Laure

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

I agree. Your mind is the functioning of your brain, which is part of your body. You seem to be assuming that your problems are due to your own faulty mental habits, when they may be physiological. If you have an infection or a tumor or a chemical imbalance, a therapist is not going to be able to help. I would suggest going to an M.D. first, going over the history of your recent illness, and getting some tests to rule out a physical cause before going the therapy route.

My personal favorite, "Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an a**hole"

Well, yes. I think metal music is analogous to jalapeno peppers in this regard! Jalapenos do cause a kind of discomfort, but I love 'em! Same with metal music. I think a prime example of this is the song "I Am I" by Queensryche. It is an intensely uncomfortable song, but boy is it good. I don't think art in general has to have "making you feel good" as its goal. Reading We the Living caused me worse than "discomfort" but it was a great book.

This post is a prime example of what I'd call the "Pandora's Box Paradigm". It's the idea that any new discovery or invention, along with its potential for good, will have equal, or more, potential to cause disaster. I think this paradigm must sometimes be true, or it wouldn't have come about in the first place. But I also think that it is so deeply engrained in our culture that it's automatically applied to any new discovery or invention, making many feel apprehensive. The question that is un-answered is, "What horrible thing might happen if we DON'T open the box?" It could well be that the unopened boxes have led to much human misery that could have been prevented. I am thinking of the fear of "playing God" through stem cell research, cloning, and the like.

OK, here's another interesting question: which hand is your mouse-hand? I'm left-handed and mouse right, which I think is the most sensible way, since then I can write with my left hand while using the mouse. But it seems a lot of people mouse with the dominant hand. What do you think?

I would never have solved the Petals around the Rose problem without looking at the source code! I don't see how anyone could hit upon the answer without looking at the source. It's not an obvious thing you'd do with dice, at least not obvious to me. I mean, even when you see what it's doing in the source code, there's no "Aha moment." (I got an 800 on my math GRE, by the way, so I must have the Bill Gates Disability on this one.)

If this "immortality" is just not dying from old age or disease, I'm assuming you could still die of accident or starvation, so it still requires self-sustaining and self-generated action. I am not sure I would notice my immortality. I mean, do you wake up in the mornings now and think, "Jeez, is this EVER going to END?? How long have I been doing this life thing, 43 YEARS?" I think it would be the same if the figure was 100 years or 1000 years. Every day is a new day, and to the (healthy) living, it already seems as if we are immortal. So I guess I'd take it!

Another Honda fan here. Here's my lovely "Pipsqueak", a 1988 CRX, repainted last year in color-shifting paint... I think it's the perfect Objectivist ride. I sacrifice nothing! It looks great, it's reliable, still gets about 40 MPG, lots of cargo space (I can put a 21 inch monitor box in the hatch and close it), plus I got a Japanese-market back seat for it 2 years ago so I can transport my husband and son now if need be.

Yep, the press loves this kind of "science" story. It's like Chariots of the Gods -- people get carried away with these "wouldn't it be neat if.." speculations, forgetting that the onus is on them to prove it's true, not on others to prove that it isn't. (My husband was David Stork's roommate in college for awhile! Nice that he has taken this on.)

Stephen, Gee, this is a real Seinfeld thread; "a thread about nothing", huh? My husband is an MIT physics grad and a professor of optics. I'm just a computer science PhD with a common-sense viewpoint of physics. So, as you can imagine, we have our disagreements. If you've got the time, I wonder if you'd entertain a couple of questions? 1) I don't get what you mean about space not being empty anywhere. Isn't a vacuum an area that doesn't have anything in it, i.e. no atoms whatsoever? 2) What is your view of relativity? (while standing on one foot, please! ) From the little I have read about it, I come away with the impression that Einstein was right, but that many people who try to explain relativity end up making it sound nonsensical because of the way they word their explanations: "space-time is curved", or "time slows down if you're going near light-speed" for example. A sensible person like me responds that space can't be curved, only STUFF can be curved, and space is NOT STUFF. Likewise time can't slow down, but EVENTS can happen faster or slower IN time (or at least appear to). So, is there a way to explain relativity in words without the "reification" of space or time that most people resort to?

Here's one of my favorites: The Island If I had a ship, I'd sail my ship, I'd sail my ship Through Eastern seas; Down to a beach where the slow waves thunder- The green curls over and the white falls under- Boom! Boom! Boom! On the sun-bright sand. Then I'd leave my ship and I'd land, And climb the steep white sand, And climb to the trees, The six dark trees, The coco-nut trees on the cliff's green crown - Hands and knees To the coco-nut trees, Face to the cliff as the stones patter down, Up, up, up, staggering, stumbling, Round the corner where the rock is crumbling, Round this shoulder, Over this boulder, Up to the top where the six trees stand .... And there I would rest, and lie, My chin in my hands, and gaze At the dazzle of sand below, And the green waves curling slow, And the grey-blue distant haze Where the sea goes up to the sky.... And I'd say to myself as I looked so lazily down at the sea: "There's nobody else in the world, and the world was made for me." A.A. Milne

1. Ayn Rand (100%) Click here for info 2. John Stuart Mill (65%) Click here for info 3. Epicureans (60%) Click here for info 4. Thomas Hobbes (60%) Click here for info 5. Cynics (58%) Click here for info 6. Kant (58%) Click here for info 7. Nietzsche (58%) Click here for info 8. Aristotle (57%) Click here for info 9. David Hume (57%) Click here for info 10. Jeremy Bentham (57%) Click here for info 11. Plato (48%) Click here for info 12. Jean-Paul Sartre (47%) Click here for info 13. Prescriptivism (47%) Click here for info 14. Aquinas (41%) Click here for info 15. Stoics (40%) Click here for info 16. St. Augustine (35%) Click here for info 17. Spinoza (31%) Click here for info 18. Ockham (25%) Click here for info 19. Nel Noddings (12%) Click here for info (Who the heck is Nel Noddings?)

Want good gas mileage? Get a 15 year old Honda CRX HF. Mine still gets about 40 MPG, and it's cuter than the hybrids!

Regarding whether people can actually "choose to be irrational", the examples I can come up with are cases in which a person either decides not to think too hard about something, because of social consequences, or decides to be dishonest in order to go along with a group. Example: "I don't know if I really believe in God or not, but I'd rather not think about it and take the heat from my family." Another example is a psychological experiment I've read about. There's a "subject" and a group of volunteers. They put them all in a room, and ask them "which line is longer, Line A or Line B?" Line A is really longer, but the volunteers have agreed in advance to all answer "Line B." Most times, the "subject" will say "Line B" to go along. (I find this horrifying, but I have read that it is the case!) As for definitions, I think free will encompasses our ability to choose. The most important choice is to think or not. But there are plenty of choices that have nothing to do with thinking. (Gasp!) Example: Will it be vanilla or chocolate ice cream today? (Is either choice "irrational"?)

I have heard that he is an atheist. I hope he does write a book once he retires. For now, if he wants to remain Fed Chief, he has to avoid controversial statements, so it is often hard to know exactly where he stands.

Thank you, Betsy. I may have overestimated the "diss percent" due to the particular posts I chose to read.

I think we can figure out the truth without first figuring out what Ayn Rand would say! Thanks for the links; found the article in The Ayn Rand Letter. Notice that she did NOT advocate nuking Cambodia, and that she also said we should not have gotten involved in Vietnam to begin with. If the US would stop supplying money, training, and housing for them, that would be a big improvement! That's not what I'm after. Just out of curiosity, what motivates you to participate in this forum?

How complex do I make it out to be? I think a situation in which the enemy is a nebulous organization and not a government, and in which the enemy has no goal other than to kill innocent people, and cannot be disuaded by casualties, is composed of religious fanatics that can't be reasoned with, and is dispersed across the globe ... is a difficult situation! Why am I annoyed? I had been looking for a website with a forum where Objectivists could get together and discuss things, I thought maybe I had found it, but it leaves a distinctly unpleasant taste in my mouth when people who, by virtue of their common interests and views, ought to get along and be able to have civil discussions, spend 90% of their time dissing each other. Objectivist dogma is not necessarily at odds with the truth, but if they were at odds, I would give more importance to the truth. I don't know what Ayn Rand would say, and my point is, neither do you. She was a genius with a remarkable way of seeing straight through to the essentials of any issue. I just wish she were still alive; I'd love to know what she'd say. I think I've read just about every word she wrote, but no, I'm not familiar with what Ayn Rand wrote about the Cambodian incident invovling a merchant marine ship called the Mayaquez. Enlighten me. It is not my intention to take a dump on the lawn. I'd love to find some like-minded people to have an interesting discussion with, but if I cannot find it here, I will move on.

The situation is more complex than you guys make it out to be. And I find your constant argument about who is a "real Objectivist" or what would Ayn Rand say to be very annoying. What's more important, your opinion of what the Objectivist dogma says or what's TRUE? And I don't think any of you should be presuming to know what Ayn Rand would have said. If she were alive, she might say some surprising things that would have you rethink your positions. You are talking about killing millions of Iranians because of the presence of hundreds or maybe thousands of dangerous people there. So, if there's one criminal living in your neighborhood, are the police justified in firebombing the entire block? So, who started this present conflict? Some terrorists, mostly from Saudi Arabia, whose organization was based in large part in Afghanistan. Did Iran declare war on the United States? No. This is what makes this a particularly difficult situation. Who is "the enemy?" Is it every single country in the Middle East, with the exception of Israel? If so, is it really in our best interest to nuke all of these countries? And then, what about other countries that have terrorist cells? Should we take out France, Spain, Indonesia, the Phillippines while we're at it? What about the United States? The terrorists who attacked us were based here. We were "harboring" terrorists. Shall we nuke ourselves? I suppose if you want to get rid of all the terrorists on earth, we could just destroy all life on the planet. Is that the kind of victory you want? I don't think killing millions of people in Iran is right, and I also don't think it will solve our problem. Do you think Osama bin Laden is going to say, "OK, OK, I can't take all this suffering of innocents any more. Al Qaeda surrenders!" Not gonna happen. I don't have the answer, but I think the general direction we should go in is to "quarantine" nations that harbor terrorists, and send ALL suspicious foreign nationals back to their countries of origin. I also favor the Israeli approach of assassinating terrorist leaders. I am not sure how we can fight the problem at its origin, which is, in my view, the Madrassas. One thing that may help is exposure to American culture.