themadkat

Oh, I stand corrected! Thank you.

Not I, said the little Mad Kat.

Oh, yeah. Raw milk producers are constantly in danger of being shut down. The sterilization nazis constantly accuse raw milk of being dirty and dangerous, but the things you have to do to regular milk in order to keep it safe for, say, grocery store distribution make it almost not even worth drinking as milk. It's just like white opaque water. I still drink grocery store milk myself, but if I could buy some raw milk instead I gladly would. Only catch is, it won't keep for more than a couple days.

Mmm, raw milk. I can't possibly understand why anyone has much sympathy for wild dogs. They're not even legitimately in the ecosystem - they were introduced and now they've gotten out of control. I think people hear "dog" and they think of shooting Rover. But these things are not domestic, and may have never been, and they will kill and eat anything they could get their hands on. Honestly I think there are times when one can legitimately shoot a pet as well. One of my fiancee's friends said his parents had lost three cats to a neighbor's roaming dog and when confronted about it the neighbor simply said, "Not my dog." Well, my fiancee's friend is off to his parents' house to shoot that dog if it comes on the property again. How can the neighbor complain? He claimed himself it was not his dog! How can anyone be disallowed from taking action to protect animals under their ownership and care? Or worse, taking action to protect THEMSELVES?

This would be so amazing if I didn't have such a passionate hatred for the Cowboys...maybe I can go see them lose?

No, they are not the same. Most PCs are random cobbled-together crap (obviously one can customize a great PC, but I am talking about a Dell, HP, or eMachines that comes off the average shelf) and bottom-of-the-barrel parts. Apple's hardware is not only high-quality hardware in its own right, but it is tailored to the needs of the OS and so creates a synergy that makes the system run even more smoothly. I never owned an Apple and always used PCs up until I got my MacBook Pro a couple years ago. I now use both kinds of computers on a regular basis but generally prefer the user experience of my Mac, and it is certainly a more stable system with less junk running on it. I also have never had any hardware issues with my Mac. I went through 3 motherboards on my old Dell laptop. Whoa. Although I don't agree with Mammon on this one, I think you are being excessively harsh in your assessment of what he was saying. You're basically accusing him of being immoral. Just because his opinion may be wrong does not mean you have license to condemn him this way.

Frank loved California and he loved the house they had there, as it allowed him to pursue his favorite hobbies in a way that was nearly impossible in the big city. Ayn loved New York and, practically speaking, it may have been easier for her to be nearer to the center of publishing as a writer (though not strictly necessary). Frank never liked New York and was never comfortable there, but they went because that was what Ayn decided they were going to do. I am not saying it had to be a sacrifice on Frank's part, as his marriage was probably a much bigger value to him than his locality, but clearly it impacted his happiness and ability to produce value negatively. As for the last part, I would not say that Ayn stepped out on him because he was not enough of a man. I really can't speculate on what may have been lacking in their marriage. But I agree with you about the sleeping on the couch thing. I would never ask my fellow to sit around and wait while I figured out whether I wanted him or someone else. That is, as they say, trying to eat your cake and have it too.

And I would counter that as a woman attracted to men this is not at all my experience of romance and sexuality. It is not my experience of sex acts (let's not forget that sex does not boil down solely to intercourse and that there is an incredibly broad range of sexuality to consider here). I totally reject your assessment of masculinity and femininity. I find the idea of being anything but a value pursuer in any area of my life abhorrent and an insult to my personal sovereignty. There are many men who I am physically stronger than, possibly even you, but I would never think less of those men, and there are many very strong men who I find repulsive and low as individuals. I will always be puzzled how people who follow a philosophy which revolves around reason and the mind suddenly throw all that out and make it all about bodies when it comes to this one aspect. Some of the greatest heroic men, who have produced more value in the world than most of us could ever dream, are not physically strong, and some of the greatest heroic women are not beautiful. Many strong men and beautiful women are evil. If I had the choice to select a small, weak man who is a moral and intellectual giant or a strong, powerful man who is an evader and a stupid fool, who do you really think I ought to take? Who is really more of the man there, and if the latter, then of what use is manhood???

I'm referring to pretty much all the facts of their relationship which were observed or recounted by those close to her - that Ayn was the initiator and pursuer of the relationship in the beginning, that Ayn was the one to have a career, that where they lived was primarily dependent upon Ayn's wishes and the needs of her career (specifically California vs. New York), that Ayn was more often than not the sexual initiator (again from the outside the bedroom perspective, no one knows anything beyond that), and that Frank very obviously needed Ayn more than Ayn needed Frank (see the Nathaniel mess...if it were Frank asking to see another woman Ayn would have just left). I am not trying to put Frank down at all here. He sounds like he was a wonderful, sweet guy, a fantastic husband. All I am saying is that clearly he was following Ayn's lead in pretty much their whole relationship and unless I am wrong, which I could be, I understand that to be more of the "masculine" role in the relationship from the perspective of both traditionalist gender roles and gender roles as Rand herself describes them. Also, I want to be clear on this point. Just because Rand put something in a book or illustrated her view on something does not mean it integrates well with the rest of her philosophy. Rand should be given credit for having possibly the most internally consistent philosophy ever developed by anyone, anywhere. But simply saying "it's in the book" does not indicate specifically how it relates to the rest of the philosophy. And it should not be assumed that I will take a relationship as portrayed by Rand to be ideal and just accept that is the model of how a relationship should be. For instance, Roark and Dominique is certainly not indicative of the kind of relationship I would ever want to have, from either side. As for Dagny and John, I really always thought she should have gone with Frisco in the end.

Tank!

I would submit that there are many rational reasons to limit family size to a few, if any, children. However, those reasons are all from a self-interested perspective, for the welfare of both yourself and the children you choose (not) to have.

You may be correct on this point. I hadn't thought about that. If that is the case, I wonder how its integration with the rest of her philosophy, which I do not understand well, could be made more explicit.

I had always hoped that the homosexuality debate would help some folks to see the errors in/let go of the whole hero-worshipper definition of femininity or reject that model of a romantic relationship as the ideal. For me personally, I am a woman and I have never, ever experienced romance that way. I don't desire to look up to anyone. I'm my own hero and that's how I like it. I am hetero and I am in a longstanding relationship with a wonderful fellow who I love deeply. But the idea of looking up to him as some kind of hero seems completely strange and discordant to our relationship. Our love is built on mutual respect and admiration. We do have different roles in some regards, but that has nothing to do with our gender. Rather it is simply that each of us takes charge in the areas in which we excel and support the other in some of the areas where they may be lacking (of course the vast majority of our skills and beliefs overlap to such a degree that we just work together). Not at all to be presumptuous, but simply to illustrate a point, I see some parallels between our relationship and the marriage of Ayn Rand and Frank O'Connor. To be honest I have never seen how Rand's description of ideal romance and sexuality match up with her actual real-life marriage. She was clearly the dominant partner by nearly any standard one can factually verify without being indecent or prurient. Don't get me wrong, I agree with Rand on many other of her arguments regarding romance. I fully accept that one's lover must reflect one's highest values, that an ideal relationship should be long-term, that one must be sexually selective, and that an egoist who loves and knows how to take care of herself is in the best position to love and take care of someone else. I just want to throw more or less her entire theory of gender in romance out the window. I think that at minimum a minority of Objectivists, say maybe 20%, feel as I do on this.

Some of my research should eventually help to diffuse crap like this, eventually. I hope to redefine the paradigm of understanding why animals choose to cooperate.

I think your instructor has a point. But your instructor aside, I personally have never accepted Rand's affair with Branden as moral and I would not proceed to defend it. I think she blew it in that instance. I wouldn't say that Frank and Barbara were OK with what was going on, it obviously hurt them deeply, but they were either not strong enough to stand up for themselves or they could not bear the thought of losing the spouses they valued so much (I'm inclined to say more of the former for Barbara and more of the latter for Frank). Rand may have justified it to herself somehow that Frank would not be hurt but I think the evidence is clear that Frank was devastated. I do think it is possible to love more than one person at a time but it is hardly a sustainable or desirable state of affairs, as you can only give yourself completely to one of them, or perhaps incompletely to both of them in which case they both deserve better and should leave you. Just my pennies.

To understand Objectivism and agree with it to even the slightest degree, one absolutely must take ideas seriously. I find that as people grow older, especially once they are staring down 40, they begin to take ideas less seriously and rely on their "experience of what works" or "this is how it is". Ideas become less important and people seem to run with whatever makes them feel OK about themselves, or perhaps what allows them not to think too much as they live their "busy lives" (nevermind the question of how you are supposed to choose between various options and values if you have no consistent criteria by which to judge them!). This is, I think, part of it. Other people, as they get older, "dig in" to whatever ideas come to feel easiest to believe in, and their world shrinks so that they can justify the way they look at things to themselves.

For those of you who haven't read Apology, Crito, or Phaedo, to make a long story short Socrates could have avoided his death sentence but instead refused escape and willingly drank the poison hemlock, the method of his execution. He justified this, more or less, by saying that he had agreed to stand up for and live by the laws of Athens, and that it would be unseemly for him to try to run way when they no longer went in his favor. Thoughts? Could the death of Socrates be a demonstration on how the "social contract" justification for being law-abiding can be anti-life?

I was listening to Bill O Reilly the other day when I was in radio no-man's land, and he was more or less calling for us to nationalize the oil industry. It was strange to hear him talk about it. He basically said something about unrestricted capitalism being the only way to go...until you "need" it. The more "essential" the good or service provided, according to ol' Bill, the more excuse the government has to nationalize it. One caller actually did bring up the right of the oil companies to profit and for the CEO to receive whatever pay was contractually agreed to given that they did profit, but Bill more or less shrugged it off. He made an interesting point, interesting in the sense that he would go to this argument to justify it, that since the oil companies were profiting from the War on Terror, that gave the government more of a right to nationalize/redistribute. So much for conservatives being the defenders of capitalism.

I'm going to echo the questions put forth to you previously - is your relationship that one-sided? Granted what your friend did here was inconsiderate, but it sounds as if there has been tension building here for a long time. Do you feel as if she takes advantage of you on a regular basis? What does she contribute to your well-being? Does she express a feeling of valuing your time and energy in general? The more I read the more I feel like it's not about the computer. What's the real issue?

I know, bad habit of mine. Trying to do better

I took quite a few college philosophy courses, earning myself a minor in moral philosophy. They were a much more positive experience for me than Kevin's experiences here. Even in classes where it was clear the instructor disagreed with me (my Love and Friendship professor was openly consequentialist, as was I'd say upwards of half our department) it was always respectful. My Philosophy of Science course was great and had only 6 people in it, plus the professor's huge friendly dog that always laid down near me I'm so glad I took that, because especially with the type of graduate study I'm undertaking in the department I'm taking it in, philosophical battles are going to be huge and my findings will mean nothing if I can't defend their relevance through philosophy (mostly epistemology). All in all, my undergraduate philosophy experience was a good one.

How can they say the free market has failed in this regard? Airplanes were ALREADY limiting cell-phone use on their own, mostly for safety reasons. The damn thing can't even be ON during takeoff or landing. I don't get what supposed outrage this bill is responding to.

Considering that I am about to be a TA within the next couple years (I don't have to teach my first year because of a fellowship), I think this thread is great. I look at it as a "what not to do" of TAing. Granted, I will be teaching bio/anthropology and not philosophy, but to some degree teaching is teaching. Also I don't know why everyone hates on teaching undergrads so much. I'm excited to be teaching undergrads and look at that as every bit as important as my future research.

Thank you sNerd, I may have to check that out, as an environmental scientist myself.

I will say this. You need to take a serious look at what YOU get out of this friendship, and whether it is anything like what you give. Does this friendship serve you? You say she cares about you "in her own way." Is this a way that actually benefits you/comforts you significantly? I'm not going to offer any answers. You need to come up with them yourself by taking a good hard look on your own. Trust me, this is really important. I was in a similar situation recently.