Bryan

Right to life is more than simply the right to be alive. It means the right to live (or not live) your life in any way you see fit. Any restrictions on your property rights or liberties infringe upon you basic right to life. For example, if someone dictates to me what I can and can't do with my own property, they are encroaching upon by ability to live my life in the way I desire.

Getting drunk is immoral. It impairs your judgement and ability to think rationally (along with all the other negative physical effects). How drunk is drunk? Have you ever drank to the point where you've blacked out for several hours? Have you ever been so drunk that you can't stop your hands shaking the next day when you sober up? In multiple scenarios, getting drunk can kill you. This is "slightly" more serious than making you "slur when you talk and not have really great motor skills". Of course drinking doesn't "make" you do anything, but, at the very least, stops you from "making" proper decisions. Alcohol is just as serious a drug as cocaine or heroine. The only reason it's legal is because it's "socially" acceptable.

Sorry it took me so long to respond, somehow your post slipped under my radar. Your plan sounds good, 10 pages a night sounds like a fair pace, as my schedule is pretty full too. So I'm officially on board. BTW: I finally got Half-Life 2 last night, amazing game. Visually though, it's no Doom 3 .

Not from his TV show, from his radio show, he was talking about school vouchers. I didn't know what a school voucher was so I searched the internet for information about them. In my search, I stumbled upon capmag.com. The columns on there blew my mind and the rest is history . I agree with you whole-heartedly about Hannity being a republican party lap-dog, but the same could be said for pretty much every conservative on AM radio or on Fox News. You have to take them all with a grain of salt, or perhaps an entire shaker of salt.

Interesting that you like O'Reilly but not Hannity. I'm just the opposite. Both of them are "blow-hards" though. I'm a little partial to Hannity because I discovered Ayn Rand indirectly as a result of listening to his show.

The ideal implementation of government is a democratic republic, where elected officials vote for the people they represent. For the most part, this is what we have in America. What do you mean by meritocratic? I've never heard this term before Also, there is nothing pseudo about that authoritarianism in Singapore. Just because the dictator there is semi-benevolent, it doesn't make him any less of a dictator. On a side note- to anyone who cares, g-mail has the greatest spell checker in the history of man.

I agree with you on both counts. With alcohol, the slope is just a lot more slippery. What's the moral amount of drinks to have in a sitting? One? Two? Three? Eighteen? For most people it's hard to tell.

I start my day with one 16 cup pot for the to break out of my morning groginess, and I drink another one through the course of the day.

I drink an immoral amount of coffee, meaning that I drink an amount that has a negative effect on my life. I think a better example would be anti-depressants.

The scale on the first graph is not a percentage, the units are degrees celsius (or Kelvin). The span of variation is only about a single degree. Looking at the annual average, the lowest variance looks like it was about 1861, the highest around 1999. Is a single degree of variance in average tempature over a period of 150 years of any significance at all??

Who was that? And what were his intentions in making an AS movie? Why did he give billions to the UN? In response to your previous post, how could somebody willing to rip off intellectual property also like AS enough to make a movie out of it?? edit: spelling

I'm not sure if you can draw too many strategic parallels between WWII and the wars that followed it. Towards the end of WWII, the US had two choice in dealing with Japan, they could blockade the island and starve them out or nuke them. Due to the geographical and political climates, they didn't have either of these options in Korea or Viet Nam.

I'm pretty sure I'm related to Methuselah.... I hope that I can still have kids when I'm 187 .

Maybe she misinterpreted the book and is aspiring to be James Taggart or Wesley Mouch .

These stories amaze me every time I hear them. I can't believe that they told you that your topic was "Eurocentric". In the context you described, it's an anti-concept designed to attack capitalism without even addressing it. I'm glad I've never had to deal with this kind of crap in college. I go to an engineering school that is, for the most part, apolitical.

How long did it take? I haven't met a girl that I really wanted to have a meaningful relationship with in a loooong time

For a blanket statement like no minor can rationally decide to have children, it must be true for all cases, not just the general case. I would agree with you that, in general, minors are not capable of making proper decisions on things that will affect the rest of their lives. Let's pretend a 17-year-old girl is married to a 21-year-old guy. The 21-year-old already has a successful career and the 17 year old is planning on staying home and raising the children. They have both been studying Objectivism since they were children and already have proper philosophies to guide their lives. Why can't she make the rational decision to have a kid?

I did not make the assertion, you did. You asserted that "[t]here is no way a 10-18 year-old can rationally decide to have children," but have not provided any evidence to why this is true. You are presupposing that all of the requirements that you have listed above could not be satisfied by a minor. I am simply saying that some minors could satify them.

Regardless of the necessary facts and context, it incorrect to say that ALL minors are incapable of making the decision. And how can you possibly imply that I'm not capable of making the decision? This seems reasonable, I just wanted to nail you down on a position .

This is simply not true. While it's true that most minors can not, there are some minors who can rationally decide to have children. Based on your ideas, who has the final say on whether or not a pregnant 17 year old has an abortion? What happens if the girl and the parents are in disagreement? edit: grammar

How was this image generated? What do the colors indicate, why is one green in the other blue? Is it a measure of brain activity? Blood flow? I've seen brain scans before, the images can be dramatic. But unless you are formally trained at what you are looking at, it doesn't have any legitimate meaning.

Not all opinions are arbitrary, just opinions that are not based on fact. What facts did you hold to be true that led you to the opinion that I am alleging a subjective reality? My speculation (read: opinion) is that you are confused about the definitions of fact and opinion. You seem to assume that an opinion must be based on a fact. By definition, an opinion is a belief. The basis for this belief can be anything. For example, a lot of people have the opinion that God exists. What is the basis for this opinion? Your guess is as good as mine.

An opinion is simply a belief (which may or may not be correct); a fact is indisputably true. As for your example, it used to be an opinion that the Earth was flat. It has been proven by observation that the Earth is essentially round, therefore it's a fact.

IMO, the objectively appropriate age for someone to decide whether or not to have an abortion is the same the legal age of consent. If 16 year olds can legally have sex, they can legally decide to abort a pregnancy.

After being exposed to imaginary/complex numbers several times over my educational career, they never conceptually "clicked" until I started taking electrical engineering courses. The easiest way for me to conceptualize complex numbers is to view them as two-dimensional vectors (a number with a magnitude and a direction). You can think of the pairs of numbers as "legs" of a right triangle, the real part being the horizontal leg, and the imaginary part being the vertical leg. The magnitude of the vector is simply the hypotenuse of the triangle. The sign of each number in the pair will define the vector’s direction.