just bitch about it until your congressman introduces a law forcing productive people to pay for it. I have the "right" to a free house (I can't pay my mortgage so I'll just use the ballot box to steal the money from you fellow Objectivists ). I have the "right" to free electricity, too. So I'll just exploit the Ohio law that prevents my power from getting shut off during the winter months because I might freeze to death . I'll just stop paying my electric bill in October, so my power company gets screwed and is forced to give me free power for six months. I also don't need to worry about DP&L putting a power limiter on my electricity because those are illegal to use during the winter. Don't forget free transportation! It would be a horrible violation of my "rights" if I were forced to ride a bike or (god forbid) walk somewhere. Time to bitch to my congressman to steal the money from someone else. And of course we can't forget free health care! I can't pay the ER bill when I get drunk and fall down the stairs so I'll just make those evil rich people pay for it. Hey, I'm the average American and you need to feel sorry for my plight. The 1st of the month is very busy for me. First I need to stop by the welfare office, then I directly proceed to the liquor store and then finish up my day by picking up a 50-bag from my dealer. Time to head back to my section 8 housing to sit on my ass while I receive free electricity, chatting away on my free cell phone. [/rant]
  23. Wow. My wife and I just finished watching Paranormal Activity. What a crappy, horrible movie. That was the first movie in a long time that I was actually on the verge of falling asleep. It consisted of nothing but 1.5 hours of watching two people sleep. Not only that, but they were too cheap to even add a back story. The demon is haunting this girl but there is no explanation of why or how it started. The whole concept is that scary things are happening at night so the couple sets up a camera in the bedroom to catch whatever is happening. So you end up sitting there for most of the movie watching them sleep. The movie gives you the courtesy of telling you when something scary is about to happen as well. While they are sleeping the timer on the bottom corner is speeding along. As soon as it slows to real time, you know that it's time for something stupid to happen. Oh, and when you're not watching them sleep, you're just watching them make coffee or do their homework. The only good points I would give this is that there were a few funny scenes. In one scene The other funny scene was when I think I spent more time staring at the ceiling than watching the actual movie.
  24. It looks like that group you created scared him off Facebook completely. I was starting to wonder when I stopped getting all his odd posts on my news feed. He seems to no longer even have an account, although the Objectivist Party group still exists.
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