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Rockefeller

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Everything posted by Rockefeller

  1. I am a beginner too, but I noticed that you haven't uploaded your eRepublik avatar yet. Doing that will give you 2 experience points! I know that from Plato's Tutorial, which could be found under the 'Info' tab.
  2. After reading recommendations by some Objectivists, yesterday I went to watch Julie and Julia. It turned out to be lively, delectable, and refreshing experience. The movie is based on two real life stories: one of an American cook Julia Child, who with her perseverance brought French cuisine to American homes, and the other of a blogger Julie Powell, who set herself a unique culinary challenge. Julia Child, as depicted in the movie, had a joyous and benevolent sense of life. Her flourished accent, her spontaneous humor, and her ability to find joy not only in her cooking but also in routine activities (like buying vegetables), were enough to make me sit straight and giggle. At one point in the movie, I wondered if she had been deliberately depicted as jocular (perhaps as an apology for depicting her heroism), but my doubts were dispensed with once I got home and saw real Julia Child on YouTube. Julie Powell's character had a slightly lesser appeal to me. She turns from a bored-at-work young woman to a determined sleepless soul firmly focussed on her newly-found goal. She does have a tendency to be guided by her emotions, but I think the movie expertly portrays her conflict, and how she overcomes it solely by her free will. For example, Food played a central part in the movie, but it was not over-depicted. Yummy close-ups were shown just at the right time to make your mouth watery. I personally loved that there was no violence, not even a swear word, even during the AMC commercials in the beginning. And when we entered the theater, it was full of really old folks - I and my friends must have been the only youth present. Some parts in the movie were a bit boring. Julie's office atmosphere, her friends, and her not-so-solemn talks about Julia being in her dreams, were trite and bland. I also had a bit of a trouble shifting my focus when the movie switched (back and forth) between the two stories. But overall, Julie and Julia is a rare movie about setting up your goals and achieving them, and it shows that in a lighthearted manner. EDIT: Removed some typos.
  3. I am a Producer. And my GM seems intelligent enough: he gave me a raise as soon as the job market offered a higher paying job for my skill level.
  4. Do you know if the resources can be discovered? On the 'Social stats' page under the 'Info' tab, if you click 'Details' for 'Svalbard & Jan Mayen', it says: P.S. It's OK to use this forum to discuss technicalities of the game, right?
  5. ... presuming they speak English! But oh yeah, Larry Page has gifted us with Google TranslateTM.
  6. Name: DzzL Location: Norway (Svalbard & Jan Mayen) Trying an MMORPG for the 2nd time! I joined before you posted
  7. I would consider Cornelius Vanderbilt a better role model. Yes, Rockefeller was the richest. However he started a craze of pholatherpy that only worsened altruism in the business community. And gave 1/10 of his money to the church. Eww...

  8. Within the context of health care debate, exposing his "true intentions" matters a lot. It highlights the logical conclusion - the end result of government interference. It destroys the pretense under which he is able to fool many people ("I am for Capitalism", "nobody is messing with private healthcare", etc.). It diminishes his credibility because his claims are blatantly contradicted by his own statements regarding single-payer universal health care.
  9. I liked the originality and creativity of the plot, but I didn't its style. One big thing that caused me headache was the "camera shake" in the entire movie - you know the handheld camera style filming. I call this kind "impressionist movies". Granted the handheld camera is consistent with documentary-mode . But the shaking didn't stop even after the movie switched to drama-mode! I also have a personal issue with abundant gory, dirty and yucky scenes in the movie - I can take gross stuff in a few scenes. But I wasn't ready for it in almost the entire movie. Regarding the plot, there were some elements of romanticism. Many of protagonist's actions were goal-directed. He achieved some success by thoughtful action, although some element of luck was introduced in many sequences. For example, Overall, as most people have already pointed out, the creativity and intensity are too rare to miss. It's a lot more than most movies offer. If you like intensive sci-fi action, you will surely enjoy this one but make sure you can take the camera-shake and gory stuff.
  10. Can you explain where does it say (in that quote), or even insinuate, that global warming is bad?
  11. In this sentence, "simultaneously" pertains to the action "exist" (a verb). 'Exist' serves the same role 'focus' serves in the example Lagroht provided. True, entities can exist simultaneously. But to form the concept of simultaneity, you must distinguish this possibility from the case of them existing non-simultaneously. In Lagroht's example, distinction was focus together vs. focus one-after-another, in this case it would be exist together vs. exist one-after-another.
  12. Theoretically, you are right that the concept of simultaneity can be formed just by looking around in a room. But I see two problems here. 1. Simultaneity pertains only to actions, not to entities. When you look around a room and form the concept of simultaneity, an abstraction is drawn not from actions of entities, but from actions of consciousness. However, the CCD is the still the same - duration. You focus together, or you focus one after another. 2. Conceptualization of actions of consciousness require a certain stage in child's development (ITOE, 2nd ed., p30). Therefore, I still think that actions of entities, such as "clock striking 12 + cuckoo coming out" are chronologically important in forming the concept of simultaneity. By the way, pointing out the hierarchical or chronological order of concepts does not amount to deriving a concept "from a linguistic definition".
  13. I have a different hypothesis, which is solely based on perception of entities and their spatial relationships. But I think the forum rules prohibit posting such "musings". (Mods?)
  14. Where does the article "blame" the ancient man for some evildoings? The article merely suggests that "activities of ancient man contributed to global warming". But, it is completely silent on whether global warming is good or bad. Ruddiman's hypothesis is that activities of ancient man caused an increase in CO2 due to burning of forest. That is a purely scientific issue, and has nothing to do with ethics or politics. The error that Ruddiman as well the article commit is associating CO2 increase with global warming - a completely unfounded claim. But that is a separate issue.
  15. I just received an email message from the President of University of Miami. It's about healthcare and contains some disturbing bits. Full message: http://www6.miami.edu/president/dialogue/d...e_08_18_09.html Since it is a "private" university, I don't mind if its administration takes stand on an issue. But being a student, it matters to me what stand is that. The UM President being "personally involved" in pushing lawmakers is a bad precedence. The whole thing is worse because she is probably very close to the Clinton household; if what I have heard is correct, she was appointed with some interference from Bill during his Presidency. At the end she is asking for comments and suggestions. Please send her your opinion (at [email protected]), especially if you have already prepared a short or long piece to pound another liberal. It doesn't matter whether you are from UM. Her messages are widely circulated - at least every university student, employee and faculty member receives them. Most of her messages are only related to UM football, though.
  16. You are confusing two separate questions: 1. What is the hierarchical order of the concepts "simultaneity" and "time"?, and 2. What do I need in order to know that 2 events are simultaneous? To answer 1, first notice that the concept of simultaneous-events is a narrower category of a wider concept: multiple-events. The commensurate characteristic (or the Conceptual Common Denominator) which is used to differentiate it from other multiple-events is duration. Simultaneous-events are multiple-events with duration equal to zero. It is a case of narrowing the range of a measurable characteristic to subdivide a concept. Above means that hierarchically simultaneity is above "duration" (which is above "time"). Incidentally, in this particular case the logical order of these concepts also turns out to be the chronological order in which a child grasps them. When a child observes "button pushed + bulb glows" or "clock striking 12 + cuckoo coming out", he grasps the concept of simultaneity only by differentiating them from other multiple-events. To do that he needs (implicit) grasp of duration (and thus time), which serves as the differentiating characteristic. I think I should have been more clear when I used the phrase "is based on". To answer 2, notice that you already need a concept of simultaneity in order to judge whether two events are simultaneous. Then you "only have to ... observe them". Man is born tabula rasa; all his concepts including time are grasped by the effort of his mind. The concept of time is grasped (implicitly) as soon as an infant makes the first integration of his sensations. He realizes that a particular sensation persists! But time is an axiomatic concept. It is not formed by differentiating one group of existents from others. But it is formed by an integration of all existents. Actions, entities, attributes persist for some time, but they may persist for any time. I just discharged 2,000,001 neurons in writing this response. An infant doesn't need to measure anything; he grasps concepts by measurement omission.
  17. Ahh, I love that word; it is so precise. That reminds me one of the problems in my textbook (8 years ago) was how to express [L M T] in terms of [h G c]. :nostalgia: Although the choice of units is contextual based on a given problem, but defining universal standards may only depend on the hierarchical level of concepts. For example to grasp velocity, one must first grasp length and time.
  18. Lagroht, The passing of that body through a given point may be repetitive, but how do you know that it is periodic (and thus a standard)? To know that it is periodic, you must relate it to other repetitive events. Now you will observe that some of them repeat a fixed no. of times for a given repetitions of this event. This is based on the concept of simultaneity, which is based on the concept of time. Thus, the concept of motion is derivative of the concept of time, and not the other way around. The unit of time has to be defined in terms of motion. This is because you cannot observe time directly. What you observe are entities and change in their spatial relationships. But to relate that change to motion, you must have the concept of time. The argument is similar to that for the concept mole. Moles are measured in terms of mass and number (of atoms). In the same way, time is measured in terms of length and number (of repetitions). But units of both mole and time are base units. edit: removed typos.
  19. I don't know what they are going to show. But I can imagine the movie opening with a metaphoric scene showing Atlas using all his energy to carry the burden of the earth. Then the opening credits with New York buildings, skyline etc. Then the story. Finally, during Galt's speech, when he talks about going on strike and Atlas shrugging, I'll return to the beginning scene and show Atlas calmly putting away the burden from his shoulders. I am not an artist and am not sure if this would count as good art.
  20. Facts don't matter to them. They have already "declared" global warming in 21st century, and are busy publishing papers on how a small town in East Africa is going to get affected by that. I always yell "false" whenever the 'viros' show an image of Katrina and put the caption global warming. [A Convenient] Truth is that the sensitivity of hurricane genesis to climate change is very less. This is mainly because the conditions in tropics - the birthplace of tropical storms - are least affected by the change of climate. Even during ice ages or warmer climate, historical records show that the tropics had similar climate as today. Year to year variability in tropical storms is largely caused by large scale ocean-atmosphere oscillations (e.g. El Nino). It is ridiculous to talk about a given storm being caused by climate change. Global warming alarmists use statements like "Category 4 and 5 hurricanes have almost doubled in the last 30 years" (Science section on 'An Inconvenient Truth' website). Noted scientists (like Kerry Emanuel) shamelessly back them up, knowing perfectly well about the uncertainty in observations then and now.
  21. Yes, I think the same. An owner possesses an old car is because it is still of value to him. If he sells it in the market (or for scrap), the little money he would make would be of less value to him than his "clunker". Cometh "Cash for Clunkers". The government offers him rebate on a new car if he sells his old car. In effect, he is offered more money on his old car than it is worth (to him). Whose money? The money extorted from the citizens of a country, especially those who have "too much". (Even if it is printed or borrowed money, it still amounts to real wealth being redistributed). Net results on the whole economy: 1. Money extorted from everyone to unjustly reward someone. 2. Wealth/products of mind being destroyed. 3. Incentive for intentionally destroying working cars. 4. An artificially created "bubble" in the industry. Above happens in some form or the other for every economic sector touched by the government.
  22. Zip, you are missing the point. My response was directed towards your argument that since Greenists "can't even predict the weather for next week", there is no way they can forecast the long-term climate change. I didn't say anything about "modeling our societies".
  23. Caution: This argument is fallacious. Greenists may turn it against you. Weather forecast has nothing to do with climate forecast. They are problems of two different scales. As an analogy, I can confidently forecast that six from now Boston is going to get colder (due to seasonal change), but I can't be so sure about 10 days from now.
  24. I think Peikoff's understanding is that the only people who have enough motivation to kill Valliant's book are Barbara Branden or her "claque". If that is true, he is right in persuading and motivating his listeners to speak up and prevent injustice to Ayn Rand. For example, what could be worse than the fact that under 'Philosophy' section on Wikipedia's article about Ayn Rand, there is a quote from Nathanial Branden that completely misrepresents what it means to be an Objectivist: So it all boils down to the fact that Wikipedia's standard of relevance is that which is reputable (which they decide by vote), not that what is true.
  25. I am reading The Romantic Manifesto and have finished 6 chapters. Based on that, and a quick look at the table of contents of AoF, I would say that with regard to literature only, AoF appears to supersede RM. Having said that, RM promises to gives you a wide perspective of art and aesthetics. I am not sure if AoF covers topics such as man's need of art, romantic vs. naturalistic art etc.
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