yoni

I'm planning on improving my communcation skills, I'm just not sure how to go about it. I don't want to spend all day writing essays because I just don't have time, but I think I can try integrate some new skills into research reports or general communications (they are largely technical - but there is heaps of room for improving my communication). Right now I use memrise.com to expand my vocab, but in terms of structuring my thoughts, ideas and writing them out cleanly I really have no clue. I'd like to be able to study at the OAC at some point, but I don't even want to try the entrance exam given my written skills at the moment. Any suggestions?

Hedge Funds are being issued Subpoenas in new SEC probe... ... (From WSJ, but you should be able to read the majority without subscription here: http://www.traderdaily.com/news/item/20507.html) otherwise, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1216083953...p_us_whats_news The day before, a comment made by "Macro Man" (London-based macro hedge fund trader): (http://macro-man.blogspot.com/2008/07/slippery-slope.html) (PIMCO and SAC are Lehman clients generating massive profits) Speculators seem to be getting it both ways. If they're not causing higher prices then they're definitely causing lower prices. Edited to add links..

Kant doesn't spoon-feed his readers either. It is only just that he have contempt for unintelligent readers who want to be spoonfed (comprehend what is being written). I'm well into Beyond Good and Evil and I'm still thinking its junk and not understanding half of it ... maybe I'm just not smart enough to comprehend such deep thoughts. At what point do you blame yourself for not understanding and what point do you attribute the bad writing to the author? I've read Rand and while personally I find many of the concepts difficult to integrate her writing makes perfect sense and is very clear to follow.

I wouldn't know about Kauffman but one thing I dislike with Hollingdale is he leaves all these random french lines untranslated.

Ifatart: I had never thought about it like that. Thanks for sharing! I put TSZ aside because it proved to be too difficult for me, but I did pickup Beyond Good and Evil (Hollingdale translation) which I'm finding more comprehensible. I have a question about a certain section and its wording however. "On the prejudices of philosophers", "section 18". "it is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable: it is precisely with this mind that it entices subtler minds. It seems that the hundred-times refuted theory of free will owes its continued existence to this charm alone." I can't integrate "not the least charm". A theory is not charming when it is refutable? but that wouldn't make sense because otherwise it wouldn't "entice subtler minds". What charm is Nietzsche talking about here?

I'm considering philosophy major in combination with my degree, just to improve my expression and the opportunity to discuss abstractions with other people interested in the same but having recently looked into OAC, I think it may be the better option.

"Speculators", the ones who make money consistently, are usually selling their holdings off in these situations. By the time everyone becomes interested in a new instrument (in this case oil, but gold has been too recently) they (the average joe) are the ones holding the bag, not "speculators". These "bubbles"(I don't mean to imply that a long-term collapse of oil is imminent, but at least in the short-term it appears so) are characterized by rampant recent acceleration in the price after many months or years of gains, combined with media hype - especially the word "crisis" or predictions(e,g, oil to rise to 2016). I'm not too familiar with the structural economic policies and their effect on oil, but obviously there is an effect, and it is serious. It is not possible for anyone (no matter how fat a speculator) to move a market by himself(so-called "manipulation") or in co-operation with other really fat speculators in the long-term. Anyone who has ever tried has gone bankrupt.

When Marx concluded that he was unable to ignore Adam Smith's explanation of "exchange and division of labour" as the motor of economic progress he admitted that past human life had "required private property for its realization". His weird concept of alienated labour was therefore not "negative" but "rooted in the nature of human development". So after this assumption he goes back to Hegel's Phenomenology of the spirit which offered "a transhistorical combination of history and psychology in which a form of alienation was accorded a positive and necessary role". Marx explained that the "outstanding achievement" of the book was that it conceived "the self-creation of Man as a process... [and]... objectification as a loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation".(Phenomenology of the spirit, Hegel) *other quotes from Gareth Stedman Jones, lecturer Sometimes I honestly think this is some conspiracy to confuse me, wtf is the "objectification[of what?] as a loss of the object[what object? who's object?], as alienation[from what?] and as transcendence of this alienation[so alienation and non-alienation at the same time?]"... anyone? p.s. I find it amusing how many of the rallying cries of communism are completely misapplied. "Let the ruling classes[all those staking a claim on your life, especially socialists] tremble at a Communistic [Objectivistic] revolution. The proletariats [industrious workers, not mindless brute labourers] have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daydream I tend to drift off when I'm at work and I'm doing a task I'm unconsciously competent at. I'm not too sure what they mean by "more empathy", but from the sound of it I would prefer scoring low and not having any empathy. ... http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/980 How often do you find yourself in a daydream during the average day. Do you think it is a waste of time or beneficial, and why? I wasn't really able to find any more detailed information on this topic. Edit: I searched a little and found Tenure's topic on "developing a sense of life" http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=9836 ... .. This happens to me all the time, completely wild and unnecessary thoughts which I would never act on (unless I want to be dead, in jail etc).

Link

Morality ends where a gun begins. In the fantastical emergency of Man A arming Man B and 'forcing' him to aim a gun at you, you would be justified in shooting back at Man B (although he is clearly not responsible). I wouldn't call this moral or immoral. As Athena pointed out the emergency situations are not the norm. If they were, neither man or morality could exist.

"If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a 'sacrifice': that term brands you as immoral. If a mother buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not a sacrifice: she values the child higher than the hat; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty." For the latter mother would the "sacrifice" (which is only so by irrational standards) not be considered moral by rational standards? Since it should not in reality be a sacrifice. I can't exactly put my finger on it but there is some thing that bugs me with the latter statement, almost as if it would then be moral for the hat loving mother to buy the hat rather then feed her child (I do realize this is not the case). edit: maybe I'm just looking into it too much... I overlooked it but I think my question was answered by the next Galt statement: "Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice—no values, no standards, no judgment—those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values, sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to the evil."

I heard about Franz Kafka as another one of those literary geniuses. So naturally, as I've been doing lately, I thought I would read him. I began with "Metamorphosis and other short stories". I have never been so repulsed by a work of fiction. His famous "metamorphosis" is about a man who lives with his parents and supports his family by working at some sort of train company. He wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect. He is then locked in his room and the story describes his life as he crawls around the walls and begins eating leftovers and rotten food. He daydreams about kissing his sister and her accepting him, but his whole family is disgusted with his new transformation and refuse to even talk to him - he is also unable to communicate with them, and they do not believe he can understand him. His father throws an apple at him which is stuck in his insect skin for months and Kafka describes how the rotted apple is remains in this inflamed skin, slowing the insects movements. The insect is described as having hair strands, dust, rotten bits of food stuck to him and refusing to eat. So, after a few months the insect/previously the man dies and the whole family is happy. They finally can move apartment and the story is concluded with his sister being described as beautiful and ripe for marriage. I was also equally disgusted by his other stories. I've heard various interpretations of this as man being a "vermin" and struggling for the impossible, but it sounds like complete bullshit to me. If anyone has read him I would love to hear there thoughts? please enlighten me about this literary genius. Thank you.