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Bourcet

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Everything posted by Bourcet

  1. I train each week and look forward to the challenge of improving each time, either increasing the weight or number of repetitions. It gives me short term goals and the long term goal of gaining muscle, which I do for myself because I find it attractive. It takes a lot of hard work to gain muscle and to visualise your achievement is very rewarding and motivates you to continue improving in each session. I enjoy working out, I enjoy the challenge and having goals, and I enjoy the result because I find it beautiful in comparison to being underweight, weak and more prone to injury in other areas of life. Whether or not you find it attractive is a personal issue, and for me, I consider the body of Frank Zaneto be appealing, only in the sense that I would love to look like that just for my own pleasure.
  2. Most I.T vacancies are for development roles, whether that be for desktop applications, web applications or web development in general. If you look at these vacancies you find that it's rare to find a requirement for one specific language, especially in web development as sites often interact with databases, so you'd need skills in html, xml, css, asp, javascript and sql for example, or alternatives to these. It's not necessary to get a degree as most people have degrees now, so you'd need to distinguish yourself by providing evidence of your achievements and capabilities, and the great thing about web development or development in general, is that you can have your own portfolio to show potential employers. You can teach yourself through books or get certification, rather than get a degree. In terms of computer repair, you could work in a shop and receive computers from customers, with the task of identifying the problem which could be software or hardware based, and then solving that or replacing the hardware as components are so cheap, it's not necessary to repair for example a CD Drive. An alternative is I.T Support which could be internal for a company and you'd solve the problems that staff have with their software and hardware, or you could work for a dedicated I.T Services company on the service desk which would, at entry level, involve answering calls throughout the day from customers and then logging the fault and escalating it to second line support who would actually solve the problem. You don't need a lot of I.T skills to do this as it's mainly about organisation skills as opposed to troubleshooting.
  3. The basis is the principle of individual rights. By stealing a dollar you are admitting that you do not accept the principle of the individual rights of man, which of course means that should anyone steal from you then you have no basis of complaint since you don't recognise individual rights. If nobody recognised individual rights then there would just be widespread theft, in fact people wouldn't bother producing since it would be stolen. Either there would be dictatorship or gang warfare. A slave no longer has a purpose, other than to escape.
  4. I think when growing up every child responds with joy to exciting things that he values, but I wonder why some adults respond with tears of joy. When I have found something very funny I have always had tears when I laughed, however recently I've had it in response to joyous things and I don't know if it is because there is some negative component that I am unaware of that saddens me and therefore induces tears. For instance, I was reading a book the other day called The Stress of Life by Dr Hans Seyle (Mentzer referred to him) and it was a great read in the sense that the author wrote with clarity, he intended for his work to be understood and it felt great to understand some science and for some reason I thought how wonderful this was (because it is rare) and tears began to roll down my face, but I wasn't sad at all. Maybe the tears were a reflection of the sadness that unfortunately most authors do not engage me?
  5. I don't know what you have read but Peikoff discusses in OPAR how knowledge progresses from the possible to the probable to certainty in a context, based on the quality/quantity of evidence gathered.
  6. I don't know how it works in America, but in England they are referred to as just recruitment agencies and you can find them on the high street in city centres. It's best to go in person because if you do it online they just ignore you. There are general recruitment agencies for office work or more specific agencies for I.T work and so on. I contacted an agency once for I.T Support roles and had to go to their office to fill in some forms and do some basic tests. Then after several weeks they contacted me and told me I had an interview for a project management role several days later. A CV is a curriculum vitae, which in America is a resume.
  7. These examples are just another way of expressing a code of ethics, or more like trapping you in an impossible world where the ethics of egoism are thought to apply and are considered bad. I assume that the altruist would take his own life, since that is the ultimate self sacrifice, and therefore he would be praised as a good man. The man who kills the stranger must be the egoist and since he considers his life more important than the stranger, he's a monster and must be condemned as bad. As for the man who allows the kidnapper to kill the stranger and himself then he must be considered as bad since he refused to save a life by extinguishing his own. My response would be to kill the stranger, since I have a choice, I choose to save my own life since that is what is most important. But my choice is not free because I am being forced to choose. If there was no force, then I would not kill the stranger, or myself...well, the scenario would never exist would it. I think this example allows you to make choices and judges you morally based upon them. But this is a mistake since morality only applies to a choice that is free and not forced. And all these examples are from the altruist perspective that rely on force and result in death. Isn't it funny how people express how great altruism is, by relying on force and death. What would your response be Summer and why?
  8. Careers advisors claim that most vacancies are hidden and filled through networking, so you can volunteer to increase the size of your network. I volunteered for a long time and my boss basically networked for me and found me some contacts, one of them actually offered me an interview. I also contacted a company in the business pages and asked if I could volunteer for one week in a certain role, he instead told me about a paid vacancy that they would consider me for after my week of volunteering. I did not complete the week. After interrogating the current employees, I decided it would be a bad move. Probably the easiest and quite effective way is to sign up to a recruitment agency in person and let them find you jobs, as responding to advertisements rarely results in employment, unless it is a large organisation that takes on a hundred or so staff for basic temporary seasonal work. At the moment I am doing an internship for a large organisation, unpaid, with the potential of paid employment after that period. If it doesn't work out, at least I will have gained some new skills, worked in a large organisation which I have never done before and hopefully get some new contacts. Applying for jobs online is pretty pointless. I have even applied for minimum wage I.T jobs and have been turned down, even though I have a degree in I.T and close to 3 years work experience in I.T roles. Your CV is pretty bare but you could expand on it by describing some of the skills you have used while in education and some achievements. You also need to describe what it is that you want, generally speaking and what you are good at. Check out a career guidance book called What Colour is Your Parachute, I found it helpful in finding my transferable skills and how to approach companies.
  9. Your example relies on actual physical force, psychological torture cannot exist without it.
  10. What do you think should happen so this doesn't happen again? prevent muslims from joining the military?
  11. In response to the last elaborate example, the answer is no, his rights are not being violated. Rights only pertain to freedom of action, so long as man is free to act, his rights are not being violated. There is a book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People where the author explains how you are free to choose your response to stimulus. He is not an Objectivist but it's a very interesting book. For example, if you are driving along and a car cuts you up and honks his horn at you, you can decide to get angry and let it affect you, or choose to ignore it. Or with your example at work and people are ridiculing me because I am atheist, I can choose to ignore it or let it affect me. Sure they are abusing me, but I can let it affect me or not. And even if I do let it affect me, I freely chose to let it and freely chose to remain at that company.
  12. Is it not clear to you that physiology is a scientific subject that requires the study of scientific principles, and you can't understand its terms and experiments without knowledge of those principles. In which case you are judging someone as non-Objectivist on the basis of his inability to understand a field of science because he has not been educated in that field. I don't see what the significance is of quoting Tore Boeckmann when: a) I didn't even know the author was an expert, since it was just a name. I didn't criticise his science. Besides, I can criticise any expert on the basis of his presentation if his aim is to teach the lay person. I can point out that he doesn't explain or define concepts, that he does not logically develop his theory and he fills it with technical jargon. Reading the research of a field of science requires an understanding of its principles. You cannot learn about physiology or any field by only reading about its experiments, since they are targeted toward the scientific community who have certain pre-requisites in knowledge that the lay person doesn't have. It also contains terminology that is taken for granted. Sure I could read it and maybe remember it, but it would only exist in my mind as a floating abstraction. I hope you can grasp that I agree with HIT because I understand it and it makes sense. I disagree with HST on the basis that I don't understand it because it is filled with jargon and therefore it makes no sense to me. Also, whatever evidence there is against HIT I have not read since it has not been posted anywhere, and most likey it would make no sense to me. Please try to convince people with clear arguments instead of threats, because the more threats you make the more likely I will just stop replying to you.
  13. My point was that freedom of action can't be violated by psychological coercion alone. His examples were vague and the context is not clear. For the first example he could be referring to a doctor in which case I assume he would have violated the contract he signed to help his patients. Or he could be referring to a man who has invented a vaccine that prevents a certain disease, and in this case the information would be how that vaccine is made and the context is property rights.
  14. In the context of war, if a combatant is captured by an enemy then they can torture him psychologically and it can damage his mind in the sense of unsettling it because his senses don't permit him to close his ears (if the torture is via sound), which would cause stress and could lead to physical problems within the body. But in order to do this, they would have to deny his freedom by physical force, preventing him from escaping. You can't commit psychological torture without the threat of physical force as a man would be free to escape it. Unless of course a man chooses to accept psychological torture and he can choose to stop experiencing it whenever he wants to, as in an experiment, but then his rights aren't being violated so no one denied his freedom.
  15. If the Taliban had been taken out and troops had then left days later, who do you think would have taken over? most likely it would have been a similar political force due to Afghan culture. In fact, there would be a period of time where rivals would fight for power and there would be no government, which would only attract insurgent groups that could use it as a base or try to gain power themselves and use it once more as a launch pad for attacks against the west. The whole point of nation building is to try to change the culture from the top through the imposition of a new political infrastructure, because the populace would only replace the previous regime with a similar one due to the ideas in the culture. As far as I am aware, in Afghanistan, there was no movement for the creation of a government from the people for a friendly regime. If the Taliban had been taken out, there would be no radical change and a similar anti-west regime would replace it, providing support for insurgents.
  16. The expression on his face made me think of a doctor inspecting a patient for some anomaly.
  17. Since it is not clear to me I am no longer Objectivist, well it was nice while it lasted, I guess I'll turn to religion now. Ok I don't understand physiology, I didn't evade on a massive scale, or even a small scale, and the link didn't help me. So HST may be great for bodybuilding scientists, but until it explains itself to the lay person, it won't be accepted by people, other than those that accept by faith or by authority. Although the author is just a name with no explanation as to who he is. Please can you tell me what education you have undertaken in understanding physiology?
  18. I would appreciate it if you could create a separate thread for HST where you can argue for the merits of that method, after all, if you think that HST is the best method then it won't gain much attention hidden in a HIT thread. I have only looked at the web site and don't understand the scientific jargon so it is no use to me. However, feel free to recommend a book explaining it.
  19. If she was locked in his home and "clients" were brought to her to have sex, and then she tried to escape by killing him then that would be justified self defence since he has imprisoned her and force is the only means to gain her freedom. But in this case, she was free to escape when she went out on "business" and nothing was preventing her. Unless he had minders follow her. I don't know what you mean by her not being psychologically fit to understand the option of escape or being reasonable enough to act on it. The fact that she killed the man meant that she saw him as a threat and therefore she wasn't completely brainwashed in the sense of seeing the man as someone good to her. I have no idea what her state of mind was. Are you claiming that she was not responsible due to a psychological illness?
  20. Yes if you could find those references I will give you a cookie I used to eat 3 meals per day but now eat 5, so I eat every 3 hours and drink a lot more than I used to as it is required to transport the nutrients. I would say that previously I was dehydrated all of the time, but now I have around 500ml after each meal so it works out to around the recommended requirement of 2 litres per day. I don't pig out at all, my meals are very small and my 2 minor meals are only 2 pieces of toast for 1 meal while the other is a muffin. I eat tuna quite often as it has lots of protein, of which I have around 1-1.2g per kg of bodyweight. I think a major contribution of my weight gain, aside from the strength gain, is due to a great reduction in activity, otherwise known as laziness. I used to be very active but this caused problems with my knees and because I live in a country with a Soviet style healthcare, I don't want to go through the nightmare I had last time with my knee. It went something like this: -See doctor: He gives me painkillers for a month, which do great...in giving me stomach ache. -See doctor: He sends me to physio...2 weeks later. -See physio for several weeks, problem not resolved. -Wait a month or 2 to see a foot specialist: He has no idea. -Wait a month or two for x ray. No problem with bones. -Wait 3 months or so to see a consultant. He spends 5 minutes playing with my leg and books a date for keyhole surgery inspection...several months down the line. -Receive letter from Bupa (private healthcare) telling me that the NHS has handed over my case to them. Reduction in time to surgery. -Bupa surgery: Keyhole surgery, wake up 40 minutes later, problem solved. All in all, it took a whole year just to remove some debris from my knee, and during the whole time I could not run or play football and it often hurt just to walk. I was even told that if the NHS were to have operated, it would have increased my recovery time because they didn't have the tools for keyhole surgery. So now my main goal is strong legs, but since I'll be working out I may as well improve my upper body.
  21. What do you guys think about the cycle of bulking and cutting? At one time I used to weigh 147lbs at 6ft and I didn't do any weight training at all, I used to jog quite often. I then injured my knee and couldn't do anything for 1 year. Since then I have done my physio and have been working out for around 5 months and the main reason is to strengthen my weak knees. Now I weigh around 174 lbs and although I have increased my muscle mass, for the first time ever I have got some belly fat, which is quite discomforting. I'm wondering if it is necessary to have these cycles of bulking and cutting, or if instead I should incorporate some cardio work to reduce my fat. Also, what is the basis of doing cardio work at a certain pace to reduce fat, and anything over that pace that causes heavy breathing, starts to reduce muscle instead of fat?
  22. According to the article and the link within that, she worked from 6pm until 6am, returned to his house and hand over the money, for 3 years. What prevented her from using that money to escape?
  23. There seems to be no specific reason as to why it is necessary to show criticism from a random person, other than look at him, he's wrong. If he wants to know what is wrong with the criticism then that's fine, he's coming here to find out. If this person is important, like if he is a politician, then his intention is to show us how bad he is and therefore we can decide to stop supporting him. But as it stands it's like perusing books in a book shop and someone stops by and rants for 10 minutes that Objectivism is bad. I don't care what a random person thinks and don't want to waste my time correcting him, there would be no point to it. My intention in asking my questions is to find out if this is anything other than "look how stupid this man is". Do you want to find out what is wrong with this man? why he writes such nonsense? do you find him convincing but find something is wrong somehow, and you post it so others can point out how he is wrong? do you want to show how stupid certain groups of people are? (Marxists)
  24. I don't think it's as easy as that because you have to look at the Afghan culture, and giving them a constitution to protect individual rights would not work because they would never accept it. You cannot force people to be free, they could easily just get rid of it and establish an Islamic theocracy. The only way to do it would be to change the culture, just like Peikoff states is necessary in order to establish a laissez-faire society. If a group of Objectivists took power by force in the U.S now and changed the constitution so it would protect individual rights in full, then they'd have to enforce it by denying free elections because the people would not stand it and vote back in some socialist. You cannot convert barbarians to civilised people at the drop of a hat through law. They wouldn't recognise the law and soon change it.
  25. You have to look at what they are trying to establish politically, and although religion plays a part, the republicans wanted to create a socialist state, however I don't know what they want now. If they want to create a capitalist state whereby individual rights are protected then of course it would be moral to support them as the UK is not capitalist. If they want to establish a communist state then obviously it would be immoral to support them as they would deny individual rights.
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