Ninth Doctor

It started because of Yehudi Menuhin? I've never heard of it, I thought it was a joke. Yehudi wasn't a normal name for a person when his parents named him that, but now, since he was so famous I expect that it is used, though I've never met anyone by that name. It just means "Jew". People are going around asking "who's a Jew"? In the 30's, too? Back then there were places in the US, clubs, nice restaurants, etc, where you might see a sign at the door: No Jews, No Dogs. I can't imagine how that phrase was funny then, but I suppose it could have been part of breaking down the bigotry through humor. You think it has something to do with Atlas Shrugged? Garet Garett's The Driver seems a better reference, though I don't have any trouble crediting Rand with having invented the motif out of whole cloth. BTW the link in your first post doesn't work, it goes to a Wiki page that has nothing to do with Yehudi, Yehoodi or whatever.

Maybe it has something to do with Yehudi Menuhin? FWIW, his mother named him Yehudi in response to an anti-Semitic experience she had. She was going to move in to an apartment, and was being shown around, and the landlady informed her that one of the good things about living there was that Jews weren't allowed. Not realizing that she was talking to a Jew. So, name the boy Yehudi, and no one will ever wonder whether he's Jewish or not, that was the idea.

Here's a good talk by a Muslim free market advocate. Some "Objectivist literature" on the topic of Islam is truly god-awful, IMO. I haven't been following the developments in Tunisia, however.

I don’t think this subject is well suited to an online discussion forum, since you can’t assume everyone has sampled all the different fragrances cited. I particularly like Hermes Eau D’Orange Verte, with basically combines orange and mint. Never mind that it is marketed as unisex, I think of it as ideal for daytime and outdoors, and wouldn’t wear it on an evening date, it seems wrong for nighttime. However, I also associate it with the Paris Metro, since I repeatedly found myself near women who were applying the cream version as a hand moisturizer there. I wonder what fragrance the uber-sexy Lord Flashheart wore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCbsVfmDVSo Joy by Jean Patou, I’m sure of it. He needed all the floral he could get, to balance those natural oozing musk notes. Woof!

I’d like a correction for the blurb on my paperback copy of The Fountainhead. http://www.peikoff.com/2010/06/21/a-passage-written-about-the-fountainhead-reads-dominique-francon-the-exquisitely-beautiful-woman-who-loved-roark-passionately-but-married-his-worst-enemy-ive-always-had-the-impression-t/

Of course I don't know that it was done without permission either. I've seen it several times over the last 20 years, I showed it when I ran a campus club, probably more than once. ARI had a lending library, I bet they still do though they've certainly upgraded from VHS by now. Peikoff really comes across well here, though unfortunately the opponents aren't very good.

Well I'll be... It's from 1984 to be exact. Someone else posted it to YouTube quite a while back and it didn't stay up for long, a copyright claim was made. So, watch it quick, I certainly recommend it. I can't imagine that this is much of a revenue source for ARI (or whomever), meanwhile it's a good tool for educating people about Objectivism, maybe turning them into donors. I wish they'd make it freely available in a kosher way.

Jesus H. Christ, by the time the reply box comes up I've forgotten what I was going to write. This site is buggy as hell nowadays. Anyway, here's the link I was planning to share: http://reason.com/ar...wealthier-world

I suggest the Ludovico technique.

Begging what question? The grammar of your third sentence is nonsensical. As to your objection to my use of the word paradox: “A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition.“ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox All you have to do is consult a dictionary. Oh brother.

There were royalists, some went into exile. I like to think the founding of the US comes close to being an exception, but you can't claim it had universal consent (which I acknowledge is an impossible standard, there's the rub).

Any anarcho-capitalist or social contract critic worth his salt is going to immediately ask: contract with whom? Where's my signature on this contract? Then the more Objectivist flavored reply comes: what gives you the right to initiate force against me? I don't see this line of thinking going anywhere. Government establishes and maintains itself by coercive means, yet is necessary for the protection of rights. That's the paradox.

Before anyway skewers me for problems with the following, let me acknowledge that this is just the product of a Sunday morning reverie fueled by Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and Bach’s BWV 169 Cantata. So now how about this, combine Rand’s lottery idea with the Hamburg honor system. You pay in your share anonymously, calculated I’m not sure how (note that Hamburg’s 25% of property is a very high figure, particularly for an investor). You get a numbered ticket, like a raffle ticket, so it’s anonymous until you come forward. There’s a drawing, and some number of people get their taxes refunded double and maybe a few hit the jackpot (pick a figure in excess of a large number). Then, in order to collect, you have to substantiate the amount of tax you paid. Later on a cynical mood will strike me, and I’ll come back and scoff at this. But it looks like it’s worth the old college try.

Here’s a good new piece on credit reporting from the Mises Institute, it ties in well with points I made earlier, in other posts on this thread. http://mises.org/dai...f-Credit-Checks

You complain that I want to know more about the historical examples of voluntary taxation that you cite “off the top of your head”? If you know that your examples are irrelevant or don’t stand up to scrutiny, why offer them? Here’s a good counter example I’ll accept without evidence: there were hunter gatherer tribes on the plains of Africa 100,000 years ago that had no system of taxation, voluntary or compulsory, whatsoever. No doubt true, so what? Now, Iceland. I checked Wikipedia, and it says “The followers of the goðar [the chieftan] owed them military service” and “At first the chieftains relied primarily on peasant levies”. Sounds like there wasn’t a central government imposing taxes, but military service coupled with “levies” paid to a local strongman doesn’t sound like a voluntary government financing system to me. From what I gather about Hamburg, you were obliged to pay ¼ of your assets (!) annually to the state, and payment was on a kind of honor system, so you drop an envelope into a chest, and your name is crossed off a list. What happened to the people who didn’t have their names crossed off? Not clear. This does seem like the best counter example to my claim that no voluntary system has ever been instituted, though it lacks the key feature Rand calls for: “tying government revenues directly to the government services rendered.” FWIW, I think this example speaks volumes to the German cultural values of honor and oath keeping*, coupled with aversion to the intrusive means of tax collection then used elsewhere in Europe. Obviously it didn’t last, at least not past Bismarck. I can’t find info on how long it lasted or what brought it to an end. I’d like to know more about it, and am a bit suspicious since I’m having to learn of it from an American theologian whose bio states that he lived briefly in Bremen, not Hamburg. * One of the features of German culture William Shirer cited critically in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; this cuts both ways. While I’m thinking of it, there was a case in British history, I think it was in the mid 1700’s, when an income tax was instituted to finance a war. After the war, the tax was repealed and Parliament ordered all the records burned. Ah, the good ole days.

The way you remember them? You have this wonderful technology in front of you, which makes it so convenient to quote the person you want to reply to, and you're just making shit up, having a dialogue with yourself. Start your own thread, call it Tomer vs. strawmen (so there's truth in advertising), and I'll ignore it in the order presented.

Who are you quoting? It looks like you’re talking to yourself and it belongs on another thread. I’m all for levying fines against perpetrators, but charging fees to victims doesn’t sound right. There’s a conflict of interest problem, and it goes against Rand’s characterization of paying for police and national defense for the same reason you pay for insurance. If you get robbed or raped, if anything you ought to be expecting compensation from the police for not having protected you. For being negligent in their work.

Yeah, and there's Willam James too. Trouble is, are you looking for someone who made a Nobel Prize worthy contribution to science who also did something substantial in philosophy? That's tough. If the standards are lighter, you might even count Sam Harris. He advertises himself as a scientist, with some kind of expertise with the brain, but the only writings I've seen by him are philosophical (or polemical). Also Richard Dawkins, though with him the scientific credentials and output are readily observable.

Charles Sanders Peirce is a good American example from the late 1800's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce

Do you mean physical science? The goalposts aren't clearly set. What makes someone a philosopher is an even more vague issue. Richard Feynman sometimes said things that were philosophical, but certainly would have disdained the appellation. Goethe qualifies. By specifying the last 200 years you rule out almost all the great enlightenment thinkers, Franklin's an obvious one, but also a few of the French philosophes. Voltaire even did experiments, though he's not credited with any discoveries. Among the living, there's Noam Chomsky (linguistics) and Umberto Eco (semiotics).

Instead of thinking of this in terms of determinism vs. free will, I’d like to suggest it’s more about authenticity. Just imagine if some silver spoon trust fund endowed Ivy League degreed pseudo-litterateur were to write an imitation of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, or of a Kafka story. Or think of the examples of upper middle class rappers with fabricated “street cred” who come along every few years and are eventually exposed as poseurs. Rousseau wrote very influential books on how to educate the young, while not only having never raised any children, but having left each of his at a foundling hospital as soon as they were born. Say what you want about Rand’s fiction, one thing it’s not is inauthentic.

Rand’s sister spent nearly 50 additional years living under the Soviets before they met again. Rand was reportedly disappointed at how much she’d changed by the early 70’s. I don’t think this example supports your case. Her early life provides reasons why she didn’t want to have children. Her mother used to complain about the duties of motherhood in the presence of the children. I don’t say there’s a simple one to one relationship here: witnessed communist revolution, therefore wrote Anthem and Atlas Shrugged (her prophetic, apocalyptic works); mother was a complainer, therefore didn’t want children. I’m sure there are contrary examples from other writers, where experiences (good or bad) don’t color their writing. P.G. Wodehouse comes to mind, his experiences in WW2 could well have turned him into a Dostoyevsky, yet his writing resumed without a trace of what he went through. In Rand’s case, however, the facts line up quite well. I don’t think this is a negative in any way.

Just a quick reminder folks, the world is going to end October 21, that's this Friday. http://en.wikipedia....imes_prediction

I think her early experiences set her on the way to becoming a modern day apocalypticist. She saw her world suddenly destroyed by bad ideas, and having escaped, saw the same ideas at work in the US. Since nowadays she’s being hailed as a prophet, the biblical parallels are becoming ever more ironic.

Go to 4 minutes in for probably the funniest polish put down joke ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJscb0qdlTo&feature=related