Solid_Choke
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Posts posted by Solid_Choke
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I think he meant in elementary school and junior high, in which case I believe he would be correct in saying that there are more drugs and weapons now than there were then.
Of course that doesn't mean his post resembles anything close to an argument. Maybe they were "doing something right", or maybe the entire culture has changed since then. I'm inclined to believe the latter. Also, I don't think of getting children to "behave" in a school environment as being necessarily good.
Exactly. Should we be giving props to people in the past for having children that are more docile and easier to control? Is it really better to have children that don't question their slavery to the state but instead just do what they're told?
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No one carried guns and knives to school, and drugs were unheard of. Must have been doing something right.
How far back are you talking? My mother attended high school in the 1960s and not only were drugs very prevalent there was a school shooting that killed two of her classmates. I am very skeptical of the idea that in the past young people were less violent and more well behaved.
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I'm glad to see that despite the politicians' best laid plans, the American people plan to save their rebate money and/or use it to pay down debt. Apparently only about 1 in 5 plan to go out and spend the rebate.
A CCH CompleteTax survey of 2,020 U.S. adults commissioned by CCH and conducted by Harris Interactive found that 47 percent plan to use the rebate money to pay down debt. Another 32 percent intend to use the rebate to save money, and 21 percent plan to spend the rebate.
Sadly because the rebate checks were purchased with debt they aren't actually paying it down. They are simply delaying it further into the future when they will have to pay it through taxes.
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This is interesting news about the manufacturers changing the default, and confirms what I've held forever, that free-market forces are the best way to resolve such issues. Right now there are 3 wireless networks detectable near my home, and all of them are secured.
Two years ago I could drive from my house to the grocery store and always have internet connection via unsecured wireless networks. Now less than about one in four of them are still open. I think this probably has more to do with companies changing the defaults to protect the customers than increased awareness about router configuration.
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Having recently read two charming books, The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet, both by Benjamin Hoff (the faults of Taoism aside) I was inspired to revisit the original Pooh tales written by A.A. Milne way back in the 1920s. I grew up watching the Disney tv version of Pooh, and find that that is the Pooh most chldren nowadays are aquainted with, unfortunately. In a world where most books for children focus on such themes as multi-culturalism, altruism, religion, unconditional tolerance, etc. it is refreshing to read stories which such interesting characters (again, putting aside the fantasy fact that they are animals acting as humans), Each character has a unique philosophy; unique as compared to the other characters. The interplay between these characters and their outlooks in every situation is absolutely charming. And the wisdom of Winnie the Pooh always wins out. I can't think of many other young children's tales where the characters consistently get the just desserts of their philosophies. Bad philosophies always seem to win out... but not in Pooh. My new personal favorite character, is Piglet, as he is the only character who undergoes any sort of change throughout the course of the original tales: he gains confidence and a new outlook on life (that, and the illustrations of him throughout the stories are adorable!).
For those of you who do have young children out there, I highly recommenf the Milne stories of Winnie the Pooh. I even recommend them for all of us adults out there; reading a little Pooh can make even the worst days a little better. Just the illustrations alone will make you smile.
I was a huge Pooh fan when I was a kid. I would make my mother put in the tapes almost everyday. Sadly I don't remember the storyline but I'm sure it had a lasting impact on my early life.
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Woman Aborts Child To Help 'Save' the Planet...hopes her actions would ensure her carbon footprint would be kept to a minimum..."Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,"
I was watching the Planet Earth series...the last three episodes are about "the future" which is of course, bad because of humans...I heard comments similar to:
a scientist saying, it's not that we have to stop scientific progress, we must roll back scientific progress
a few others stating their "expert" opinion that the human race should be limited to .5 to 1 billion people
a couple of EVIL corporate dressed types with real short hair (compared to the longer haired scientists and environmentalists) explaining how drilling for oil in Alaska would have a minial impact, as scenes of caribou (or whatever those things are) and their babies walk around an existing oil plant (more than likely they prefer the safety of the plant)
Maybe that child would have invented a new energy source that can power the globe and produce less emissions. Now we'll never know.
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Is anyone having trouble with the DVD? It kepy lagging up for us; we are using my little brothers Playstation, one of those mini-ones. My computer wouldn't run it too, it said it was the drivers, so I downloaded new ones and it still wouldn't work. My computer is brand new and I have all the codecs I could ever need.
I don't know what was up with it.
Try using VLC: http://www.videolan.org/
If it still doesn't play it is the disk and not your computer.
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Digging up an old, old topic.
I really find it laughable that most Objectivists would consider some sub-genres of metal to be completely lacking in virtue. Power and Prog metal have the most complex music written in modern music. If you've ever seen the work of bands like Nightwish, Dragonforce or any of the stereotypical Speed/Power Metal bands, you'd realize what work, pride and showmanship is put into their art. The lyrics of many bands are simply tellings of stories. It's a form of entertainment. The gasly lyrics of some death metal bands ( I'm not much of a fan of death metal, but I even enjoy some of it ) are simply describing brutal acts. I look at it like a horror movie. And just for the record, most fans of Death metal are more interested in the music than the lyrics.
Metal is fantasy rock. I am not saying that every single line of it is completely moral, but much of the grotesque things found in metal are rebellions against the censorship fascists that were in high numbers in the 80s, which is when a lot of the gory and brutality/sexuality sprung up in metal and many other art forms.
To write off Metallica as " noise " as I saw a member of this board do earlier is nothing short of complete ignorance of the music Metallica played, especially pre-Black album.
I'm listening to Dragonforce right now. They never play anything this uplifting, exciting, or complex on the local rock stations. It is simply amazing.
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He is correct. The Old Testament laid down plenty of laws concerning slaver and the New clearly treated it as a normal state of affairs.
There is frankly nothing in the Bible that could be used as an argument against slavery.
I don't know of any arguments in the bible against slavery either, but I do think it should be noted that a large majority of the people in the abolitionist movement were Christians. Perhaps it is something something unrelated to their religion, but it does cause one to think that maybe something about Christian ethics lead them to believe the suffering of slaves to be wrong.
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Capitalist Party, isn't that the Republicans?!?! The Republicans support rich people, they must be the capitalist party am I right?!?!
You laugh but you sound exactly like the majority of my vocal classmates here at ASU.
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A friend of mine quite recently proposed a "solution" to abusive and neglegent parenting.
He proposes that the state raises kids till the time they reach adulthood, through a new regime of education.
I told him that this idea runs counter to freedom, capitalism, and selfishness; but he counters that it is.
I told him that the idea was statist to the nth degree. He counters with "what about the abused kids?" and I said "let them work it out by the child protection laws and they'll support themselves"
I also mentioned that the kids not interested should not be forced to continue with it, but he disagrees, claiming they cannot make their own choices.
I cannot explain it fully, but the idea sounds way too much like Brave New World. But this technique, as far as I know, remains untested.
I am conflicted over it because, on the one hand, there are really good parents out there and freedom of choice in education is part of liberty, but, on the other hand, the abuse of kids by parents is a breach of rights as well.
On Tuesday, a 20-yr old mother came home to see her 1-yr old stabbed to death by the kid's great uncle in order to "get rid of demons" in the child.
Would this new regime solve this problem?
Any Objectivists here support this idea?
Am I being elitist in not supporting this "equalizing" idea?
Is parental abuse necessary cause for a new governmental agency, or should this idea be run by businesses, if at all?
So what happens when the state is abusing the children? I would argue that public school abuse children's minds by forcing them to conform to their warped ethics.
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Climate Audit is one of the most professional global warming websites you are likely to find. It deals with the problems in the climate record and especially with the IPCC studies.
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Do you have more information on this claim? I have never heard that intellectuals in post WWII Japan and Germany were captivated by Austrian Economics.
I believe the ruler in West Germany who got rid of the price controls was influenced by Austrian-style economic theory. I don't know of any link in Japan though.
The Road To Serfdom
-F.A. Hayek
The Law
-Frederic Bastiat
Basic Economics
-Thomas Sowell
(It was published in the 21st Century...so sue me)
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Oh, they are two threads about this game. I suggest merging them.
But yeah, a friend told me he really liked it and I looked it up on Wiki and found it was inspired by Atlas. BUT as far as I can tell, it never said anything about being an Objectivist game or city or whatever. So don't say things like that.
You never know, it might have been messed up because the people in it were like the Brandens...
It's not really an "Objectivist" city per se. It is just that the city is similar in many ways to Galt's Gulch in that it was hidden from the major population and inhabited by productive geniuses and had some form of highly capitalist economy.
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I have never had that problem with OpenOffice. It has done a pretty good job for me. That just goes to show that everyone's software experience is different and that it depends on what they do with the software - and in this case what the documents they open contain.
I just installed it. You were definitely right about the speed increase. It opens almost instantly, but OO used to take about 5 seconds.
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If you have steam installed you can download the demo. I tried it and all I can say is "wow"...
Here it is
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Yes. StarOffice has tools to help with that that OpenOffice does not.
I have been using SO for a few days now. I definately prefer it over OpenOffice. One nice thing about it is that is opens faster.
Is it still a Java app? If not why would it open any faster if all it has is more features?
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What problem are we trying to solve with it?
Many people vote for the lesser of two evils because they don't believe the candidate they truly like has a chance to win. It could make third party candidates (such as the Freedom Party) more likely to win. Well in theory anyway.
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Thanks to Choke for finding the link. I read at the book (a half-step above skimming), and I don't see that AS could be called "inspired" by The Driver. Pending contrary documentation or authoritative testimony from Peikoff or someone else who knew her very well, I would conclude that the name John Galt does derive from Henry M. Galt in The Driver, and this is more satisfying than the connection with the Scots/Canadian John Galt (founder of Guelph). The existence of the sentence "Who is Henry M. Galt" on p. 52, which I've seen some of the whiner sites point to smarmily as evidence of plagiarism lacks credibility -- in the context of Driver, there is just about nothing else that he could have said. Unlike AS, "Who is Henry M. Galt" is not a highly meaningful and symbolic line, and would be functionally interchangeable with the sentence "Who had the prosciutto with peas?".
As for the particular topic, involving railroads might seem like an impossible coincidence, but recall that railroads were the center of the universe in those days. There is clearly an element of shared viewpoint -- we would be in big trouble if Ayn Rand were the only person in the country who opposed socialism. The similarity in the evil that was being opposed is because the two authors were writing about the same evil. Indeed, the clear and present avatar of that evil here in the US at that time was one and the same person: you have his likeness in your purse.
I conclude that Rand must have been aware of Garet Garrett, especially since he was a well-known writer, and that in the context of his writings and her views, she very likely had read The Driver. And that's about as far as I think it can go.
Also both books mimic real history in many ways. People like Andrew Carnegie bought railroad companies and revolutionized them only to have the government later enter in and more heavily regulate the industry to the harm of the customers. Real life has plenty of examples of this same story happening over and over.
Man has good idea.
Idea makes man wealthy.
People are envious of man.
People conspire with government to steal man's wealth.
The history of anti-trust has shown many such stories.
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Funny how that pdf turns up immediately (within hours) after my print copy arrives at the library. And when I looked and looked for it all over the place. How did I miss it?
-Q
I'm fairly sure it is becoming popular once again due to the Mises Institute. Actually they are bringing many older books back into print especially ones with classical liberal themes. I have no problems with retelling stories in your own unique way. I just find it kind of odd that the connection wasn't made earlier or that it hasn't been discussed very much. Actually even Superman wasn't entirely original either. He was based on Hugo Danner. Some of my favorite works of art are simply remakes with a twist. The Departed was a remake of Infernal Affairs except it takes place in Chicago instead of Hong Kong and the Irish mob instead of the triad. Also if Rand was trying to hide the fact that The Driver was her inspiration I doubt she would have used the same name "Galt" for one of the characters.
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If anyone wants to check for themselves you can. The whole book is free online right here.
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What do most Objectivists think about approval voting? Would it be superior to a present system? Why or why not?
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It seems kind of hard to cram philosophy into a FPS. At least, not into the game play itself.
A traditional FPS yes, but if you have ever played Deus Ex you know there can be plenty of time for story and philosophy in a FPS/RPG hybrid.
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I had never heard of Garet Garrett before of this book so I checked him out. Interesting guy. Actually it might interest some of you to know that Caxton Press who published a few of Garrett's books was the same company that published Anthem.
His Wikipedia article lists The Driver as being written by him in 1922 in an edit from 2005.
It sounds like a cool book regardless.Ditto.
Gulching: Can we create an Atlantis?
in Political Philosophy
Posted
Have any of you considered seasteading?