kilgoretrout

Areactor.... I wasn't implying that these 'beautiful' people with unusual metabolisms are any better than those who are overweight that also treat their bodies like shit. If you don't excersize, eat right, and treat your body right... that is bad You are taking a risk. Regardless of your weight.. I did not mean to imply that fat people are bad and skinny people are good...

sorry for lowering the collective iq... "The ideal lover would also be the ideal debate partner (or soulmate or whatever else you want to call it)." I interpreted that as saying that he thought he was looking for someone that was not physically attractive, only smart. The book by Kundera is still about this regardless of the fact that I misunderstood the meaning of dichotemy... I need to read the whole thread(context) before I deduce the meaning of a word from the context of a post...

Do you know anyone(family, friends) in any field that owns a private business? Of any kind... Offer to code their websites, database software, manage their networks... anything you can get your grubby fingers on... Make an offer they can't refuse, do your work for little to no money. Continue to work your current slave job.. In your free time code their software... You probably won't have time for a social life over the next year, but who cares... You don't have to take the courses if you illustrate that you are competant... This is especially true with the tech field. You need to demonstrate your abilities as well as your motivation. They will not care that you have accomplished small-time jobs as it will illustrate how motivated you are aswell as your flexability/ability.. I know people making six digits that did not graduate from college. TomL is not the only one to do this...

Does anyone have these kinds of experiences? No. I haven't taken personality yet... Isn't there a disctinction between 'actual' and percieved. Like how you see yourself compared to how people see you. I would think 'ought' self would closely match one's percieved self, but not their actual self. I would think that one would follow their OWN moral judgement... However, that of others or that of the collective society would rarely be matched. Whether or not the outside world sees your actions the way you have justified them is another story. I would think one's ought self would match their percieved self as long as they weren't severely mentally disabled. The actions you percieve as moral are generally those that you bring to fruition. Only people constantly making mistakes would have a percieved self that was far from their ought self.

Are you asking that objectivist philosohpy be applied to our foreign policy? Like is it O.K. that we occupy around 130 countries? We fund governments and their militaries despite their completely backwards political systems? We must not intertwine ourselves in foreign affairs. I too believe the primary role of the government is to protect the property and life of its citizens. However, our current foreign policy is not representative of this. Grenada is a good example. “Capitalism would not collapse if Grenada remained revolutionary. And Reagan was right, it wasn't a matter of direct resources that you needed from that country. He said, "Nutmeg is not the question." I mean, that was Grenada's biggest export, we could get perfectly good nutmeg from Africa, you don't need Grenada's nutmeg. So why did they invade Grenada? They invaded Grenada because they were serving notice to the people of the Caribbean, and to the people of Latin America, and to the people of the world, that you cannot drop out of your client-state free-market system. That if you tried to take an independent source, and that if you use YOUR land, YOUR labor, YOUR resources, and YOUR capital, and YOUR markets in a different way, in a collectivist way, if you use them to benefit the needs of your people, rather than to be milked like a cow for foreign investors, if you do that, this is what's going to happen to you.” Now I am not saying we should be communist. Communism doesn't work. It won't work. Communism would have failed. Like it has in China. Like it did in the Soviet Union. Do we have the right to tell another group of people how to run their political system? If they serve no economic or military threat to us? Does meerly an economic threat serve as a reason to invade another country to overthrow their government? Would the Iraqi war been justified If Bush stated that inorder to repair our economy we needed to lower the price of oil... and this was the best way. Perhaps. Is an economic threat greater than that of a political/religious doctrine? Perhaps

Could you fall in love with a talking dog? Not me... What about someone in a coma? Don't think so... Therefore there is no reason to reject a soul/body dichotomy. Your rejection of the body is not any better than a rejection of the soul. Your girlfriend/boyfriend would not be happy if you thought she was ugly, but you remained with her because she was smart or you had alot in common. Your partner would figure this out pretty quickly I would think. I can pretty much guarantee this. If you want to read about this. There is a good book called The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It is about relationships. It is a good book. You should read it.

Essentially he likes to get accross the idea that he is awesome... Ex. Stoned smoking a cig. I am discussing my current situation in college. He goes off on a tangent about how he got into the University but I am at city college. I ask him what his gpa and sat scores were out of hs. Laugh a little then go inside. (i scored 300 points higher and had a gpa slightly higher, but because my major was competitive i did not get in...) He calls me boy(and others aswell). It's not like he's a redneck... He just wants people to know he thinks he's the best. Essentially he is saying you aren't a man compared to me...you're just a boy. I tend to think it's the other way around... When he first moved in with my neighbor, he started a discussion about literature. He completely pre-judged me by my demenor and what little he knew about me. He would ask if I had read something in an extremely condescending manor. I think I failed to mention that I'd read most of the books he read in college, before I was in highschool. It is not as if I approached him in a condescending way... owe your FAT, that makes me better than you. I am sure people have in the past... so to him I am guilty by association.

Yeah fruit and vegtables do the body good. But back to the topic of discussion.... Hydrogen vs. biodiesel... Am I misguided? or is the hydrogen gang?

Vonnegut's writing style is absolute genius. He is a literary genius. Just because you don't understand something does not make it bad. Maybe you should read Breakfast of Champions, it's illustrated. The pictures will make the words less confusing.

"Reich developed a theory that the ability to feel sexual love depended on a physical ability to make love with what he called "orgastic potency." He attempted to "measure" the male orgasm, noting that four distinct phases occurred physiologically: first, the psychosexual build-up or tension; second. the tumescence of the penis, with an accompanying "charge," which Reich measured electrically; third, an electrical discharge at the moment of orgasm, and fourth, the relaxation of the penis. He believed the force that he measured was a distinct type of energy present in all life forms. He called it "orgone."" Bwahaha... I think what he was measuring is called electricity. Electric impulses are what make the nervous system work. Perhaps this was not common knowledge during his time. Is this 'orgone' the muscle memory you speak of? I don't think there is any validity to any of his work. (Put on your tinfoil hats people) However, book burning is evil. If anything it would have been great entertainment for psychology students. Unfortionatly, we will never be able to enjoy the splenders of Reich's work because of the evil book burning government.

I have no problem with him being fat. I have a problem with him being an arogant jerk. It is not like I'm in any great physical shape or good at most sports. I'm sure he could engage in sports at my level. I believe his personality flaws are a result of his weight. It probably went something like this: He couldn't find a girl in high school. His character sufferered as a result. Now he can't find a girl. His character suffers as a result. It's a vicious cycle. Fat Bastard, "I eat because I'm unhappy, I'm unhappy because I eat".

I eat all organic food. Today I had pea soup for lunch. For dinner I had fresh Lobster. It was delicious. I speak from personal experience when I talk about people with cancer. I have three friends that were diagnosed in there teens. One is dead. One has only a few months left to live. The last was diagnosed in January. These are not people who lived a long glutonous life then eventually succumbed to liver or lung cancer.

Granted. However, some people do take it too far. Some threads on this message board scare me a little. It makes me laugh when I see people argueing their points basically by saying 'because Ayn Rand said so'. Not laugh in a good way though. When you laugh at someone with a brained damage it is never a good laugh.

Good point. Mind altering drugs are not nearly as great of a risk. On a more serious note. I would like to clarify my response as I have good reason to believe I did not successfully get my point across. Both climbing a mountain and taking drugs are risks. The ability to justify/rationalize those risks is merely subjective. Some people like nuts some don't; it is merely a personal preference. Some people will happily eat sheets of acid. How many of those same people will climb K2 or any other mountain, regardless of their physical shape? Very few. How many mountain climbers would eat a sheet of acid? Very few. How many from both categories would volunteer for a dangerous mission (assuming the cause was just, and the war was not immoral or unjust)? Mountain climbing is not a cause that can be equated with rescueing grandmothers from burning buildings or cats from trees. Or is it? Perhaps I am mistaken. To further clarify my point... The previous paragraph does not illustrate an argument by consensus it merely illustrates how morality and personal preference dictate the risks one will take. It is not saying, "Donnie likes to mutilate himself, therefore self-mutilation is good." It is saying, "Donnie likes beer, but Barry likes weed." Both involve risk. One could come to the conclusion that both are gluttonous. Which involves the most risk is really a subjective interpretation of the inherent risks of either behavior. Which one is immoral? Both by my personal beliefs. That hasn't really stopped me in the past from imbibing in the sweat nectar of the gods. I am sorry if any comments in my previous post were taken as personal attacks. That was not my intention. Everyone has different 'moral' upbringings. The quotes were not intended to imply that your upbringing is immoral by my standards. Simply, the intention of quotes was to imply the fact that morals are subjective and different personal history usually alters the perception of morality.

"The K2 example and the LSD example are not analogous. The former is a question of weighing risk against reward. The latter is the pointless assumption of risk. The K2 example is closer to a soldier volunteering for an extremely dangerous assignment." This is clearly your subjective opinion altered by your 'moral' upbrining... The primary reward for climbing K2: An adrenaline rush The primary reward for taking mind altering drugs: AN ADRENALINE RUSH The secondary rewards for climbing K2: Publicity and accomplishing something YOU consider to be great The secondary rewards for getting screwy in front of the WhiteHouse: Plublicity and accomplishing something YOU consider to be great... It's all subjective... You need to take a step back and look at reality. Many people consider climbing a mountain to be just as absurd as destroying yourself with mind altering drugs. They both lead to the same conclusion, self-annihilation. As a wise man once said, "a man who makes assumptions has a fool for a master".