KendallJ

Here is a link to a bunch of before and after's on my house. Unfortunately now that I have it the way I want it, I have to move... To Philadelphia... http://picasaweb.google.com/kendall.justin...feat=directlink

Yes. No.

Finally, you are admitting your are depending on the so-called right to privacy. If you create such a right, then yes. Can you define this right please? What is a right to privacy? How does it derive? "Aggression to circumvent" is not aggression by any definition of the word. The right to privacy lets one create "forceful" out of non-forceful actions. What's wrong with this? Wat right is being violated in this case?

Please. Put words in someone else's mouth. stalk: to pursue obsessively to the point of harassment. http://mw1.m-w.com/dictionary/stalking No one said you can harass someone. However, 99.999 percent of the people who use this service are not stalking. To the other 0.001 percent, it is the * harassment* that is the rights violation, not the observation. The observation is not the rights violation. It is a conflated notion of "privacy" that makes it such. What property right is being violated here? I posted a response to you earlier, and you seem to be avoiding it. Is that because you want to cling stubbornly to this idea without actually articulating what right is being violated?

The actual crime being trespassing, and not looking through your blinds.

I'm not a legal scholar but I'll give you my thoughts. 1. other evidence that such surveillance has a strong causal link to the initiation of force. 2. To the extent that there is nothing regarding #1 with the activity: yes. 3. Surveillance is "secret observation for the purpose of spying." Bit circular that... Surveillance as such is not a violation of any rights. Just as the owning of a firearm is not. The fact that a few people who survey or own firearms ultimately act to harm does not make the act itself criminal. It is the act of force that is criminal. Some have claimed that this mechanism is too easy to access. Well, most technological innovation make everything easier including crime. The bizarre fear that somehow increasing the ease of a criminal act will somehow increase the prevalence of the act is flawed thinking, but it is the thinking that is at the heart of the idea of "privacy".

Why is this different?

Can you cite a reference for this? I'm not even sure if when Rand wrote the book that the term Objectivist had been coined. So she'd be including a message to a non-existent group of people. Why would she need to do that?

Well, you're both right and you're both wrong. The mormon church has made inroads into the management of the troops that it sponsors and the councils where mormon churches are prevalent. However, all troops are essentially independently formed and policies are hardly uniformly practiced. When I was a Scout the religious aspects were almost non-issues in my particular troop and what was taught was a non-religous specific "reverence" (which today, I apply as a reverence for the myself, and for the human capacity for reason) You'd simply have to know more information about chuckleslord specific context and to advise based upon some broad brush generalization will yield poor advice. The Eagle Scout award is not a "degree" and it has no value as such. The advice I'd give someone who was just starting into scouts and someone who only had 3 months to finish is vastly different. At this point in chuckleslord progression, it is far less about an abstract policy discussion that might not even apply in his case, than about having the personal character to complete what he has already 99% completed. If someone says they have 3 months to finish, they probably have already completed the Eagle Project, and lack maybe a few merit badge requirements and a board of review. At this point it is basically about finishing and acknowledging your already 99% completed accomplishment. I was 2 merit badges short of my Eagle and considered quitting. I'd regret to this day if I did. It had nothing to do with some larger philosophical issue at that point, and more with a 13 yr old kid who was starting to discover high school and girls.

As an Eagle Scout who disagrees with some of the values of Scouting as they are espoused now, my preference would still have been to finish. When you say " those morals, which are no longer mine, will follow me for the rest of my life" what do you think you mean? The morals you choose come with you for the rest of your life. Take what is good of the experience, and believe me there is a lot that is good, and simply drop the rest off at the door. Being an Eagle Scout is not endorsing a particular set of values for the rest of your life. It is a sign that you have completed a set of tests, most of which are indicators of character, leadership and independence. Hurry up, get your ass in gear, and finish it.

Another way of saying this is that the choice to live is what brings into existence the need for a code of morality. "Should" as in an ethical should only applies once the choice to live has been made. The choice to live is not the province of morality. It brings morality to the forefront as a necessity. In a statement such as "if you want to live, you require a code of morality," the phrase "if you want to live" is what is known as meta-ethical basis. That is, it is the reason upon which a code of morality is based. In Objectivism this meta-ethics is not based upon personal feelings or whim. It is based in the objective requirements of life. Only if you choose to live do you need morality. The choice to live therefore is "pre-ethical." There is not reason why you should choose to do so. It is only if you do choose, that the idea of a should comes into being. If you choose not to live then you have no need of morality, as dying is an incredibly easy thing to do. Also, choosing to live, and choosing not to die are not the same thing. Living is not the avoidance of death. Nor is it pulse maintenance, i.e. survival. Rand never said anything to the effect that our purpose is to survive.

What makes it a great piece of prose?

The title and the question are incongruous. He invented a unique type of motor. Generally most normal average men do not innovate such things. However, that has nothing to do with moral perfection nor moral perfectability.

Why we make it up of course! Could you be a little more specific? Objectivism is a philosophy that Ayn Rand developed. I know it because I've read her works. But this doesn't seem like the answer you were looking for.

Except that as part of a concerted thesis about the nature of ARI, this carries very little water. Even we here have questioned Peikoff's statements about particular policy, but that is a very different thing from claiming systemic failure in ARI policy.

I just took a quick look through it. It basically tries to "read the tea leaves" of Rand's writing, indicating what she would have thought as evidence against ARI. Inferences, and implications that are poorly substantiated at best. Anyone who associated with her, and discussed issues in detail would be in a far better position to understand the applications of her philosophy, yet it is not presented as this. In once case it actually claims Rand misapplied her own philosophy so that ARI's extension of it (support for Israel) is wrong. It's junk in my estimation. And of course there is not comment on C. Bradley Thompson's "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" which of course differentiates Objectivism from the school of neo-conservatism. Such an analysis would be crucial to the thesis of the site, which is that ARI is really a neo-con organization. No definition is given of neo-conservatism so it's used as more of a smear than a real definition. The site seems to take a libertarian pacifist position a la Ron Paul. Almost all the criticisms are foreign policy related.

a. that is a scientific claim that has very little backing, in context. TO claim that second hand smoke is like toxic gas, in any context, ignores the meaning of the word toxic. Dose, concentration, time exposure, etc are all relevant factors for the label. So no, second hand smoke is rarely like toxic gas. You'll find that most studies claiming danger from 2nd hand smoke require you to be co-habitating with a chain smoker for a good part of your life. To suggest that this applies in this context would be wholy context dropping. It simply is not true. b. which rights are those? Is that your right to be in someone else's private establishment, in the environment that you deem appropriate? in public, is actually rarely in public. If you know that ahead of time, it sure is.

When one starts talking about merit, it would be advisable to make sure one's own work is up to snuff, and that they aren't in fact earning what they get themselves. Are you sure you aren't just avoiding the salient point that was made? Your whole line of reasoning misses the whole distinction between intellectual and political activism. Politically, no rational individual would, in the name of ideologicla purity, oust a member of a party, if in doing so, they made their political party irrelevant. Spectre is a moderate republican because, surprise of surprises, he is from a swing state. A little cabal of right wing nuts can't oust him and he knows it. He simply switch parties to prevent a stupid blunder. If you want to change the ideological nature of the senator, you have to change the ideological nature of his state. You don't do that in the primaries. All you do there is put someone in for your party who is unelectable. All I can say is that my inbox is filling up with notes from regular board members thanking me for calling you out. Really, go home.

You're the only one who has been a de facto part of the right. Honestly this is more of the same nonsense from Space Patroller. I am annoyed at Republicans and mad at the Democrats. So why on earth would I celebrate that a right wing fringe group in Spectre's state chose now to go on a quest of [questionable] ideological purity in the name of making the party politically irrelevant? Honestly, SP, you are the farthest thing from an Objectivist, and more a complete right wing nutball. Go back to your NeoTech troll hole. If the Republicans are not so bad, then now they are completely irrelevant. Why would anyone be happy about that. That's right, while the Democrats burn and pillage, the Republicans still get to keep.... card check.

And losing it's filibuster. You think Snow and Collins are what's holding the GOP back, do you? Hardly.

My dear man, you've misunderstood me. It's not an ad hominem because I wasn't making an argument. It is simply a good old fashioned joke, at your expense.

I think K-mac is being far too generous.

I think we need a wiki with questions that every newb asks. 1. What about roads, fire companies, and emergency rooms? 2. The free will vs. determinism merry-go-round yet again. 3. Family's and children's: isn't that sacrifice? 4. Masculinity, femininity, porn and polyamory. 5. How's the voluntary tax thing work again? 6. Aren't animals conceptual beings too? 7. Are you suuuure we don't need a little bit of regulation? 8. Contextual certainty? huh? 9. What about the genocide of the indians? ... and for those of you who love fantastic hypotheticals... 10. If there was a robot who was indescructible, but who could reproduce himself, yet napped twice on every fifth Thursday, but was constructed originally by man, but needed to forage for nuts and bolts to survive, but not really, who happened upon someone else's cabin full of bolts in a crazy snowstorm.... (you get the point) Sorry to hijack. It's Friday and I'm feeling whimsical.

I believe it's actually a very strong component of how the "common law" developed. That is, the idea of writing new laws, i.e. statutes or "statutory law" the way we think of it today, has a downside in that with the stroke of a pen, very well though out and proven principles can be erradicated. Precedent has a stabilizing effect on this, and is in fact how common law developed.

Oh Sorry, I meant this question, not the other one.