Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Charles T.

Regulars
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    128

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Charles T.

  1. Two War Updates in One

    in The Objectivism Meta-Blog Discussion

    Posted

    I find that the best source for keeping up on the war in general and for hearing war-related news that you won't hear from the "mainstream media" is the John Batchelor radio show, which airs on WMAL radio in New York from 10pm to 1am each weeknight. He regularly interviews folks like McInerney, and talks with John Loftus every night. Loftus is the fellow who brought those Saddam transcripts to light in the first place.

    Batchelor himself is a typically inconsistent man, a religious conservative, but he is very pro-U.S. and "gung-ho" where the war is concerned, and understands clearly who our enemies are. He constantly draws attention to stories around the world involving the violation of individual rights and liberties.

    Here's a URL for WMAL where you can listen to the show (but be warned, it's AM radio, and the commercial breaks often seem interminable):

    http://www.wmal.com/

  3. Classical Music

    in Music

    Posted

    Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto (The Emporer Concerto)

    Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major

    Shostakovich's "Festive Overture"

    Copland's "Appalachian Spring"

    Bizet's First Symphony

    For those who are unaware, you can sign up on "Listen Rhapsody" and stream 25 free tracks per month, no obligations of any kind. A good way to sample music.

  9. Radio Talk Show Hosts

    in Movies, Shows, and Theatre

    Posted

    I would suggest John Batchelor of ABC News Radio, though his show is a news program, not what I think of as "talk-radio", meaning: he does not take calls from listeners (which is one reason I like it). Ideologically, he doesn't add up to much, just a fairly typical religious Republican, full of lots of inconsistencies, but he supports the war, presses the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia are the sources of much of the world's heartache (but doesn't forget about China, France, and Russia), and presents the news with seriousness. His is a great program for staying "up on things". He's on the air for four hours, the last of which is mostly repeated segments from earlier in the show. He talks to authors, experts, analysts, etc. Some of his frequent guests include Victor Davis Hanson, George Friedman, John Loftus, Yosef Bodansky, Michael Ledeen, Bill Whalen. Usually he has a segment each night dealing with recent astronomical happenings, and occasionally he has one about movies. He also throws in segments where he interviews authors about their books, which might be about anything at all.

    His site is here.

    You can listen live here, 9pm to 1am EST every weeknight.

  12. Weird Stuff In Rand's Fiction

    in Ayn Rand Book Club

    Posted

    There are a few events in some of her fiction novels which bother me, and I'm just wanting someone to give a defense/explanation of them.
    All of the examples you cite are textbook illustrations of taking something out of context.

    Read the books, keep the whole context in mind, and you will, hopefully, come to understand that none of your examples are accurate descriptions of what is depicted in the books.

    1.) In Atlas Shrugged when she seems almost gleeful at the thought of a train full of people being blown up. I understand that many of them were immoral, but did they really deserve death--especially the children? It seems that if you make this argument, you have to argue that everyone currently on welfare deserves to die.

    No, everyone on welfare deserves to NOT be on welfare, since no one deserves to be robbed in order to fund welfare. What happens to ex-welfare recipients after having that source of unjust funding removed is their responsibility.

    2.) Again, in Atlas Shrugged towards the end, Dagny kills a guard who "wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness." Okay, maybe he had some problems, but I don't really consider that a capital crime.
    You omit almost the entire set of circumstances, including what he was guarding and why. He might not even have known what he was guarding, actually, and it wouldn't make any difference. That's exactly why Dagny gives him, quite benevolently, the benefit of the doubt, and offers him a chance to walk away unharmed. He chose poorly, and Dagny had the right to shoot him.

    3.) In The Fountainhead when they blow up a privately-owned housing development. Note that I have not read this book yet, but I'm just wondering what the justification is for destroying someone else's private property.

    Reardon made that private property possible, and did so on certain terms. Those terms were violated, so he revoked his permission.

    4.) In all of the fiction that I've read, her sex scenes seem to be more like rape scenes.

    The motivations of the individual characters involved makes it clear why the sex scenes go the way they do. The scenes in the books were mainly tense, charged, first encounters. Were you to extrapolate the lives of the characters beyond what is shown in the books, I doubt that after having been married for five years Rearden would still be throwing Dominique around as he did the first time, or that she throws things at him and resists him so energetically each time. In other words, it's not reasonable to conclude or imply that for Rand, sex is supposed to be generally an "almost rape-like" experience.

    Context, context, context.

  13. Handedness

    in Biosciences

    Posted

    since left-handed people use the right brain more

    I recently read that that whole "right-handed/left brain, left-handed/right brain" thing is a myth, just one of those stories that got started, and stuck. Has anybody else heard that? I'm pretty sure I read it in Michael Shermer's book, "The Borderlands of Science", but I don't have a copy so I can't confirm that.

    CT

  17. problem with vertical scroll bars

    in Help and Troubleshooting

    Posted

    For some reason, the scroll bar along the right side of the screen is "unlimited" when I visit these forums lately. That is to say, the slider you move to scroll the screen up and down is tiny, and moving it just a touch sends you down past all the posts in the thread to blank white screen, as if the screen is bottomless. I can still click on the up and down arrows to move down without shooting past all the posts, but the scroll bar is useless. Is this just something I screwed up on my computer, or is anyone else experiencing this?

  18. Moral to protect your home to the death?

    in Ethics

    Posted

    As was pointed out, it would be suicidal, but it would also be completely justifiable. It's up to you. We are not in fact free in the U.S., though we are closer to it than any other nation (maybe that's not true anymore, I'm not sure). We are semi-slaves, and it's up to each of us to decide at exactly which point we will no longer put up with violations of our rights. You're justified in fighting in defense of your rights at any point.

    However, it should be stressed that one purpose of our legal system is supposed to be to allow us to avoid the use of violence to settle things, so a person should at least give that avenue a try before he starts shooting. Always try reasoning with people first, then, if that fails, you have to make the decision of whether or not you're going to bend over and take it, or seek justice.

  20. Taxes: Federal Sales Tax

    in Political Philosophy

    Posted

    Adding a new type of tax in the US is a bad idea. Any change to the tax system -- other than simply lowering *rates* -- is mostly a distraction. Forget simplification, just reduce the rates...slowly down to zero, and we won't have to worry.

    I agree. I've learned much about the "Fair Tax" from Neal Boortz, who is currently writing a book about it, which he hopes to have out in February (that's what he keeps saying on his radio program). It is tempting to pounce on the idea of abolishing the I.R.S. and removing all of the "hidden taxes" that exist at all levels of production, but it is the issue of the immorality of taxation that must be exposed and popularly accepted. Accepting an entirely new system surrenders that issue in principal, and would be a big mistake.

    If someone is truly willing to accept a new tax-scheme in the name of decreasing the tax burden and allowing people to keep more of their own money, then what argument is there against simply gradually lowering tax rates and abolishing the various taxes? If anyone were to argue against that, then I would have to suspect that ending taxation and protecting property rights are not their true goals.

    Taxation has to be defeated morally, in principle. Publicizing the various ways the gov't could be paid for without it (and how the gov't is vastly larger than it has any moral right to be) is more important than suggesting and promoting a new, more efficient way for the gov't to rob people.

  22. Brook on O'Reilly 12/13

    in Events & Announcements

    Posted

    I was surprised O'Reilly actually let Brook complete some of his thoughts. And they were good ones!

    "I'd like to see Fallujah turned to dust." Ditto.

    He perfectly essentialized the flaw of the current war when he pointed out that the moral emphasis in past wars that we won was on preserving the lives of our soldiers, while in this one the emphasis is on preserving the lives of Iraqi civilians. O'Reilly concluded by saying, "I'd like to see us get more aggressive, but you can't kill civilians." Then how exactly do we fight this war when the enemy is hiding among them? Blank-out. All he can come up with to say is, "We have to fight it 'smarter' ". Gee, that's real helpful there, Bill.

    Did anyone watch Michael Newdow on the Hannity and Colmes program? He ate Hannity's lunch. Whatever Newdow's faults may be, he is an effective and persuasive speaker, at least on this seperation of church and state issue. He knows his stuff. Then I switched stations and saw Christopher Hitchens likewise making mincemeat of Pat Buchanan on Scarborough Country. I like Hitchens more and more the more I see and read of him, though I don't know much about the guy.

  23. Why are Objectivists hyping "The Incredibles"?

    in Movies, Shows, and Theatre

    Posted

    I enjoyed the film and recommend it, but I think it is typical in its mixed premises. In terms of the ideas it represents, I don't think it's anything special.

    As with "Finding Nemo", there was one scene that I found totally offensive:

    Mr. Incredible physically assaults and almost kills his obnoxious boss in a fit of rage. It was unjust and completely criminal, enough to put Mr. Incredible in jail for the rest of his life, yet it is not only glossed over and made to seem laudible, but Mr. Incredible is utterly unpunished for it (other than losing his job).

    Apart from that one glaringly awful scene, I thought the film was fun (though not side-splittingly funny), beautiful to watch, and excellently performed. I'd like to see a sequel.

  25. Brook on O'Reilly 12/13

    in Events & Announcements

    Posted

    He is just that stupid. I detest him extremely. Some things he has said:

    "I think that wealthy people in this country should be able to keep half their money." :santa:

    (paraphrasing from memory) "If I'm sitting in a bar and Christina Aguilera or Brittany Spears walks in and says, 'Let's go," who's going to pass that up? I'm just being honest!" Basically admitting he would cheat on his wife if the woman were "hot" enough (and the girls he chose for his example tell you something about him, too). He said this in the context of how men are weak, they can't be expected to be loyal or faithful all the time, that's "just the way it is". He's fond of saying that, and chalking peoples' flaws up to "human nature".

    I haven't written them down, so I can't cite them all, but I have heard him say scores of stupid, rotten things. He's despicable.

    I heard someone say his ratings are beginning to slide since that recent scandal of his, which he managed to downplay pretty effectively by settling out of court and arranging a non-disclosure agreement. I hope it's true.

×
×
  • Create New...