miz astrid

Now you're twisting my words. Fantastic. I think you need to read more carefully before jumping to conclusions and deciding what you think the person meant is actually what they said. Perhaps instead of starting sentences with "So you're saying" you could ask "Do you mean...?" and give people a chance to clarify things for you instead of putting words in their mouths.

Just thought I'd point out that you twisted his words around - that is definitely not what he said. Can you explain how a stripper might show off the great mind she possesses while she is at work? Perhaps by gaining a clientele that is more interested in the fascinating intellectual conversation she provides than her naked body? I guess that's possible, but I find it to be highly unlikely.

Thanks!

I intended to see this movie in the theatre, but managed not to, unfortunately. I thoroughly enjoyed it at home. I have a question for Moose though: Do you not think that homosexuals being deprived of the right to enter into a marriage contract is oppression? While certainly there are worse examples of oppression, I do think this is an example, however slight. And while I don't think the government should be involved in issuing 'marriage licenses' I do think that consenting adults should be able to enter contracts regardless of their sexual orientation. My assertion then is that homosexuals in this country are oppressed. If someone cares to explain how this doesn't constitute oppression I'd be glad to hear it.

That was freaking awesome - I almost fell out of my chair.

to properly introduce myself. I'm 29, married to a wonderful man, and live in Denver, Colorado. I'm currently a full time student, pursuing a Nursing degree, which is a big career change for me. I earned a degree in Aviation Technology, and had aspired to be an airline pilot, but that eluded me when I had to quit flying for medical reasons. I did stay in the industry for 3 years after that, and dispatched aircraft instead of flying them. While I really enjoyed my work, for too many reasons to list I had to abandon it. The first book of Ayn Rand's I read was Atlas Shrugged, and it remains my favorite to this day. My mother, who I'm very close to, bought it for me as it's her favorite book. I had been somewhat involved with the Libertarian Party prior to that, as they seemed to be the best political alternative available...you all have subsequently convinced me that they're not. Thanks for that - I really love this forum, and while I don't have much time to participate, I really appreciate this great resource and all of the fantastic people who can take the time to really contribute. I know whenever I need to read some intelligent discourse, perhaps for the world to feel more sane sometimes, this is the place to come. I still have a lot to learn, although as yet I can't say there's anything about Objectivism I disagree with. So far I have read all of Miss Rand's fiction [We The Living is my second favorite,] and have started to plow through the non-fiction. I've gotten through VoS, CTUI, and I'm part way through ITOE. Since I started school again in January I have little time for pleasure reading, and my progress has been frustratingly slow. I'm hoping to be able to take off Spring semester - that would definitely allow me to speed up the process! So please bear with the newbie and keep up the good work guys - you rock.

I'm not here much, but figured I'd contribute a picture to the thread. This is one from my wedding a little over 2 years ago...don't have any more recent ones uploaded. I really don't look much different anyhow.

Well, I suppose I've been immoral and evil then, although that certainly wasn't my intent. I have thought about it a lot and discussed it with a few people, but was never able to determine if it was immoral or not. Which is difficult - I much prefer to judge something as right or wrong, but this has confounded me which is why I'm here asking your opinions. My line of thinking really has been that if the copyright holders, generally tiny record labels that went out of business [and often run by an artist that produces music for that label,] thought they could make money by re-releasing these tracks they certainly would. But then if they could make money in the underground dance music niche they wouldn't have gone out of business in the first place. But just because they went under doesn't mean they didn't release fantastic music, and to me the fact that they went under doesn't imply that they don't want that music to be heard and shared. I did try and explain the anomaly of this niche - a huge part of DJing is sharing the music you love with other people in an environment where they can dance, while combining different tracks to make completely new and different songs for brief moments in time [or not so brief if you happen to record it.] I am going to see if I can track down some people more in the know than myself who could enlighten me a bit. I honestly think that the dynamic of this particular niche of the music industry is very different from the rest, but perhaps I am wrong. Or perhaps ultimately it isn't relevant to the issue and y'all can make me realize that.

Well I apologize for not coming back to this earlier. Apparently my email notification wasn't working, and I have been super swamped lately with summer school and finals. Yay to a break from that! Thank you guys for directing me to some helpful information. I almost feel silly to have been swayed by those folks, but they did a pretty good job lying convincingly about a lot of things in that movie. Glad I had the sense to ask folks who have better BS meters than myself.

Wow, I think I actually have something relevant to add to this discussion, and the time to do it! Let me give you all a little background on the music I'm into. I am a DJ, and mostly play house music, which is one genre of electronic dance music. For many years, most electronic dance music was produced on vinyl, and much still is. DJs that spin this kind of music mix a track off of one record [or CD] into another, often times with both songs playing at the same time for long periods. Depending on what kind of music you are playing, this can take quite a lot of skill to do well. This specific area of music and performance is very DJ driven - i.e. the artists producing the music do so with the knowlege that this is what happens, and in fact, it's what creates most of the demand for their music. The consumers of DJ culture, people who go to dance clubs or parties where DJs are playing this kind of music, generally do not buy these albums - they much more frequently purchase mix CDs produced by DJs. Now most CDs getting distributed comercially or for profit DO license every track on the CD from the artist or copyright holder. However, most DJs I know cannot hope to ever make a living from DJing, and do it because they love the music and mixing it together, especially for other people. And in order to increase their chances of being able to DJ for larger groups of people, they need to distribute demo CDs demonstrating their skills to people that might be interested in booking them for an event. Alot of the artists producing the music are DJs as well. So I have a couple of questions for you all. I've thought about this issue long and hard, and still fail to determine hard and fast answers. I produce such demo CDs and give them to people for free, as well as making them available on my website to be downloaded for free. I should also mention that due to the nature of a mix set, it would be pretty difficult for someone to isolate a specific track on the CD for long enough to be usable to them in making their own mix set, as well as extremely unlikely that anyone would want to buy a copy of my mixset from them. Whenever possible I include track listings to give the artists credit. One reason track listings might not be included is that I didn't know I was being recorded or through some other oversight managed to not keep a track listing - and with thousands upon thousands of records it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to put a list together after the fact. In any case, I'm wondering what your take on this is. Honestly due to the nature of this specific area of the music industry [hopefully I explained that well enough] I have never seen anything wrong with this. Perhaps I would feel differently if any DJ I knew personally [and I know quite a few] was making money DJing and could ask them about it - for most of us it's a very expensive hobby. I think I should also mention that most of these records do not have anything written on them regarding how they may be used - generally the artists appreciate any exposure of their music, and really hope it will get played in places other than no-namers [such as myself] basements, especially by better known DJs as then more people [usually other DJs] will buy the album. So I am curious what your take on this is. Here is my next question. I have the utmost respect for intellectual property and have spent many thousands of dollars on music over the years, and would absolutely never attempt to gain any for free if I could have paid for it, regardless of price. [i also would never attempt to sell any mix CD I produced without getting all the tracks licensed.] I have spent over $50 for a single record, that had a single track I wanted. The advent of digital technology is super exciting though, and more and more dance music DJs are playing more and more music from CDs. One great thing about it is the price point - in the past, I would frequently pay $10 or more for a record that had 3 or 4 tracks, but only one I liked. Now frequently I can purchase that single track online for $2. That's freaking awesome, I can afford so much more music now! It's also great for those producer/DJs that are unsigned as they can mix their own music into their sets much more affordably as burning a CD is much cheaper than pressing a dub-plate [a lower quality record for personal use.] Anyhow, I hereby admit to having downloaded music when I didn't have the artists permission to do so, but only in instances where I could not find the artist to pay him, or find a copy of the music in question to buy. So many electronic record labels have gone out of business, and there is so much good music out there that is out of print or just impossible to get otherwise. I think in order to gain more perspective on this issue I will see if I can track down some of these artists and get their take on it - but I do think it's likely that instead of being upset about such transgressions they would be happy that there are people out there that love their music enough to track it down or share it when it's no longer available to be purchased, and who would pay for it if they could. What do you guys think?

Hi all, as this is my first time posting on the forum let me first say that while full time school and work have left me with little time to get involved in discussions, I have been reading the forum for quite some time and find it to be a fantastic resource, as well as just truly enjoyable reading. I have great amount of respect for many of the regular posters here, and definitely have found a higher signal to noise ratio than on any other forum I've ever visited. Thank you for that! I watched this film today, and found it disturbing enough to want to investigate other peoples opinions of it. If you google Loose Change you will find several places to stream or download the film; it's about an hour and twenty minutes long. I would prefer that you didn't post a reply here unless you've watched the film. In any case I highly recommend taking the time to view it, although I must warn you there is some pretty disturbing footage - watching some of it was pretty difficult, as I don't think I'd seen much of it since shortly after the event occurred. So basically it is my opinion that they provide indisputable evidence in this film that the official story propogated by our government as to what happened on 9/11 is false. I felt that even if you ruled out all of the eyewitness testimony, that the video footage, as well as scientific facts [ex: what tempurature titanium melts at] and historical precedent [skyscrapers don't collapse even after burning for 24 hours over many floors] gave their argument merit. I wanted to know if other intelligent people, like the ones that frequent this forum, had come to the same conclusion as me, and if not, I would appreciate hearing why. I felt quite ill after watching this film, as it's ramifications are pretty serious.