Apprentice

I wish I had one for you. There seems to be a shortage of activist groups of any kind that don't seek to coerce others into their causes...

Hello Erica----I'm just a young newbie to the forum too Digging through my brain--the screenname is Spanish?

Old Geezer-- From what I have read, Socionomer is right about trying to track which companies are getting their product from which countries. You will have a hard time doing this. I'd be very careful about doing this, however: What sort of a group are you looking to get involved in? I assume that it will not be a group that tries to make your friend's situation the non-voluntary responsibility of American taxpayers? That would be a problem.

Drat--you beat me to it

What did you object to exactly? (Sorry--my speakers are so poor that it's hard to either understand the words or to make any sort of aesthetic decision about the music...)

Poohat-- I've been trying to understand where your argument is going for a couple of days now. Since you're arguing that the urge to engage in a sexual relationship with a member of the same sex is controllable, I have to assume that you think it should be controlled. Why? (Correct me if I'm wrong in that assumption.) You've explained the biological/evolutionary drive for heterosexuals to couple quite adequately, but I'm certainly not convinced that that drive is the only reason out there for humans to engage in a sexual relationship. I'm personally attracted to men, however, I don't choose to have children. My sexual relatioship is of no use in terms of providing the continuity of the human race. Is that wrong? What about two infertile people engaging in a sexual relationship--is there no reason for them to do so? Should they choose not to engage in it simply because choosing to have sex is a controllable urge? Or is there some other value that they can get from sex beside the production of rugrats? Why should the urge to engage in sex that will never produce children be controlled if it is controllable?

Actually, could you unpack that statement a little? What did they mean when they said that? Incidentally, my preferences for meat run somewhat similarly to theirs. I like to know where my meat comes from and that the conditions were good. For instance, while I'll eat regular chicken or eggs from a crammed farm where the animals are living on top of one another in their own filth, I prefer free range and am often willing to pay for it. This is not a particular concern for the animals, but for the quality of the products and how that could potentially affect my health and taste buds. In other words, yes--knowing how the food was raised changes my perception, but most likely not for the same reasons as your friends. I'd love to see a rise in free range and/or organic farming from consumer demand on the free market if someone could figure out how to do it more economically. But that's definitely not the same thing as wishing industry would bow to the sort of governmentally-enforced standards that organizations like PETA would like to push.

I had not heard of VIP health care before. If there is another thread about this somewhere, can someone point me to it? Thank you This is a rather interesting article (assuming you can get past the author's apparent dislike of people with money...) Had to laugh at the AMA's take on it based on their quote on page 4, "The American Medical Association says there's nothing wrong with VIP health care if it's not 'promoted as a promise for more or better diagnostic and therapeutic services,' according to an ethical policy instituted last summer." I would be interested to know what "ethical policy" that is and how it came about. My first reaction is that the service would inherently provide more and better diagnostic and therapeutic services simply because you actually get to see a doctor when you need one. While we're not at the waiting periods of Canada yet, my parents' descriptions of trying to get my father in to see a gastro doctor and neurosurgeon are rather alarming. Simply getting people in to see doctors sounds like a vast improvement to me! It will also be interesting to see if this could bring about new scientific discoveries in medicine through customer demand. Maybe it will return some dignity to the medical profession too. (I'm hoping.) Any thoughts on where this might take healthcare? It seems much closer to the sort of service I'd like to see and would gladly participate in if we had the money for it. I'm still somewhat confused as to the relationship between the VIP care and the patients' other insurance companies. You pay the membership fee, but you're still working with regular insurance companies to pay your actual care bills? I would see insurance campanies becoming a huge problem in this scheme if they refuse to pay for care at VIP clinics. It would be nice to see insurance companies emerging that are geared toward this type of health care.

I like black, personally--a flat black color, not a shiny one. It's slimming, calming, and goes with most things. I have flat black dishes that are rather austere and food looks fabulous on them

Well thank you AshRyan--I've been greatly enjoying your posts here

Thank you! I look forward to it too

Hello oldsalt-- I'm not sure if you're still interested in this information at all, since it's only tangentially related to the discussion at hand, but I may be able to provide it. Some amino acids are made by the human body (nonessential) and others must be gotten from diet--they are called essential amino acids. What your doctor/nutritionist may have meant was that it can be very difficult to get a complete amino acid profile (one that contains all the essential amino acids) from a vegetarian diet (or even moreso with a vegan one.) This is because animal proteins (meat, dairy, eggs) provide a complete profile. Soy and quinoa apparently do too. However, other vegetarian sources lack some of those essential amino acids. For instance, nuts and seeds tend to lack lysine, and legumes lack methionine. Since not many people are willing to spend their time scientifically composing a diet that is rich in complementary proteins (the proteins Old Geezer mentioned briefly that provide the full array of amino acid building blocks when added together throughout the day), it can be dangerous to let them go willy nilly about making up vegetarian diets of their own. Perhaps that is what your doctor was getting at and not making a very precise statement about it? You'd have to ask him/her to find out. So, sorry if that was a bit off-topic at this point. It doesn't really pertain to the ethics of eating animals, as you mentioned, but I thought you might still like to know

If we're still looking at the idea of insurance companies, wouldn't it be smarter for them to ask more specific questions? For instance, "Do you engage in sexual intercourse with multiple partners without the use of a condom?" It's been my understanding that the reason for homosexuality being a high risk factor is practices that are common to certain circles within that group. The risk factors go up for a heterosexual engaging in those behaviors as well. But for a homosexual who spends his or her life with a monogamous partner, there may not be much more of a risk factor than any heterosexual couple out there. If you consider it in that light, are the insurance companies really adding many more people with that high risk factor considering that presumably they are seeking monogamy through marriage? Seems they'd get more useful information that could help them make smarter decisions by simply asking more specific questions. There's always the possibility that the person can lie in answer, but they could do the same with regard to other risk factors like smoking. I love the idea of the sample contracts on the shelves of Walmart

Hello- I just wanted to introduce myself before jumping right into other folders. I'm currently a science writer/editor from Illinois and hope to make a career change to culinary arts in the next few months. My first exposure to Objectivism and Ayn Rand was a couple of years ago when I picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged. I've been a laissez faire capitalist in spirit and lover of reason and productivity for as long as I can remember (with the exception of a couple years of college where I must have decided such things were too much work.) Currently, I'm enjoying some of Rand's non-fiction and hope to move on to the rest of her writings and some other authors when I'm finished. (ie--Von Mises, Peikoff, Armentano, etc...) My goal in participating in this particular board is to improve my skills in the conventions of rational argument--and also just to be in an atmosphere conducive to Objectivist ideas. It gets a little lonely out there sometimes Anyway--I suppose that's it for an introduction. I'm really enjoying reading through old threads right now!