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xgenx

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  • Birthday 10/07/1965

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  1. <br /> <p>The view that "Death of a Salesman" achieves a criticism of capitalism is itself a loud influence against capitalism. Claiming that this play finds a chink in capitalism means you don't understand the strength of capitalism. Unfortunately this is a common view. </p> <br /> <p>I saw this play last weekend with a local theater critic and he made the same claim. In fact the theater's promotional material says, "Exploring the struggle to define one's own identity in a world where a man's worth is defined by his ability to make money."</p> <br /> <p>Yet the anti-hero protagonist is juxtaposed with another man, his helpful, insightful neighbor Charley. Charley says, "Why do you have to be liked? JP Morgan wasn't liked... but when he put his pockets on, they loved him." </p> <br /> <p>Willy was a second-hander, experiencing life through the dreams of others and living life through the stories he told to others. It is a tragic, but honest description of a common malady. </p> <br /> <p>This is my review of <a href="http://www.thefullertonian.com/Blogs/tabid/97/ID/448/Stages-Shows-ldquoDeath-of-a-Salesmanrdquo.aspx">the performance</a> at a local theater.</p> <br /> <p>Where does it criticize capitalism?</p>
  2. We don't know what they intended, nor do we know what was going on in their subconcious when they were writing it. Then again, we never do. But we were not watching their intent. We were watching the product of their intent, their film. That is all we get to see in movies, or art in general. We don't get to have, nor would we want, the artist to stand over our shoulder and explain the intent of every brushstroke or every word. That's not what art is. A work of art should work without this. We do find out that there are no dead people walking around on the island. No one comes back to life. There is even an episode entitled "Dead is Dead" There are messages from dead people. But I don't thing Objectivism breaks down as soon as you get a message from a dead person. An aquaintance of mine received several time delayed messages on his cell phone from his wife, who was since deceased. Verizon was unable to cancel the delayed messages. Objectivism still applies. The villain, the fraud, convinces John Locke to kill himself. When Locke says "Why do I have to die?" the fraud says "I guess that's why they call it a sacrifice." John Locke is driven by duty, and the fraudulently resurected Christian Sheppard convinces him it is his duty to die. But first he changes his name to Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832, proponent of utilitarianism and animal rights). Sure I could say this was all unintended and just coincidence, but there are no coincidences and "everything that happens here, happens for a reason" (that is to say, every action is caused).
  3. Oh, their path was lost. I think it starts that way. Since you seem to have seen it I can tell you that much of the storyline coincides with the world history of philosophies. I don't know if you noticed but Jack's father's name is Christian Sheppard. The first time we meet the villain of the story he is standing among the reeds. He has taken on the appearance of Jack's dead father. That means that the first time we see the villain he is fraudulently appearing as the false resurection of Christian Sheppard.
  4. I would assert that the TV show LOST was an exposition of Objectivism. What is more, I would say it was not just a television series, it was a six season long movie. In the Aristotlean tradition it had a begining, a middle, and an End (Parts I and II). You may have heard that the show is sci-fi but it is not. It has no plasma beams or strange devices. In fact the first episode begins just after every machine is broken. It is post-machina. The show is not sci-fi, it's phi-fi. It begins with a frame of an eye opening. It is a single eye and it represents the focus of attention. This is the fundamental choice in Objectivism and it is the first frame of the series. The characters have been deposited on an island, as in ancient Greek philosophical scenarios, and are left to descover it. The nature of the island is discovered simultaneously by the viewer. Nothing is gauranteed. The viewer must use, and sees the characters using, the power of their minds to determine the validity of their senses and the ability to discover "Whatever the Case May Be", which is a title of an early episode. The seconde episode name is "Tabula Rasa" and a main character is named John Locke. Many other philosophers are represented (as flawed characters) such as Rousseau, Hume, Jeremy Bentham, Anthony Cooper, Mikhail Bakunin, and Edmund Burke. There is another character who's name turns out to be Christian Sheppard. The show is full of, not philosophical questions, but philosophical statements: "Whatever happened, happened", "Live together, or die alone", "The Cost of Living", "The Economist", "Do No Harm", "The Greater Good". The list goes on. And that is just from the show titles. Early in the first season a main character holds up a black piece and a white piece from a game, and you the viewer are asked to choose. You are choosing between good and evil. But no one has horns or is red. You must discover and use your mind. Most of all, I think the show depicts a sense of life that conforms to objectivism. Nothing is given to you. You must excercise your mind to acquire the knowledge. You must choose to focus. The sense that I get from the complete show is that most fiction is based on a sense of non-reality. All the other stories are detatched from reality. They are adrift. They search for a truth that is "out there". But in LOST, by focusing the mind, validating the senses and dealing directly with "whatever the case may be" we can leave the sea, we can stop being adrift, and we can gain a toe-hold on the foundation that is the Island. If we atain the Island and perservere "as long as it takes" we can reach the heart of the island, and acceptance of the primacy of existence without reservation. I would like to tell you so much more about the show but I would be a spoiler and there is still a chance one of you might see it. The story is wonderfully told and I wouldn't want to spoil it. Even if it was not intended as an Objectivist movie it may have been an open forum argument between philosophies which just pointed in the right direction. Objectivism, being base on existence, has existence on it's side.
  5. There was a line in the movie where Xerxes points out that Greece is governed predominantly by reason, which he scoffs at. When you consider that reason stopped being the predominate guiding philosophy for much of the past 2000 years, and that those men may have been it's only defense, yes, they were heroes. For centuries reason was preserved only in books that those men provided for to be written. It is a wonderful telling of, at least, Objectivism's roots.
  6. I liked the Incredibles a lot! The physics of the objects seem Objectivist in that each machine had particular features and properties which we could perceive. They didn't have the magical qualities that writers often try to sneak in when they work with animated CG. The voice intonation and facial expressions were very character specific. The parents had to explain to the children that they were in a battle of life and death, there was no certain outcome, and they, the children had a roll to play. The father taught the daughter better posture and to move her hair from in front of her face. He taught her self-respect. All of those were fantastic assertions of Objectivism. But the great villian was a person who wanted to make all their fantastic abilities available to everyone. He wanted to sell the incredibleness. That is why he was a vilain? In some ways the Incredibles where the Incredibly Elitests.
  7. This is a great quote. It can be expanded and clarified. I live in a college town. I am saturated with misanthropic statements such as that people are viruses on the planet. People are poluters. The population explosion will kill the Earth. The Earth will be better when people are gone. I hear this daily from relatively sane people. There are even popular TV show portraying the pastoral life of animals when the Earth returns to normal in "Life After People". In these shows there is always someone monitoring the CO2 content returning to normal, and what happens when space aliens arive. Maybe this is a subtle clue that if you switch sides now and work for Gaia you will be allowed to remain after the rest of your race has perrished. None of my friends see any of the products they are wearing or viewing Youtube videos on as a product of mans destinguishing characteristics.
  8. Well, wasn't that the point of the show? Everything that happened, happened. The rational view of existence, that we live in an existent world where things really happen and can't unhappen even through time travel or other weirdness. They were living with the consequences of 'everything that happened'.
  9. Or maybe everything that happens here, happens for a reason.
  10. If you replace the first ball with another you will definitely lose something, the first ball's identity. Aren't actions attributes or methods of entities? Can you abstract the attribute from the entity? The first ball might have some method, spin. It might have some property, coefficient of friction. The first ball might have minute protuberances on it's surface. Does a force have minute protuberances on it's surface? Does a force have a surface? By striking the cue ball (probably the first ball) below it's center of gravity you can apply backspin, or "English". But English is a property of a ball, not of a disembodied force. The success of failure of you pool shot may (in a long shot, a slice, or a three ball combo) depend on the precise cranny on which the two balls strike.
  11. There are some lost civilizations that I wonder about. The Etruscans may have had an enduring effect on Rome. Florence, the capital of Tuscany, formerly Etruria, was the locus of the Italian Renaissance. Just a coincidence? Etruria was paved over by Rome, but we have begun to discover artifacts. Who created the Antikythera device? What about the Minoans? Who know what wonders still lie under centuries of dust? But as far as what we know, I would vote for the godfathers of Reason, the Golden Age of Greece.
  12. Healthcare and environment are growing industries. Check hospital web sites maybe. Craigslist or your local paper or HotJobs or Monster are OK but you have to organize your work (job hunting work). Rather than volunteering I would recommend an apprenticeship type of trade. You get some pay right off the bat and get on-the-job training.
  13. There are two types of people; those who classify everything into two types and those who don't. Rather than get into all the particulars I would say that rationality is a matter of degree. Are you purely rational? Is there such a thing? We have just begun to remove contradictions and invalid concepts from our lives. Are you finished with that process? If so I think we would be bringing our problems to you. One of the most interesting ways that I learned physics in college was to explain it to the under-achievers in class. They needed help. I found that by listening to their miss-conceptions and realigning them I could more fully understand the issues and the bad methods. Sometimes I could see that I was making the same mistakes in other areas of my life, and that I was paying a price for it. If you can formulate responses or questions for these irrationalists in your life you will better understand the concepts and issues yourself, and you will be increasing the total processing power of the human race, and you might prevent another government bailout or something. We all benefit from more rational thought. "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people." --- Mr. Garrison, South Park Elementary School
  14. I can read your examples and counter-examples, but I don't see where they are going. Are you saying that objects don't have measurements? Are you saying classes are not objects without measurements? But instead of guessing at your point let me clarify mine. You might create a class Table. Your Table class might have properties NumberOfLegs, Height, Width, Length and Color, and a method New(NumberOfLegs integer, Length decimal, Width decimal, Height decimal, Color RGBColorValue). In the class none of these properties are populated. The class exists in code as a template. But it is a template whose properties can be populated only through it's methods. In this simple class the properties are read-only. When you create an object from this class you must pass in all five parameters of the New method. You cannot create a new Table with Width and Height but without Length. We say that the property values are encapsulated in the object. The object protects it's data. You can only access the properties through methods of the object, and so the object preserves atomicity. The inquiry into some thisTable.Length would be accessed through an accessor or "get" method that is written into the code. This is all dependent on how, and how well, you construct your code. But each class is useful only insofar as it will be populated with data, with values, when it is instantiated, when it becomes an object. So a class is an object without values. How is that not value-omission? Why do I need to describe a "linearly ordered set" in order for this to be true? Are you talking about NumberOfLegs? You want me to describe how to count the number of legs? I think it's linearly ordered. Is that what you are talking about?
  15. Thales while I trust your understanding of Objectivism and Ayn Rand I am guessing you are not well studied in programing or we could just have a different view. Certainly Ayn Rand was talking about how man forms concepts whereas Booche and the creators of Smalltalk were programing computers. "Measurement omission" in OO is the difference between an object and a class. A class is a code entity that exist without properties. An object is an instance of a class and it can have properties. Actually I misspoke; the class and the object have the same properties but in the class the properties have no values and are said to be empty. That is measurement omission in action. The fact that units as bridge... actually I don't even know what you are saying right there, but think of the achievements of technology as an attempt. An achievement. One shouldn't confuse the product of a man's work with his method. No object is created in programing without first having many, many, many instances. You don't right a computer program for something you've just encountered for the first time. You write it to automate a process you are familiar with. By the time you get it working you will have written every properties name several times as if you were being punished. Along these lines one should not quibble over Grady or Booche or the Smalltalk guys. They are just the product of a long lineage of technologists and tradesmen. I have read part of this paper and just printed the rest and I find it fascinating. Suddenly I see history in a long arc from the Greek philosophers building a world view from the ground up instead of the God-down approach, to John Locke building governments from the ground up, to Charles Babbage supposing he could build a physical manifestation of George Boole's logic. Smalltalk is not a computer programing language, it is the tinkerers approximation of reason. Much of the languishing in philosophy has been the complaint that you can't know everything. Boolean logic was an attempt at extending logical assertions to anything but it's method could not be applied to everything to prove it. That was then. Back in Greece two people started a race, the philosopher and the technologist. The philosopher started out great, but met a much fuller interpretation in the 20th century. The technologists path has likewise been troublesome but by the work of thousands of them over thousands of year we now have the cumulative fruits of their labor. The thinking machine. Is it a coincidence that it's structure is objective? How could it be a surprise? It could not have been built otherwise. Certainly programmers with differing views could put there world views into the product, as they always have, but they will only hinder process. An unstable system will probably also not stand up well as the global internet processing power exceed the capacity of all human minds. I feel as if you are looking at all the technological efforts from levers and gears to a world-wide light-speed signal web already imbued with semantics and ontology and complaining that it hasn't achieved unit economy yet. In any case I really like this PDF. It meshes nicely with something I have been noticing about tradesmen over the ages.
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