oldsalt
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Posts posted by oldsalt
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As a nurse (now retired), I had extensive experience with just such a patient, who was cared for in the home. The parents gave loving care to the child, and were financially able to hire a nurse to care for the child during the day, but it became increasingly difficult as the boy grew (as stunted as his growth was overall). He didn't live past his teen years (as is usually the case). Like this couple's "pillow child", the boy was included in family activities, when he was well enough to do so, though they had to be extremely careful about having him around anyone with so much as the sniffles.
I have no patience fo those who make easy judgments about parents like this couple. They have no conception of what is involved in the constant care of such a child, yet they stand and pontificate against anything that would make such care easier to provide. What choices would be left to parents who could no longer care for their child because they simply cannot physically do the job? They could send the child to some facility where strangers who, however kind and competent, will never give the care that a loving family can give. There are parents who do not give loving care, of course. In such a case, the patient would be better off under professional care. In most such cases, the state pays at least some of the cost--that is, we all end up paying for the care of these patients. As long as the family is willing and able to do the job, it is none of the state's business. The only way it would become the business of the authorities is if there was documented abuse of the helpless one involved.
(That last paragraph is a mess, but I don't have more time to do anything about it. I hope it makes sense.)
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I know he was an evil dictator and killed many people. But did he deserve to be hanged? I mean, if he would have rotted his life away in jail, would that have been so bad?
If you know he was an evil dictator, how can you ask if he deserved to die? This was a man who had prisons for children. This was a man who gassed a whole village--and those who didn't die of the initial exposure now must live with the horror of genetic mutations visited upon their children; i.e., the destruction, misery, and suffering from that one act continues to this day, and will for generations. This was a man who dug a multitude of mass graves for those who displeased him. This was a man who tortured and maimed, raped and murdered without regard for the age, sex, or sin of the victim. Those who didn't die lived in perpetual fear for their lives and the lives of their children.
And his evil didn't stop at the borders of his own country. This was a man who made war on his neighbors, in no small part to keep the young men busy so they wouldn't turn on him, using gas during the Iran/Iraq war, and torture, rape, murder, and looting during the Kuwaiti war. This was a man who ordered the assassination of an American President. This was a man who paid terrorists and "martyrs" families $10,000 to $25,000 for murdering innocent Israelis sitting in pizza restaurants and celebrating weddings. This was a man who rained scuds upon the cities of Israel--a country who was not fighting against Iraq at the time. This was a man who dreamed of weapons of mass destruction--not to protect himself and his country, but to cause the mass destruction and terror of innocents.
We'll never know the true extent of the horror and suffering this man caused during his evil life.
I don't know if he deserved to die. [...]By what standard would someone "deserve" to die? What is Justice?
And I know that he killed people himself...but does that justify his own death? Wouldn't it have been more torturous for him if they would have made him stay alive but live a meager life in jail?Ask yourself about the justice of forcing his victims to continue to pay to feed and shelter their oppressor until he died of a natural death. What could possibly justify that? Haven't they paid enough?
If you do value life, then you will demand that mass murderers not be allowed to live because they are a real danger to your own life and all the values that make life possible. You do not succor evil, you destroy it.
Lastly, remember Miss Rand said that evils power is made possible by the sanction of the good. Allowing Saddam to live, allowing any murdering despot to live, sanctions evil.
As for the murdering al-Sadr, I shall be just as pleased to see him dead as I am with Saddam's death. And it can't be soon enough for me.
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German Economics Minister Michael Glos warned at a press briefing that job cuts and facility closures must be "equally [and]fairly distributed" between France and Germany. Airbus employs 42,000 workers in Germany, including 11,000 in Hamburg.
There is a lot to be inferred from that statement. Compare this with the way Ford, for instance, considers where to cut costs and employees. There is no consideration here of who is doing what and whether that activity needs to be cut, but the fact that none of the EU countries can afford financially or politically to lose jobs. It is a rather Atlas Shrugged scenario, except there is no John Galt in the wings waiting with his friends to rebuild. No, the only one standing in the wings is some Cuffy Mohammed Meigs, and he has no intention to rebuild anything.
The way I look at this is a bit different than those who understand what they are looking at when they look at spreadsheets and shareholder reports. What is worrying to me about the Airbus fiasco is that it further weakens the EU at a time when they can ill afford it. I'm not happy to see this happen because it weakens Europe's ability to fight off the Islamic incursions they must eventually fight if they are to survive. I know that there are many who have written them off, but I'm not quite ready to do that. Perhaps it is wishful thinking on my part, but a weak Europe puts a greater burden on us in the end. We are burdened enough with our own inept politicians.
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Miss Rand would be the first to tell you that the premise, the idea that we are a "product" of our environment, is false. This doesn't mean that you can't use her, just that it would probably take more work than you have time for to do a proper job.Hello there,My name is Adam and I am currently a high school student in Ontario, Canada.
I am currently enrolled in a World History class where we have been assigned an Independant Study Unit. In this assignment, we are asked to pick a significant person in history and explain how they are a product of their environment.
I am curious why you chose Miss Rand in the first place. Where did you learn about her?For this essay, I would like to pick Ayn Rand and explain how she formed the philosophy and doctrine of Obejctivsm as a reaction to her upbringing during the Russian era of comunism/the Russian Revolution.Therfore, my thesis would read something like the following"Ayn Rand developed her doctrine of Objectivism as a result of her upbringing during the Communist reign in Russia and the Russian Revolution"
The essay asks us for three main points in which we can defend our thesis, and this is where I am confused. As this is a history essay, I need to focus more on the Russian Revolution and Comunist reign and explain what these things were like, and how they affected Rand. I would also like to make one of my points somethign that briefly explains objectivism- but I am not sure how I could phrase that.
As well, the assignment asks us for three sources- a website (Wikipeida is forbidden), a periodical, and a published references (encyclopedias are forbidden). I was thinking of using http://aynrand.org for my website, perhaps one of Ms.Rand's books or a book about her for my published reference, and possibly an interview which she has done for my periodical reference?
I would like to also mention that I have never written an essay of this genre before, and that unlike many of you, my knowledge of Ayn Rand's upbringing, and of Objectivsm in general, is very juvenile. I would very much appreciate any pointers or constructive criticism in both of these regards!
If you still would like to use Miss Rand as your subject, may I suggest that you look up the Ayn Rand Institute. They have information specifically for students that you may find interesting. They are really the best resource and may be able to direct you to the information you need for the rest of your references and the work you need to do.
I want to address the responses you received so that you don't get the wrong idea. There is a lot of material about Miss Rand that isn't just wrong, but is vicious in its motivation and presentation. Rand did something that has only been done a few times in the history of philosophy: she offered a complete philosophic system. She is the heir of Aristotle, and an advocate of rational egoism. She made original contributions in Epistemology (how do we know what we know), and gave the first ethical basis for Capitalism. As such, she was the enemy of collectivism and the ethics of altruism that underpins the evil of collectivism. This made her an enemy of communism, of course, and all variations of collectivist philosophy, which meant that she has been pilloried by the intellectuals who champion these philosophies. That covers most of today's intellectuals.
She experienced the consequences of collectivism first hand as she grew up in Russia. To that extent, she was influenced by her upbringing. It is the philosophy of collectivism, however, that gives rise to the idea that we are molded by our environment. This is why she would loathe the premise of your essay. You can't help the school work you are given to do, however. You can only try to do it in as honest a manner allowed.
I wish you luck with the project and I hope you will come back and let us know what you've decided and how you've made out.
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The problem is stated this way:
There is, however, a disagreement about the nature of their problem:Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.
Senior officers insisted that the problem was essentially criminal in nature, with crime bosses on the estates fighting back against tough tactics. [....]However, not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation. Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an "intifada" on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.
He said yesterday: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."
It is no surprise, of course, that they are having trouble distinguishing between mafia-type gang warfare and Islamist intafadas, since there is little to distinguish the two in method or motivation. The Islamist may claim religious motivation, and believe it, but they live by crime none-the-less than any gang.
The philosophy that has driven the EU's rhetoric concerning the mess in the Middle East, now drives their own discussion:
[Emphasis mine]Mayors in the worst affected suburbs, which saw weeks of riots and car-burning a year ago, have expressed fears of a vicious circle, as attacks by locals lead the police to harden their tactics, further increasing resentment.With that attitude, the violence won't end any sooner, or easier, than it has in Gaza and the West Bank. Of course, in Gaza the gangs have turned on each other. Surprise, surprise.
(I did what I could to bring what I wrote on this subject from the Airbus thread to its proper venue. I'll pay better attention from now on.
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I just noticed that Featherfall also posted on this in a different area.
I didn't mean to step on his thread. I've been absent for a while, off the web altogether. It may take me a bit to find my feet again. -
As the violence continues in France, there are those who are calling it an "intifada". From The Telegraph:
There is a disagreement about the nature of their problem:Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.
Senior officers insisted that the problem was essentially criminal in nature, with crime bosses on the estates fighting back against tough tactics.[....]However, not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation. Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an "intifada" on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.
He said yesterday: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."
It is no surprise, of course, that they are having trouble distinguishing between mafia-type gang warfare and Islamist intafadas, since there is little to distinguish the two in method or motivation. The Islamist may claim religious motivation, and believe it, but they live by crime none-the-less than any gang.
The philosophy that has driven the EU's rhetoric concerning the mess in the Middle East, now drives their own discussion:
Mayors in the worst affected suburbs, which saw weeks of riots and car-burning a year ago, have expressed fears of a vicious circle, as attacks by locals lead the police to harden their tactics, further increasing resentment.With that attitude, the violence won't end any sooner, or easier, than it has in Gaza and the West Bank. Of course, in Gaza the gangs have turned on each other. Surprise, surprise.
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France, Germany and Spain have poured billions into an attempted direct threat to American enterprise, the Airbus A380, hoping to wrest the civil airline business from Boeing, in particular. I remember the festivities when they rolled out this plane.
They have just announced their third devastating setback. From an excellent analysis (with links) fromThe American Thinker:
What went wrong? Among other things...Yesterday’s announcement of a third round of delay, this time for roughly a year, in the delivery of Airbus A 380 superjumbo airliners drove down shares of parent company EADS so far that trading in them had to be suspended on the Paris arm of the Euronext market after they breached their 10 per cent loss limit. Trading resumed, but the shares drifted even lower.The A 380 has now become the largest scale business fiasco in the history of manufacturing. That is very bad news indeed for European ambitions to displace the United States as the epicenter of the world civil aviation industry. Staggering financial losses from the delay – over six billion dollars at latest count – loom, and the reputation of Airbus is so tattered that its largest customer, Emirates, accounting for almost 30% of orders for the plane has issued a coded threat to cancel some or all of its massive order, and is reported to be talking with Boeing about ordering a smaller rival in the superjumbo game, the latest stretch derivative of the 747 lineage, a model; clearly aimed the jugular of the A 380.
The company identified the installation of wiring and wiring harnesses as the source of the previous delays. Yesterday, it began to provide more detail, and own up to the classic business blunder of the age: a failure to use compatible computer systems in different parts of the company whose efforts must be tightly integrated.[....]The CAD divide echoes the nationalistic passions which the European Project, as it is known, was supposed to relegate to the ash heap of history. To unify, either the Germans were going to have to put aside current tasks and spend a year or so learning to do their jobs on a radically different system, or the French would. Computer language in the same role as national language, this round.
The failure with the A380 is, of course, spilling over to other Airbus products. The company is also considering outsourcing labor to Russia and China, which will cause serious labor problems in France, Germany and Spain, none of which can afford them.
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I enjoyed the part where the judge chided the posturing Christians for blatantly lying in an attempt to cloak ID in science. The judge is apparently a Christian himself and was highly offended that his fellows would resort to such antics in order to sneak ID into the schools. It's great that he called them on their hypocracy; he left them without a leg to stand on and it didn't come from someone they could smear as a sectarian, activist judge. Put a broad grin on my face.
(Understand that I don't think the judge's religious beliefs are actually important to the decision he wrote. It's just a bit of gravy.)
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And are there microwave ovens at convenient distances so that these things can be reheated? And are these microwave ovens placed inside a heated, and private, room where women can take the damn things off to reheat them? Of course, that kind of support <kof> would be expensive, but necessary.
Unless they have an environmentally safe gel that can hold a comfortable level, without significant heat loss, for at least 10 hours. Without having to heat it to a temperature that would fry tender bosums when put on right out of the microwave.
No wonder the shorts aren't really an item.
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What I said about the 1918 pandemic was what I remember from my study of medical history, which I did when I was getting my degree in nursing (from 1965-69).
I've personally dealt with some pretty virulent flu strains, both in the US and when I served in Viet Nam. There are strains that are, as was put above, perfectly capable of killing on their own. I'll add that such strains usually kill very quickly, too quickly for secondary infections to be a factor.
Recognizing the above doesn't invalidate what I said in my earlier post, however. I experience informs my book learnin', just as almost 100 years of experience, as well as book learnin' informs the science of medicine. Just the fact that we are discussing this as a potential problem is in stark contrast to the unexpected death that swept the nation. This makes a difference. How much of one remains to be seen.
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They are using the pandemic from the WWI era to spread fear. Yes, millions died in a world wide pandemic. The great majority of those who died did so from secondary infections - bacterial infections which took hold when the patients immune system was compromised by the flu virus.
There are two things to remember when you hear the situation today being compared to the 1918 pandemic:
1. Life expectancy in the US was around 47. This was mainly due to the sanitary conditions, water quality, and level of medical knowledge and care at the time, which was bad on all counts, especially by today's standards. I won't even go into the kind of hard physical labor required of most people, labor which wore people out by an early age. (Remember the "old" woman at Starnesville?)
2. They had no antibiotics with which to fight the secondary infections which did most of the killing. They had no sophisticated treatments for lung infections (pneumonia being a leading killer), nor medicines and IV fluids for those affected by severe gastro-intestinal tract infections.
In other words, if the avian flu turns nasty for humans, those in countries which are mainly primitive will suffer greatly (just as they do when anything untoward happens). But those in countries with modern santitary conditions, clean water, etc., and the medicine to treat secondary infections, will suffer much less. I'm not saying that people won't die, but I am saying that it won't be 1918 again in the U.S.
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Just what are these people threatening to do? How do they suppose they will take over? And why, pray tell, would the US have to submit to world opinion? What does "the world" plan on doing to us if we don't?
Don't you just love how they demand their "fair share" of something they didn't invent, or develop, or impliment? Of course, that is the essense of the U.N. - a "fair share" for countries that didn't produce any part of the pie.
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ARI released an op-ed today about this argument and noted that the one entity left out of the discussion is the individual. We are now at a point where an argument in law about rights have nothing to do with the individual. Of course, they always argue law, as opposed to principle.
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One of the defining characteristics of the environment surrounding idiots is irony.
For instance, I not only find it ironic that the protectors of the public peace should fire off bullets to protest a lack of ammunition, but also the fact that Hamas got their allotment from the largess of their Western sugar-daddies before the police got theirs. Well...maybe not *as* ironic.
Do you suppose that anyone from Foggy Bottom bothers to read this stuff. Or maybe Langley? The Pentagon? The White Hou...oh, never mind.
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Is this case asking whether the feds can overrule state laws?
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I hope none of these people ever require medication to control pain. This is just one of many avenues of attack sustained against all such medications. As with so many of the medical cases now clogging the courts, individuals and companies are sued on the basis of bad results, not mal-practice or negligence.
Consider the premise behind such litigation, and what would be required to protect oneself against being sued. Such claims demand omniscience not just on the part of doctors, but on the the entire science of medicine. They also require that every human being be a psysical carbon copy of every other human being so that any tested treatment can be absolutely safe in every instance of its use -- and that there are no acceptable risks involved. If something is dangerous for one person, it is not to be used.
We are all placed in danger everytime something like this happens.
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Racial stereotypes? Yes. My Indian blood boils at the idea of being thought of as a fierce warrior who battles to the end! How insulting is that?
Of course, my family now has members (FIVE generations straight who made a career) in the military, but we don't like anyone to think of us as belonging to the warrior caste. That would be stereotyping, and we can't have that.
Is there an emoticon specifically for sarcasm? Think of it here if there is one.
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If their mascot was an African negro hunting animals with a spear then there would have been an outcry quite a while ago. I dont think that this is essentially different - when you replace 'indians' with 'blacks', a lot of the reactions start to make more sense.
It's not like this is a government ban or anything.
Hogwash. The names and mascots were chosen because they represented a fighting spirit, not as any kind of insult. Had they chosen a Zulu warrior, which was a fearsome fighter, it would have been no different.
Would you be in favor of the military changing the names of their attack helicopters as well? They, too, were named because the appelations denote the courage and fighting prowess of the tribes for which they are named.
I have enough Indian blood in me to be on the rolls. I can tell you from my own experience that this crap comes from a dissident political bunch that speaks with a loud voice, and which does not represent all Indians any more than Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton speaks for African-Americans. Remember that the likes of Ward Churchill supposedly speaks for groups like this.
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One can only hope that the Air Force officer in this article -- LINK -- is not typical of the officers we have in Iraq (or anywhere else for that matter).
A young tech who runs a repair shop on a base which trains Iraqi Security, wrote in his milblog that, while watching a group being taught exercises, he wondered if it was right to try to change how Iraqi Joe exercised. After all, didn't these people already have a routine? Who are we to come in and try to change it?
I have been appalled by how much we have been disarmed. We pay out multi-millions for the arming and training of our people, but we've sabotaged the greatest weapon, the mind of our people.
I don't know what can be done to immediately change this. Our military is a mirror of the rest of the culture. All of these people have come out of government schools that taught them this claptrap. The same government then puts them in harms way, with all the latest technology of the best minds, but without any way to judge what is right and what is wrong; indeed, the only thing they are taught to believe is wrong is passing judgment on anything outside of themselves.
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Aside from the behaviour of many Oists, the single greatest barrier is likely the fiction itself. Let's face it, the characters can be thoroughly unbelievable and her writing often comes off as base propaganda.
Many people reading her fiction get a sense of Rand's extreme paranoia and just think "This girl has a sick mind", and never give it a second thought.
That you could say such a thing makes me wonder what you are doing here. Do you spell your name "TROLL"?
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That makes sense, and I am glad we have it clear.
Actually, if you look carefully at what I wrote after your inital post, I never once "defended" the statement itself. I only said that the context was misunderstood and called for people to re-read it carefully.
I'm glad too.
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After 10 months on this forum, I know Stephen to be: knowledgable and possessed of a depth of understand about Objectivism above virtually any one else on this forum; generous with his time; patient, especially with beginners; hard-working; funny; true to his word and in all other ways honest.
I've never encountered the moderator in question, at least that I remember, until this thread. What have I learned about him here:
1. He is presumptuous. That a 19 year old would presume to judge Stephen's posts "worthless" -- without stating why he made this judgment and give evidence to back up that judgment, tells me that he doesn't have the maturity, much less the knowledge and understanding to be a moderator.
2. He has repeatedly broken the rules of the forum himself. He has not followed the most basic rules of grammer--and I'm not talking about not an inadvertent misspelling or a forgotten comma, either. He has also been snide and condesending to Bowser, in particular, and uncivil to almost everyone else who has challenged him.
3. He has shown by statements, such as "no big deal" that he does not grasp the gravity of his actions. He seems unwilling to even entertain the thought that he may have acted wrongly.
4. Probably the most important thing I've learned is that the moderator doesn't understand the concept of private property as it pertains to copywrited material.
The idea that we have lost Stephen's wisdom and knowledge to someone so wet behind the ears that he doesn't even recognize what is wrong with this situation -- and is unwilling to learn -- is almost beyond comprehension. I love this forum. At best, it has afforded me an opportunity to finally interact with others of like mind and allowed me to grow beyond what I could do on my own, and it has helped me to clarify my own understanding. While there are others here who have been of help with this point or that, no one has come close to being the help that Stephen has been (with the exceptions of Betsy and Bowser, both in very different ways), even when he wasn't addressing me personally or I wasn't participating in the discussion. I appreciate, respect, and value him greatly.
What has happened constitutes a gross injustice, and if the situation isn't rectified, I won't be back. If injustice is allowed to stand, the forum won't be worth coming back to anyway.
Edit by the author: Added number 4 in the list regarding the moderator, which I inadvertently left out.
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The key to splitting up specific parts of posts is to copy/paste the relevant section (which you usually get from the post itself below your reply window), highlight the pasted part and press the quote key.
If that is unclear, or doesn't work, let me know and I'll try to assist you further.
I am not able to cut and paste with the keyboard I have. I'm saving every penny to change things, but I'm stuck with the technology I have. I'm trying to work out a way around the deficiency.
And many people don't. If it were an easy task to seperate who does and who doesn't, a more accurate accountability could occur. As it is, the primary motive of my post was to dispute the concept of "no fault of their own" by demonstrating some faults. I made no attempt to quantify how much fault rests on the country as a whole or any individual within the country as that would require considerably more data.
That was exactly the point I was trying to make! In my own long-winded fashion. I said that there was fault that could be assigned in my very first sentence. Because there is no way to quantify this because of the scope of the disaster, I attempted to address the question within the context that I do know.
There is an implication in the following quote -
which suggests I'm dropping that entire context, which I'm not. That implication is what I am referring as being a gross exaggeration of my position. I could have been clearer.
Oh, I should have been clearer. I shouldn't have used the personal address, which implied that I was addressing the statement to your position, when I was attempting to explain my own.
Then I replace my "straw man argument" comment with "This does not apply to me or my argument.' Again, you suggest I'm not seeing a context that I do see. My evaluation of that context is different than yours.
I'm not suggesting that you don't see the context, but trying to clarify the context of my own thinking. There is nothing personal to be inferred, just my own inability to make myself clear.
Can you see how the wording of this statement implies that the application of ethics are a function of emotion rather than reason or context? Applying ethics to a situation is not a matter or whether a person is being ruthless or benevolent. It is a matter of whether they are acting on principles or objective standards or not. Can you see why I misunderstood what you intended to say? That was one of the reasons why I retracted some initially harsher words and edited it to give you more of an opportunity to explain.
Please read my edited post. There is a reason why I monitor my emotions very closely, and I edited the statement to clarify that. (I hit reply when I meant to preview.) I am perfectly aware that one applies reason to the facts which form the context of any question, ethical or otherwise. I thought I had done so. Things are worse than I thought if I didn't communicate my reasons in a way that would have precluded such a statement!
PS: We have had a rough two days, eh?
You can say that again.
Men: Squat When You Pee
in Current Events
Posted
Alternate headlines for this story:
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Girls gone wild
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Lysistrata takes over