Chris.S

I still don't think this is proper. Say a "violent environmental extremist" group blows up an oil pipeline in Alberta, B.C. or Alaska (this has happened already). David Suzuki, who in this instance has no relation to the violent environmentalists, comes along and buys that exact property area or even a piece 500m away from the destroyed pipeline. On it he decides to build an environmentally-friendly, LEED Gold Seal certified treehouse for the purpose of extolling the virtues of environmentalism and marijuana use. Do the principles used to block construction in the NYC mosque situation also apply to this situation? Both ideologies are anti-man. Both have violent sects or groups bent on exerting their ideas by force. Both have people that at least on the surface, want to live in harmony with other people and bought that destroyed property with the same intent. Unless it can be shown that Suzuki helped fund the bombers or offered advice on how or where to blow the pipeline, or even said, "that pipeline should be blown to bits", I don't think governments should step in and stop the construction, even with zoning laws. The fact that building such a treehouse will give environmentalists a boner and yet is an insult to the oil company and productive oil-lovers everywhere shouldn't have any bearing on the decision to use force by the government to stop a voluntary and legitimate use of property.

Hell yeah, Zip. Being a student, I'm on a tight budget, but I would make it for sure.

There still has to be evidence that a person in your country (or any country) is acting for or with the help of the enemy. In this case, the enemy abides by "fundamentalist totalitarian Islam", and those countries or groups are mainly Iran, but also Lebanon, Turkey, Hamas, Taliban, etc. Even Yaron Brook separates "regular" Muslims from "fundamentalist-totalitarian" Muslims. When that evidence is put forward, ie that the funding for the mosque was wholly or partially funded through Iran or other such groups, then those individuals should be treated as enemies of the state, not mere criminals. Of course, in the long term, the ideological enemy is religion in general, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism - as well as Islam. But in the short term, it's "fundamentalist Islam" which is the immediate threat to life and liberty here in the West and the rest of the world (including Iranians themselves). When and if the US and NATO wages war on those countries, they need to use the help of as many Western sympathizers (I know many such people in Maldives) as possible, just like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. What I take from that FB conversation is that many of those people (minus Mrs. Hsieh) are arguing that the West wages war against all Muslims and suspends their rights, regardless of their actions, here in Western countries. I would think the FBI or CIA, even the Israeli intelligence, would have evidence of the funding or connections of that mosque and come out with it by now. If they don't have evidence, why not? If they do have evidence, why haven't they come out with it?

I wish I saw this when it was first posted. It is pretty heartening that "abolish taxes" is first place at 34% of the vote, but I wonder what sort of demographic reads that website (this is the first I've heard of it). Gives me hope that a career in politics campaigning for freedom wouldn't be wasted.

A "back to top" button under each person's post would be nice. I really liked that feature.

There's already a link in Diana's post to the FB conversation.

Don't forget your towel.

There wasn't enough of Flynn or Brook or audience questions on that show to have really been entertaining, but I guess it'll boost sales for both featured books.

This is a members only video. The other one about financial stuff can be viewed by registered users (and I submitted the last question answered in that one!).

This is how a few of my friends who are "educated" in political science (at WLU), define rights. After awhile of arguing against this thinking, I have to retire from the discussion because they can't or refuse to understand anything from a natural or individual rights perspective.

Yeah, Marion's line at the end was a big suckerpunch. It's like she was celebrating the fact that they went from tyranny of a single man to tyranny of the collective. Mixing the two themes, individual liberty through law with collectivism is plain stupid, but I give them the benefit of a doubt in that maybe they meant every one has equal opportunity and the ability to excel based on individual merit. But it almost killed the movie for me.

Question for clarity: those percentages relate to the number of people that disagree with the statements on the left, correct? Question for lulz: what happens if a person labels himself "progressive conservative"? does the test explode? ** there used to be a Progressive Conservative party here, now just the Conservative party (right of center). Then there is the Liberals (left of center), then the New Democratic party (far left, socialists).

Litigation procedures and tactics are a separate issue than the oil spill. Simply drilling for oil cannot be perceived as a threatening action worthy of any government interference until it infringes on others' property or life. All future occurrences or accidents can't be accounted for and should not be handled by the law until they exist. Until then, prevention of accidents is the prerogative of the property owner doing the action to first mitigate his own loss of property and life, then others. Usually this actually means taking extra precautions to avoid damages to others (for example, Factors of Safety in engineering). However, in cases where these precautions failed, a decision on criminality and due cost has to be handled by courts after the fact.

Sorry this took so long, but here it is: http://philosophy.meetup.com/280/?a=wm1_gn I haven't yet been to a meeting (I'm actually extremely nervous to go), but it seems to be a decent group from the Meetup page.

It's my understanding that with the current ownership and rules of the road, it does count as initiation of force, which is why the police can step in. If the road was actual private property, it would depend on the property owner's rules. Is driving like that putting someone "at risk"? Yes, but it's not an initiation of force until property damage happens (a crash), or if the reckless driver is breaking the rules of a privately owned road. If someone is running fast on a sidewalk and waving their arms around crazily, they are putting others at risk of getting a punch in the face, but it's not a threat nor is it an initiation of force, until someone is hit. What if someone is driving extremely slowly on a fast moving highway? I'd say that's putting others' safety at risk too, but until a crash happens, then there hasn't been an initiation of force. What about cell phone use? Putting on make-up? Chatting in the car? All of these are "reckless" behaviours while driving, but it's the same argument that if something is "risky" then government should put a stop to it (at least it has with cell phone use).

Foreseeably, lighting a candle in your house could set the whole neighbourhood ablaze, but I don't think that's grounds for the government to implement fire-safety building codes dictating how a property owner can and cannot build on his property. Risky behaviour is not threatening behaviour, and this accident does not call for increased regulation regarding the oil industry (or any other industry).

Grats man. But remember to keep networking with people and stay informed on better opportunities for yourself. Sounds like a great start though

If you're applying to a line cook position as your first job in the restaurant industry, you're not going to get it unless you've gone to culinary school. From my experience, every newbie starts in the dish pit (or hosting, then moving to the dish pit or serving). From dishes, you go to prep; from prep, to cold line cook (salads, appetizers, pizzas, maybe desserts and other small dishes); from cold line to hot line (main dishes and calling orders). If you're really into culinary stuff, it's better to get in and learn there, even if it's at the bottom. And it's usually really easy to get in as a dishwasher because there's lot of turnover in restaurants.

The most difficult part about it would be raising the money needed for the resources to build the island. Generally speaking, its pretty easy to build an island once you have the capital. Take the Palm Islands in Dubai, or Maldives or even Toronto Island as examples. Filling 20m depths is chump change. And later on you might even have to re-excavate for a foundation if you want to build high on that island, right down into the seamount. Construction technology is pretty far along, and you can always think up something new for a new job

It would be nice to discuss things happening here or in the papers (specifically the Metro, I hate that paper, but I'm in contact with it daily), and Canada in general. There's also a Meetup group that meets every few weeks. I'm not sure how much I'd participate though.

Well, the short stories we've been covering in this course are all very vague with reasons for doing anything, and I suppose that's part of the reason for dissecting and discussing them. I would rather the authors were explicit and direct in what they're trying to tell, but then where would the art be? I'm not trying to say that art has to be vague or incomprehensible, but if say D.H.Lawrence just wrote "capitalism exploits and kills the working class", then it wouldn't be as fun arguing against his retarded symbolism in "The Rocking Horse Winner" with other students. And it would be a much shorter story (not that that's bad). Same idea with Chinua Achebe and his pro-African mystic tribalism. Back to "The Lady...": it's shown that they're both at the least eager for a better life among other things that aren't told or shown, which their current relationships don't offer. Being with each other offers that for them. And it's shown as genuine from the perspective inside Dmitry's thoughts, and in Anna's inability to handle the secrecy and deception. At the end, they both want to be honest with themselves and the world. I'd say that's a virtue. Besides that, we had limited topics to choose from, and this one offered me the best chance to practice argumentation from an Objectivist view. And this story and "How I Met My Husband" were the easiest to stomach out of the 15 or so we've covered

In trying to write an essay including these 3 concepts, I'm coming up blank on what the virtue is that acts to keep the values causing the emotional response of love. I know all virtues kind of stem from the ones listed in Galt's speech, but rather than listing all of those, I'm looking for a specific word that encompasses the act of pursuing or continuing a relationship long-distance, and then trying to find ways to be together permanently. Or would the actions taken to that end themselves just be virtuous in trying to keep values that make ones life better and happier? For more context, the essay is an analysis of Anton Chekov's short story, "The Lady with the Pet Dog".

Well, I wouldn't be so hopeless. We do have at least one party pushing for complete freedom, Freedom Party of Canada. I also read a news article the other day about political rumours about "overhauling" our own health care payment system. Complete freedom, at least right now, is out of the question, but apparently the idea of increasing privatization has been floated - as has been more rationing and higher taxation, unfortunately. However, these ideas are based on the fact that too much money will be going to health care in the next few years due to our aging population, not out of any moral. People need to get out and start discussion about the morality of freedom, and why the current system of altruism is killing us very slowly. Who knows? Given most Canadians' tendency to be seen as not-American or equal-to-but-opposite-than-American, this might actual cause an upswing in freedom while the US spirals down a bit (not that America's downfall is good by any means). Then all the freedom-lovers can come here and make it even more free. But I'm telling you, in a few years the time will be ripe, people will be fed-up with the system (I think many already are) and things will change, if slowly, for the better. I plan on catalyzing this process once I'm done school.

I've been wondering about this myself lately. I think it has to do with the fact that most people still just want to work and try and make a living, and just don't realize how much they're chained up to to serve everyone else. They just don't think about it. But when you point it out, people will often just spout out the usual stuff about it being good to help others etc. It's really the incrementalism that's killing the country. Every year there's a couple more things to be regulated, a couple more taxes to be paid, a couple more social programs to be funded. But then there are times where things get freed up just a tiny bit, like our cellular telecommunications industry, and people get excited about cell phone plans lowering by a few cents. And then attribute that positivity to government...even though the same government is responsible for new taxation that will raise our television bills. It goes back and forth by slight degrees, but inevitably in the direction of more government interference in peoples' lives. That's why it's important to get the word out about parties like Freedom Party of Canada. The problem there is that voters are so apathetic and disinterested in politics that voting is in the drain, which leaves politicians open to do whatever they want here. I don't really have much hope for this country if the current generation of 18-25 continue to threaten violence on public speakers like Ann Coulter and deny her freedom of speech due to our hate speech laws. Worst idea ever, that. Anyways, I think America might be in a deeper mess than we are up here.

If only there was a socialistectomy procedure...