Jake

My understanding is that for something to be judged moral or immoral, it must involve a choice. A person must have the opportunity to choose the moral or choose the immoral. Are you judging homosexual activity or homosexual desires as immoral? If you are judging the desires as immoral, what pscyhological and/or physiological evidence are you using for your premises? I seriously doubt you have a defensible case that being physically attracted only to the same sex is a choice, or a result of other antecedent choices. If you think you do, I'd like to see it. If you are judging only the activity as immoral, are you suggesting that the only moral choice for a homosexual is to abstain from sexual activity completely, or engage in it with someone to whom they are not physically attracted? This activity doesn't impinge on anyone else's individual rights, and I don't see how it harms the lives of the people who choose to do it (societal prejudices aside). Obviously, a child cannot result from such a union, but the Objectivist value of sex is not predicated on such a possibility. One's revulsion of a sexual act is not a reason to call it immoral.

I can't even imagine how I would talk to the me of 10 years ago. I've changed enough that I can barely identify with that person. That Rand quote from OPAR where she talks about a philosophy of undigested slogans, etc. - that was me. I was coldly rational in every aspect of school/science, but full of fuzzy ideas about life/philosophy. One thing I can say is that I've always had an aversion to faith, so my transition to Objectivism was pretty smooth.

My wife and my finances are completely combined. This is mostly because I didn't think enough about sharing finances before getting married, but also because my wife has quite a bit of grad school debt. If I had it to do over again, I would probably opt for a system of sharing just those monies necessary for paying shared bills (rent, utilities, groceries, etc.), the rest belonging to whoever earned it. Of course, I would adjust the agreement when my wife takes off work to have our child. If, in the future, we decided that she should not work at all, then I would adjust the agreement accordingly (stay-at-home mom is a job in itself). Anyway, having been married 2 years, I would say that at least some amount of money needs to belong solely to each person in the marriage. When you completely combine finances, every small purchase can become a serious discussion (read 'argument'). It's not fun having to screen the use of money I earned through some else's standards.

That would be a very motivating story to read. Do you know of any written works by one of those activists?

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" I don't know of an inalienable right to good returns on real estate investments. I lived in a community with such an ordinance. If you let your yard grow taller than some arbitrary standard, the city would cut your grass, then bill you for it. If cities were private entities, and your purchase of property owned by the city was contingent on you signing a contract promising to maintain your yard, then I think it would be right. I don't believe it's right for a government organization to protect real estate values. Maybe someone else could answer this: Other than fraud, is there any way of causing a person to have a reduced return on an investment that would be considered a property crime from the Objectivist/Capitalist view?

I think you took him just a bit out of context. Here's the whole paragraph: I understood him to mean that the government was trying to justify one bail out by claiming it would prevent a larger bail out. In fact, the larger bail out has happened anyway. I don't think his stance on the truth of the "domino effect" can be determined from this paragraph. I would say he's against government intervention (means), regardless of whatever it's supposed to prevent (ends).

From this website, referencing Faith of My Fathers by John McCain: Also from another website:

It's the same for a man. The benefits of being ranked highly among peers or receiving recognition are quickly rendered null by the pain of dealing with people who don't understand you, carrying their dead weight, and general frustration at having to fight them to accomplish anything.

He never replied. Someone else replied though: My response to him: At this point I was a little agitated. The discussion stemmed from a post regarding the recent ACLU suit against the U.S. Naval Academy for its 'noon prayer' tradition. The communication in the thread had been as civil as it could have been for an atheist/theist argument, then these two guys started posting all sorts of Philosophy 101 nonsense. I believe they thought they were playing devil's advocate. IMO, there's a huge difference between 1) taking an opposing side for the sake of argument, and 2) distracting people by vomiting intentionally confusing ideas in a thread for the sake of being contradictory. The second action is just destructive and juvenile. Anyway, the thread died before they posted again. Where is the thread-jack line? Did I just cross it?

Also, BTW, it's quite a bragging right if one can be the "Anchor Man" by being the lowest ranking midshipman to graduate.

Very funny. It reminds me of a discussion I had with a prospective pilot on an aviation forum:

"Black hole" and "singularity" are two different concepts. From the American Heritage Dictionary entry on "singularity": - Astrophysics A point in space-time at which gravitational forces cause matter to have infinite density and infinitesimal volume, and space and time to become infinitely distorted. - Mathematics A point at which the derivative does not exist for a given function but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists. Also called singular point. The mathematical/physical formulae used to describe a black hole predict a singularity at its center. An infinity cannot exist, therefore the formulae are incomplete, or the mathematical interpretation of the observable entities called black holes isn't wholly correct. He wasn't denying the existence of black holes, just the supposed existence of infinite energy density at their center. I think black hole centers are a major sticking point in the effort to unite quantum mechanics and gravity.

I'll probably see the movie for the laughs (like Borat), but I'm not a fan of Bill Maher. In this interview he says we need "a person of doubt" in the White House (as opposed to a person of faith). He also says Michael Moore is a genius. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRO-LVi1FKU&NR=1

Bach's Organ Fugues are my favorite set of classical pieces. I'm especially fond of Toccata and Fugue in Dm and Prelude and Fugue in Am. To use your term, I 'shiver' while listening to these. As much as I love a number of rock bands/songs, they never come close to having this effect on me.

^ That slogan screams for a mock propaganda poster graphic.

Like many, I had an Objectivist "epiphany" after reading The Fountainhead about 8 years ago. I followed it up by reading every book in print by Rand and Peikoff. In the years since my reading spree, I have not been an Objectivist in the strictest sense. I believe this was mostly due to a lack of clarity in my philosophical understanding. I am most decidedly an Objectivist now. I just finished my second reading of Dr. Peikoff's Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand. (Is OPAR the conventional abbreviation?) This time I made my best effort to really digest all of the arguments, and try to understand them. Regarding most Objectivist principles: I believe them, but I do not have the skills/knowledge to prove them, or to make fully defensible arguments of them. I don't want to be an avowed, but non-practicing Objectivist. One of my favorite aspects of Objectivism is that it demands understanding, not mindless adherence. I would like to be able to derive Objectivist ethics explicitly. I would also like to have a better mental arsenal for critically analyzing non-Objectivist arguments. Of course: If I wish to have these skills, I must work to build them. So, I'm posting to ask: - On which writings of Rand, Peikoff, or others should I concentrate? - Should I include a study of logic. If so, are there any particularly good books? (I'm currently reading Logic by Wilfrid Hodges, 2001) - If I am unable to have frequent conversations with an Objectivist scholar, is this goal unrealistic? (I'm in So. CA now, but shortly will be headed to Japan for 3 years.) My background: - B.S. Aerospace Engineering, including a year-long course of Honors Analysis (proving the square root of 2 is irrational, etc.) - 2+ decades of choosing to think (I'd like to put "chooses to think" on a résumé...) Thanks, -Jake

Anyone interested in String Theory should read Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics. I have only an undergraduate knowledge of physics, but I've always been bugged by some of the ideas and methods of string theorists. Smolin's book is a great case against String Theory and the process by which it was constructed. The stories of his personal interactions with some string theorists reminded of some of Ayn Rand's comments about irrational trends in Physics (I wish I could remember where she discussed this).

Physically, 'white' is photons travelling from an object, by emission or reflection, and interacting with the cones on our retinae, producing electrical responses of similar enough strength from the red, green, and blue cones to be perceived as 'white'. If I say that 'white' exists because a concsciousness perceives a 'white' entity, meaning there must be: 1) an entity to be perceived as 'white' and 2) a consciousness to perceive the entity as 'white', am I a realist or a nominalist (or neither)?

I don't see how any honest person could continue to respect or follow that man after seeing that clip. I'm always suspicious of people who seem to enjoy wielding political power, but it's rare that you get to see them as they truly are. And the lord sayeth unto me, "Thou shalt cut off the nuts of thine enemies." (I don't remember that bible verse.)