brian0918

In the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEruXzQZhNI, Wallace presents the hypothetical situation where in the US, there is only one source of uranium (or some other natural resource vital to national security), and it is on some guy's property, and the man refuses to sell the property to the government. What Wallace is basically trying to do is say that the US would be in potential danger unless the government took that man's property from him. Rand dismisses this hypothetical as an "impossible fantasy" for two reasons: 1. She says that a natural resource could not become "vitally needed" if it were that scarce. She does not go into detail about why this is true. 2. She says that such a situation would never arise, in which one individual controls the entire amount of something vital to national security. As long as the resource exists in more than one place in the world, no one man can control it. I don't understand why these points are true, or even why they apply to the hypothetical situation. The example given is a single site of uranium in the US. Supposing that all other sites in the world are already controlled by other countries' governments, then that one man in the US would indeed have the only supply within the scope of the US government. Assuming that other countries are busy developing weapons with their supplies, we would potentially be in danger, having no such weapons of our own. What is the resolution?

Actually, they are going to cast a nobody in the role, according to a recent interview with one of the producers. I have a feeling that the film may be CGI given that he does not look the part and he is part of a CGI crew.

What was the date of the 2nd Tonight Show appearance? Update: I find 3 dates, all 1967: 8/11 10/26 12/13. So, which is it, August 11th or August 19th?

For me, inaction is no different from action. Choosing to ignore a potential area of concern with one of your subordinates is the same as telling him he can drink on the ship. This is similar to a mafia boss saying "do whatever it takes" so that he can deny everything later on. It's understood what was meant even if the boss does not explicitly say it.

No, having a repository of money, they should be fined a large sum as a future deterrant. For those who were directly responsible, however, maybe.

Yeesh... Not even a transcript?

I was never under the impression that the owner of the license would make the content available. It's my experience in these cases that they don't. Most likely the only chance is if someone recorded it when it originally aired, so eBay is what we're left with.

Do you have any information about when it aired? Year, or date? Season or episode number? I would first check to see what's available at libraries using WorldCat. You could then do an Interlibrary Loan request from your local library - it's usually free. Other than that, I would set up a Saved Search on eBay with certain keywords. eBay will email you whenever someone posts something for sale that matches those terms. This is a good way to find rare stuff like this.

Doesn't the corporation share any responsibility for putting a drunk guy behind the wheel of their ship? They knew of his past problems and rather than fire or suspend him, they put him back in control of a ship. Or at the very least, the people in the corporation who were responsible for deciding to let him captain the ship should be held responsible. If no responsibility can be placed on one or more individuals (such as if the corporation is unwilling to name names) then the corporation as a whole should be held responsible.

OED is the dictionary god, and I always check the etymology for any interesting aspects. It also provides numerous historic examples of the word in use, though the examples are often stripped of context and are only presented as evidence of use.

I think what's most interesting of all is his statement about the response it will get:

19 years ago the Exxon Valdez missed a turn and ran aground on a reef in Prince William Sound, causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history (11 million gallons). It was later said that the captain was drunk at the time, and had a long-standing problem with alcohol. Exxon previously told him to go into rehab, but let him captain a ship yet again. The surrounding communities that depended on commercial fishing were devastated. Exxon has already been found guilty in the criminal case, and has been paying the government for that. But what should happen to the class action case involving ~33,000 plaintiffs whose livelihoods were destroyed by the spill? In 1994, a jury awarded the plaintiffs $5 billion in punitive damages. That amount has since been cut in half by other courts on appeals by Exxon Mobil. But Exxon is now arguing they shouldn't have to pay damages at all. The Supreme Court is taking up the case. Do you agree or disagree with rewarding punitive damages in this case, and why?

I need to update my resume to include my work for the government from January to April 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003.... Actually, it's interesting that if you voluntarily work for the government, you can put it on your resume, but if the government forces you to work at gunpoint in exchange for survival, you can't.

Does anyone have the sets of data necessary to graph the number of hours one has to work per year (assuming a 40-hour week) to pay their federal income taxes for various (inflation-adjusted) incomes? For example, if you earned $40,000 in 2007, about 334 hours of your labor went toward federal income taxes; this number of course is larger once you include state and local taxes. That income is equivalent to $33,220 in 2000, which would have meant about 370 hours going toward federal income taxes in 2000. What I'm trying to make is a graph that clearly shows the increase/decrease over time in the number of hours per year I'm putting towards income taxes. In other words, cut out the middle man (money) and re-frame taxation in terms of actual labor.

But arbitrary claims are the original sources in the case of local medicinal plants. Only after we hear about these claims, and choose to investigate them further, do we determine whether the plants actually have any medicinal value.

Niels Bohr, Tycho Brahe, and a co-creator of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram that revolutionized astronomy.

Not necessarily. Arbitrary claims have led to many medical breakthroughs. When we find remote societies overwhelmingly claiming that a certain local plant has specific remedies, they sometimes prove true - it's simply natural selection on another level. The problem is that the brain often gets things wrong, finding connections where there are none, as in this case.

And that makes sense. Thanks! I think you mean powers of 10. It seems that the simplest statement is that a person is free to reduce his risk factors as far below normal as possible, as long as it doesn't require other individuals to reduce their risk levels below normal. Now if those other individuals purposely elevate their risk levels substantially above normal, and those risk levels spill over onto surrounding properties, then there would be a basis for prosecution. Does that sound right?

I know that you're tiring of the hypotheticals, but stick with me. I understand what you are saying, however you seem to have left room for exceptions. If a person purposely goes to the trouble of removing every large risk from his life, by not leaving his house, and even installing a lightning rod to channel any lightning strikes out of harms way, would he have a case if his neighbor released chemicals into the air that increased his risk of dying of cancer by some factor that is 100x what he normally experiences, even though that same risk is 1/1000th of what a normal person in society experiences?

This suggests that there is and always will be some finite non-zero amount of danger below which something will always be permissible. <begin hypothetical> If it can clearly be shown that a certain synthetic chemical, when inhaled, leads to a specific break-down in the lungs, could someone found to be releasing that chemical into the air be prosecuted for rights violations, no matter how small the dose? Let's say that on average, that chemical, which has a clear link to the destruction of cells in the lung, in its smallest dose reduces a person's life expectancy by 1 day. Is that chemical permissible? What if instead there were 1,000 or 10,000 such synthetic chemicals, which, individually at their minimum dosage reduce life expectancy by just 1 day each. What would be the point at which a company that is releasing these 10,000 chemicals into the air could/couldn't be prosecuted for rights violations? Would the amount released have to be so low that a given individual in the surrounding community never is exposed to more than 10 or 100 or 1000 of these doses in their lifetime?

Ha! I keep thinking of that one when I read threads like this.

This is related to the plague discussion I started a while ago. If a person who is infected with a deadly plague starts running around on your property coughing all over everything, GreedyCapitalist said "the law could presume that any such person is a danger per se, just like someone running around wearing an explosive vest". So unless that person has specific consent to be at a certain location (such as a hospital), the government can stop them from posing a danger to everyone else. With that said, suppose that instead, the individual did not trespass onto your property, but stood immediately outside of your property, and started coughing all over your property, thereby knowingly and dramatically increasing the number of plague bugs that you would encounter and your likelihood of catching the plague. Is this a violation of your rights? Could such a person be prosecuted for these actions? If instead of that, he lived in the house next-door, and was knowingly pumping pollution into the air around your property, without trespassing your property, and if it could be shown to be dramatically increase the number of pollutants you encounter daily and your likelihood of developing health problems as a result, could he be prosecuted for these actions, and could he be forced to stop? How is this scenarios different from the previous ones I mentioned, and how is it different from your original scenario? Reply to KendallJ: Anything at all can be harmful at a large enough dose, so that must be built into this idea of what is "objectively harmful". Where does one draw the line between what is harmful at a given dose and what isn't? Does it have to lead to death in some fraction of cases, or birth defects, or respiratory problems, or mental problems?

You could rename it Aynland and always pronounce the name with a stereotypical Asian accent.

So given a fundamental moral disagreement of this kind, is it proper form simply to not bother? Can the disagreement be resolved, and if so, how? How does one argue against another's assumed set of rights, moral codes, etc. Is it possible to show their assumption is incorrect, or can one only say that such assumptions are not favorable in some way?

I received this hilariously absurd response upon asking if they deny that we have fundamental rights: I've already obliterated their arguments in a reply of my own, but thought you'd get a kick out of it.