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Dr. Radiaki

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Everything posted by Dr. Radiaki

  1. I would never support Chavez or the ideas he promotes, but at the same time, I can't muster up much sympathy for Exxon, either. Frankly, they remind me of James Taggert's Mexican trains. They really, REALLY should have seen this one coming.
  2. Can I join the collective, or would that violate the anti-competition law? Oh, and I'm a secular Canadian hell-bent on destroying America. *runs off shrieking*
  3. For you non-Canadians, Canada is dominated by the 'Big Six,' banks with branches across the country, who have a great deal of power. This power is mostly awarded to them by the government, their success and size being secondary factors. RBC, one of those banks, has been running a a series of ads with the intriguing line of ad copy: "Invest in a worthy cause. You." The ad promotes RRSPs, and demonstrates how micro-deposits over a long period of time can add up to a great deal of extra money for retirement. Logical enough, right? The angle being that you don't need to invest a great deal at once to be rewarded for your investment. "Could it be," I thought, "a major bank promoting rational self-interest?" I read the fine print(with rather too much excitement, I might add), and of course, I was disappointed. It seems that RBC is planning to donate $10 to humanitarian relief for every new account opened through this promotion. Explain to me why major banks will routinely charge fees for completely paperless transactions(Which, I recognize, they are fully within their rights to do), and then spend even a portion of the money so collected on a charity? Maybe put some of those profits back into the business? Give a little better interest rate? Sheesh.
  4. A virtual certainty, given Stamford's recent changes to tuition structure.
  5. Indeed, and having to use a lowflow toilet on a regular basis in my rental housing, I can provide some anecdotal evidence in agreement. Ye Gods, the flushing, I practically have to lean on the handle and to add insult to injury, the toilet clogs on a regular basis. I have no idea whether this is due to a diet too rich in fiber or what, but lowflows(at least the fixtures I have) are very poorly designed.
  6. I'd highly recommend Sins of a Solar Empire, which I think has some truley objectivist values put foreward as positive. SoaSE is a 4X/RTS hybrid, with the player taking control of one of three factions, and it's the differences between them that I think demonstrates the pro-reason, pro-individualism at play here. THE TEC One faction, the TEC(Trade Emergency Collation) is responsible for the so-called Golden Age of humanity that occurred over a period of centuries prior to the events the game depicts. How was this Golden Age achieved you ask? Unfettered capitalism. A huge group of industrial combines formed a cohesive monopoly focused solely on profit, ignoring individual cultural discrepancies between worlds and trading resources to maximize profit. However, they did initiate force(Bad TEC, BAD!) against a cult they found operating on a desert world, driving them from known space. As you might have guessed, this will come back to bite them in the ass, but not until after the appearance of... THE VASARI Xenos from beyond the stars, they are truly evil in a very Objectivist sense. They initiate force(conquering all species encountered and attacking without warning or provocation), and use that force to make slaves of those they defeat. Their appearance in TEC space effectively ended the Golden Age of Humanity, as the trade fleet was(initially) ill-equipped for combat. Fighting the Vasari became possible after the huge industrial might of the TEC was turned toward combat ready battleships(hence the Emergency in TEC). The war was going well until the appearance of the aforementioned cultists, calling themselves... THE ADVENT Here are the real bad guys, forget the evil aliens. While human, they are(quite literally) suicidally altruistic, cybernetically modified, psychic collectivists intent on pursuing a campaign of revenge against the rest of humanity. All individual thought is subsumed in a massive psychic collective, and no decision or action may be made individually. Further, this message of unity is forcibly broadcast directly into the minds of individuals outside the collective, slowly turning them into mindless drones. IN SUMMARY: We have heroic capitalists striving to defend the galaxy against force initiators and a collectivist cult. Also, the game almost oozes goodness. If you like 4X or RTS at all, you should give SoaSE a try.
  7. I direct you here. The most important of them being, of course: Green Ink Currency ink invented by Thomas Sterry Hunt in 1862 Air-Conditioned Railway Coach Invented by Henry Ruttan in 1858 Just ask Dagny Taggert, am I right?
  8. Dr. Radiaki

    Traffic Laws

    You'd think given your avatar, you advocate the opposite.
  9. I would think not, but I don't have any logic to back this thought up, I'll admit, and would like to hear an explanation for my edification.
  10. I just have a quick question in regards to this topic. As a user of a website, am I morally bound, under objectivist principles, to subscribe to a profit model, even if it is not enforced by the web site's owner? That is to say, must I look at ads to be ethical?
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