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Space Patroller

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  1. The big question is "what does individual rights mean?" This is based on two things. the Christian looks at individual rights as "granted by God" and there's the old saw. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away" We look at individual rights as an essential element for human life. We don't "grant" or believe in, individtual rights. we recognize them. Given that, the Christian idea of individual rights cannot be the same as ours so the term means two different things between us. Each of us looks at the ideas of the other and says "How is that individual rights?" For example. the Christian sees nothing wrong with thoroughly idcotrination an 8 year old into his belief system. I am appolled at the indoctrination of an 8 year old into ANY philosophical system: and I mean ANY! Yet the Christian does not do what he does out of evil but in an attempt to equip the child with the tools to learn right and wrong and that is how he was so equipped, it's a mistake, not evil unless it is carried out to an absurd degree. This is why I say it is an alliance, not a love-fest. Ultimately, we will have to go after each other and they know it subconsciously. One can but hope that this can be settled non-violently. We have the advantage; our way works whether or not there is a God and theirs does not. If there is no God, their system collapses into nihilism.
  2. To what end? To be intelligent requires independent action which is the opposite of being "hooked up to...." It would be of no benefit to either. The underlying concept of such symbiosis is that either both sides benefit from this kind of thing to a degree that makes the subjegation of the ego a useful traide-off or that both sides of the deal arne't able to cut iti on their own. This brings up the question of how did we make it for the last million years on our own? and as to the first idea; when was the abolition of the ega every a good idea? This is basically some form of collectivism. Similar stories about biological entities where the head and body were separate entities have been around for decades. It's a redux of spirit posession with a white coat. This is just the sae old same old with an OS. An AI would probably be a sophisticated android. Now as for cyborgs, that's a different matter. That would start with bionic implants and replacement parts (usually limbs or eyes). In fact the story that The Six Million Dollar Man was based on was titled [i[Cyborg. and stand for CYbernetic ORGanism. That can go pretty far. The other thing is that Cyborg oould lead to actual upgrades. My standing joke about the phonatics with their cell phones clapped to their ear walking down the stree making tiny talk is that "If God had wanted man to be such a dork, we'd be born with built-in cell phones". Well just think about a builit'in Go to My PC, to which we're pretty close. I had a discussion on this matter with Robert Bidinotto in '83 in which I propsed that if things centereing around "legally blind" did not exist, along with anti-trust and the like We'd have had the bionic eye and for about $600. Why? Qua blind man, one is no use to car companies (this was before the government ruined them), book companies or television companies. In a fully free society, the development of a cheap fix would be in these compaines' interest and they'd be tripping over themselves to fund the research. In some intermeidate future, we may use bionics to extedn the functional range and scope of the senses, such as the visual spectrum. I have no lens in my eye so I can see into L-W/UV like a bug. We may find that we can enhance the human morphology to do things that we have not yet imagined. Holy "Night vision tiara sold separately", Batman! However, the ultimate end of cyborg will be biological where the formerly bionic enhancements are grown in a lab or the like and put in then the genetics are altered to have these things built in at birth.
  3. I just took in the Peikoff 'cast. I wonder if we could get him to do radio episodes of Dr. Who? He'd be outtasite in that part. As a huge Doors fan (not Morrison's antics, the music) I said the same thing back in '69. My biggest disappoint ment was KISS. They looked so exotic but their music was so banal. I knew they had the talent, it showed in their individual albums and Ace Fraley's explanation of his guitar work got pretty high level, but like all heavy metal, you couldnt appreciate it because the fuzz box was so oppressive that it overwhelmed the pitch. From my understanding. Jackson did not create the material himself as did the bands of the '60's, he hired it and it was a bit too slick, so I don't know how much greatenss there was. As to Jackson being "screwed up" Well how would you describe sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber with no medical basis and saying that his crotch-grabbing was uncontrollable when this behavior came hot on the heels of charges of being effeminate? And I won't go through all the surgical gyrations and the jokes that came out of them. As a vocalist, I thought most of his singing style was artificially emotional. I liked the music to Beat It , Human Nature and Want You Back, but felt that the antics outweighed the positive. Overall I rate Jackson as a net minus. Now. let's talk about Rush, the Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms, Green Day, Matchbox 20, 3 Doors Down and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. However there is a point that Peikoff really didn't address. Most of these acts are entertainment. What they espouse is often pure evil. Is there a point, like with Streisand where the evil outweighs the good? In her case, it's supporting the looters and bitching about "greed" while inking a $USM60 contract. and altering the words to one of her songs to play up to Bill Clinton.
  4. In 1981, my Rightist confreres, including some Objectivists were referring to the Mujihadeem as "the Afghan Freedom Fighters". Now I'm no dope and said, "Do you know what Mujihadeem means? 'Holy Warrior' as in 'Jihad'. Now what have Islamic fanatics to do with freedom?". Cue "crickets.wav" The comes Charlie Wilson's War. I got annoyed; stupidity does that to me and it really grinds my groin when it is displayed by self-proclaimed Objectivists, and was told "Hey they're fighting the Sovs" to which I said "You will find that there are worse things in this world than the Soviets [Holy Peikoff; Batman]. What if they win? They hate us as much as they hate the Russians. These are Islamic fanatics and we're 'the infidel' ansin 'kill the...'" The Islamic Fundies had been on my radar since late 1977 when the "Islamic Republic" thing started to gether steam. You don't need to be D'Anconia to know where the copper is. Just keep your eyes and ears open and your head on a swivel. I was told. "Let them have Afghanistan, the land is terrible and good for nothing anyway" I said "except for a staging area to take a shot at us, which they will surely do the first chance they get" Now, one of the problems we were having in Bosnia was with Mujihadeem in c1996-8" Big surprise to me, Right? And of course you know 9/11. Would you say that as with Afghanistan, so with Iran?, I'd bet my turban on it. If you ever saw on the History Channel "Khomeini Declassified" you would come away with the idea that these people hate us to the bone and it's pretty much universal in Iran. They're nothing like us in temperament or belief and Shia is more virulent than then Sunni, Sufi or Drous and doesn't take a back seat to Wahabi Islam. So this big deal over the protesters is a choice between ruby and crimson or sky and azure. Any Westernisms are but a thin veneer and only of a tiny fraction of the population. The protests are NOT about freedom. Now I heard one of the "best of Hanity" repeats over the weekend and guess what "...Iranian freedom fighters" Why do I get that Groundhog Day feeling? It's like the end of that classic 1953 sci-fi/horror flick INVADERS FROM MARS.
  5. And the History CHannel spreads the myth, too Last night I heard the following about "Reaganomics" "It's fine if you believe in cutting taxes and not worrying about the future..defense spending..." Is an example of the half truths that they spewed Now for the whole truth from someone who was sentient and watching the fiasco. The Reagan plan called for tasx AND spending cuts, but which branch of government has "the power of the purse" and what partly controlled that?. They did indeed pass the tax cuts BUT did not pass the budget cuts and the Reagan administration duelled them for 6 months living on "continuing resolutions" until in November 1981, they threw in the twoel. Even at that, the National Debt as a perscentage of the GDP shrank from 5 to 2.5 percent. So we did grow our way out of about half, but that was not the original plan. But guess who spend like drunken sailors. Not to mention the record-setting tax increase of 1986 that Reagan was browbeaten into accepting by virtue of the fuss and threatened impeachment over the Contras issue (for which the CONgress ought to have been disbanded and about a dozen troublemakers executed by firing squad for treason: Dellums and Bowland to name two) The 1986 edition of Miller's MACRO-ECONOMICS textbook had a page that quoted the Brookings Institute saying "...28% of the budget went for defense and 52% for social spending" But then the HC has been devoting a lot of time to UFO's Cryptozoology, Conspiracy theories and other Coast to Coast crap, so what do you expect but more bad sci-fi/fantasy
  6. Rats! I missed that. What channel was it on?
  7. If I recall aright, and someone better check on this, Rand used the Random House Dictionary For my definition of "libertarian" I used the World Book Dictionary 1963 and "objectivism" came from Philosophy Made Simple wich was a volume of something called "The Made Simple Encyclopedia", which we had since c1961. My home was filled with books and encyclopediae since I was 7 and we got The Book of Knowledge. We had Americana, World Book 1963 and one other that I forget. We had several dictionaries. All of these I would often read for pleasure. ONce I learned how to read text-only pages at about 8, having been highly motivated by the weekly magazines, I was always a voracious reader. Of course, I come from the days of Phonics
  8. This is beginning to look like a lawyers' conference. In my frist incarnation as a Providence College student in 1963 at age 18, I, innocently, pulled a similar stunt in Fr. Hennessey's Logic class and got a response that embarrassed me silly (calling my masculinity into question). What it revolved around was "torturing the data [in this case, language]". There is a term "medical minimum". When a pinky meets those conditions then it is alive. For those of you still using teething rings, it means being able to sustain the reactions that make it a living thing after being detached from the parent body, meaning at least having a compliment of functioning organs for that purpose (sometimes my middle finger seems to have a mind of its own and has the urge to stand up and salute). It was the basis for the decision of Roe v Wade thirty-six years ago. would a pinky meet that standard? If so then those horror tales about chopped-off hands avenging their original owners' maltreatment would be true. The question of "human life" as I meant it is well-understood by grownups. which means there are certain things taken as part of the context. I hope we know enough abourt the world to know what that context is and why the Pro-Lifers stress that the fetus is an "innocent living being" I am not in need of Peikoff's lecture on potential life, but I think I'll take it in. It will probably reinforce what I heard Rand say in '77-8 which was sufficient for me. Besides which if we still need that kind of thing being discussed thirty years later, it's time for us to go. Any Objectivist worthy of the name know that in his sleep.
  9. Well here's one I pulled on David Brudnoy: They recently isolated the first human (no joke) via blood genetics about 15-20 years ago. She lived in Africa. Since we're all decended from her, that makes me an African-American. I am in fact, part (Canadian) Indian. When I tell people that, I often get asked which tribe, to which I say "The tribe that owns all the casinos: the Ouannagetchamunni"
  10. Roe V Wade held that the fetus was not alive based on the parameter of extrauteran viability up to about 6 months. Now if you cancded that the fetus is a life, then since it is a human fetus, then it is a human life unless you believe that man begets dog, cat, moose or squirrel. If it is a human life then it is entitled to the same protections as a child and must, barring meidical matters, be aloowed to come to term which would make abortion murder. Using what you have said as a given: A fetus is alive It is a human fetus therefore it is a human life Human life it properly protected by law (from above) A human fetus is a human life Therefore the human fetus is properly protected by law The willful knowing taking of a human life is murder Abortion is the willfull. knowing taking of a human life Therefore abortion is murder. The arugument that the pregnant women owns her own body, while true, loses meainign if the fetus is a human life. For one thing, the act which brought about that life was voluntary (at least in 90% of cases). One takes the consequences of volutary actions if those consequences are a foreseeably probable result of that action. In this case, riding the bronco bareback was an open inviation to a new living person. Also by the time that the fetus could be considered a living thing, One would have had more than enought time to decide to seek and then procure the abortion. Beyond that, I gaban this thread with the discussion being about the embryo. Even RAnd did not want to discuss the "8 months old fetus".
  11. Boy, no flies on you! You are exactly right. I was following a Randism from "Philosophical Detection": "...Don't argue with it. Accept it and see where it leads" . What I did was show that such an economic regulatory mechanism already exists and a far better one than any control system yet devised. which was a way of saying "We already have one of what you're talking about, so we don't need to put one in, it's already there waiting for us to use it. But, as you so succinctly point out. That's not what this guy want's, I don't even know if he knows what he wants beyond some vague shape. I guess he really doesn't have the faith in God to imagine that God will fix what needs fixing. It seems to me that given the so-called omnipotence and goodwill of this God, he should not be looking to a very fallible human institution of dubious moral worth. But then after Populorum Progressio it was all downhill.
  12. While re rag on Rush and the boys (and girls), when you see what's been going on: Palin quits, Honduras, crap and trade, and see what we've been obsessing over for the last week; i. e. Bizzarro World, and when you look at liberals close up. It gives more than a grain of truth to Rush when he say's "... with half my brain tied behind my back tgo make it fair". Do you realize that every time an Objectifist gets into a good one with the bumpkins and rubes we run the risk of being tried for murder: Getting into a mental duel with the unarmed.
  13. There's nothing new or wrong with that. We Objecitivsts have proposed that for over 4 decades: It's called "gold". You'd be surprised at how people listen when it talks: Especially the smart people. It even regulates the free market and it can't be cheated, bamboozled, schmoozed or overridden.
  14. Actually, this test proves the old adage that "There are only two kinds of people in the world..." In this case; Objectivists and those who wish they were.
  15. I understand that CONgress passed some kind of law eliminating the use of incandescent bulbs by 2012/ Can the conjoining of religion and state Khomeini closer?
  16. Hey gags. Isn't that sorta like looking to ATLAS SHRUGGED for a good word about Christianity and Socialism? The two dfferences is that AS is admittedly fiction and it is closer to fact than the NY Times (All the News that Fits: We Print). Oh yes, there's a third difference. ATLAS SHRUBBED is still a money maker. Lintzen told an interesting tale on Howie Carr's show last week that the majority of atmospheric scientists, based on the data , reject The Religion in their own specialties (of which there are many) but seem to go along with it in areas of atmospherics that are not their specialties. You'd think that if they got together to compare notes across specialties, a light would go on.
  17. They expose the foolishness of their target: Read "A Modest Proposal" or TARTUFFE: THE GREAT IMPOSTOR. The minute someone says "... Yeah, they are like that" it starts to penetrate. Satire does not occur in a vacuum. I did say it's "... part of a larger camaign". In c1970 MAD magazine's David Berg used to do "the Lighter Side Of..." feature. ONe month it was "Ecology" and the person was moaning the fate of bugs and things and ess told that the things he proposed was harmful to persons and he said "Oh. I don't care about people" after putting on a display of concern for seemingly every living or quasi-living thing on the planet. That struck a chord with everyone who wasn't a screaming lefty (and their reactions were like Landru or Nomad when Kirk got at them) that I showed it to.
  18. Wa' hoppen?? I didn't get more than 3 and that's by random luck or from stuff I picked up elsewhere or figured out by myself. I think Rand would either laugh herself silly or feel sorry for the fools who came up with this. I can just picture her saying "Dawn't give dzis test to my humband". Any test where 1 or 2 is an "amber light" and the other half are "ultra ..." was designed by a person who flunked Tests and Measurements. This lookslike something some lefty students came up with during a drinking binge or pot party. The thing doesn't even reach the level of parametric statistics. The individuals who came up with this gem look to be psychological firsts: the only persons who would flunk a personality test.
  19. Then you might as well surrender and get it over with. Anything can be strung out to such a level of remoteness that it can be the cause of destroying the world in 20 minutes. That's what contextualization is all about. The fact is that a satirical campaign is, in this case, a mimic of the opposition to show what a bunch of dopes or how dishonest they are. Satire is part of a larger campaign just as artillary is part of a military campaign or sappers are part of siege warfare. You cannot reason with eco's, the've shown that over the last 4 decades. When Rand was confronted with the unreasonable, she would talk by them. Well the same is true of eco's. You use satire (amongst other techniques) to label and dismiss them and you use other techniques like information dissemination to displace the lies or kookdom with the facts. They've been peddling global warming for 20 years and have been unable to lock it up. As proof, they have retreated to "climate change" which shows a crack. It's time for them to go. My uncle could deflate a person in about two seconds. He'd just refer to them as "Professor Hot-Ass ["You're a real Professor Hot-Ass; you are" in a mocking voice]" bringing up the image of the classic lunatic "scientist" with some bizarre obsession. In fact the whole liberals' universe is starting to look like Bizzarro World.
  20. Actually, you do both. Satire has been a useful tool since the days of Jonathan Swift. Nothing sticks a pin in and lets the air out of a pompous ass like derisive laughter and nothing does that better than showing what an ass the pompouse ass is. "...then the law is a ass" has done a greater job to discredit legalism than 1,000 treatises which are over most persons' heads anyway
  21. This shows what happens when you have a properly working system of checks and balances and explains why most countries have a role for the military in the operation of governance. If our government fell into the hands of a malfeaser, the military would be forbidden by law to act despite the fact that they are sworn to defend the Constitution.
  22. OUR ANNUAL JULY MESSAGE http://cockpit.spacepatrol.us/07july.html
  23. I was just making fun of the eco's In fact Pure Oxygen is dangerous in the form of O1. The kind of distorted thinking I was demonstrating is what you get when you allow nutbaggery to continue unchecked and allow the fraudulent to go free after committing the fraud. People, implicitly but unknowingly using the Objectivist idea of the mission of government; barring fraud, figure "since they're not being put away, what they're saying must be true". After that the mechanism of the Big LIe cuts in and people end up buying into the fraud. When I was a kid, if someone lied, they were silenced and a price was exacted. That was normal and a deterrent. An advanced, free society depends on the integrity of its information stream. Because of division of labor, we can't all be oceanographers, atmospheric scientists or vulcanologists and even these specialties don't overlap in the same person. It's the job of the media to both disseminate what is true and quash what is false. When it fails to do so, it's the job of government to step in, if for no other reason than to prevent hysteria. In the case of the eco's their falsehoods have been understood for decades whetheri it's global warming, acid rain, high-tension lines, CFC's PCB's DDT: All of it. What I did was a parody of what you would see in an eco campaign.
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