Novistador

Peikoff's past work is certainly of value, but a lot of what he says in his current podcasts seems very strange. When I first got into Objectivism I bought and read OPAR and listened to all of Peikoffs previous podcasts, it was useful for absorbing everything and seeing how all these abstract principles applied in everyday situations. Since then peikoff has said a few strange things, most notably -The government should bomb that mosque in New York -some stuff about transsexuals, I believe a few things he said were just factually untrue or highly exaggerated -The things he's said here about consent to sex.

I find it hilarious that the same young liberally oriented people who are calling for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now calling for the U.S to send troops to Uganda. It's interesting how effective emotional appeals from young children can be to get people to switch their views so quickly.

I really don't understand this attitude some people have that in order for homosexuality to be a "legitimate" or moral thing it has to be absolutely the result of biology in the form of some gay gene, or gay hormones. If your attracted to someone of the same sex, then your attracted to someone of the same sex, where precisely this attraction came from, from the point that you were conceived to the point that you start feeling sexual attraction is irrelevant. Looking at this contention that people become gay because of the view that "women are to be worshipped but not desired", as well as it would gel with a certain view of popular morality seems to be total speculation and not supported at all by evidence and I don't think the rejection of that little bit of theorizing on Branden's part has any impact on Objectivism as a system. I don't believe there is one definitive scientific understanding of the cause of sexual orientation and the speculations of some specific people on this one concrete issue does not affect the validity of Objectivism as a whole.

You can't really call Anonymous a terrorist organization because it isn't an organization. Anyone can do anything, post a picture of a man in a suit with no face, attribute it to anonymous and technically be correct because that's how it works. Hence the name.

I think most of the people who refer to Objectivism as a cult aren't so much referring to contemporary people who read Atlas Shrugged, and some Objectivist non-fiction then agree with it, so much as they are referencing the relationship that rand had between herself and her mostly younger followers and friends who read atlas shrugged as it was being written (Peikoff, Greenspan, Branden) As far as I can tell that characterization is inaccurate

I saw Immortals and actually thought it was one of the worst movies I have seen in a long while I get some people here seem to like the movie because they feel the hero exemplifies x, y, z good virtures, but I don't think that makes up for juts generally poor filmmaking. I just found myself being incredibly bored throughout the whole thing, all I could think was "ok so they titans are relased in 15 minutes?, nope half and hour of random stuff" and then once the titans do get released despite the fact that their described as being just as powerful as the other gods, just on the losing side of a past conflict, instead of doing that weird warping teleport thing that the gods used to get to the titans prison, they choose to crawl around on the floor like spiders, you'd think that if you were an all powerful god imprisoned for 10000 years who had just escaped you would find something better to do than crawl around on the floor and wait for someone to kill you. Lets not forget the costume design, especially for the gods, oh my god, the hats, the hats, they were the most ridiculous costumes I had seen in a long time, don't know how anyone could be able to keep a straight face while listing to those gods talk back in forth with their divine combination of a salad strainer and ceiling fat strapped to their heads. Beyond that I thought the characterizations were very poor and shallow with Mickey Rourke's character being almost comically evil, its like the writers were just sitting around brainstorming ways they could get the audience to not like this guy, but instead of picking one to establish the character they picked 12 so he never develops beyond that, "ok so first he kills a puppy, so the audience knows he's a bad guy, then he goes on to kill a baby, then he defaces public property with an elderly woman being forced to watch as he draws graphic depictions of genitals". Say what you want about the protagonist but as far as I'm concerned he was just a dime a dozen generic good looking action movie hero whose job was simply to look pretty and punch things Above all else this movie just felt like a bunch of producers with no creativity wanting to recreate the success of 300 by randomly flipping through a book of Greek history / myths and selecting a random page and whatever story they land on trying to shoehorn it into the framework of the modern action movie. I was not impressed.

I don't think it's so much a matter of claiming a right to certain geographical ranges of the ocean, so much as it is claiming rights to the specific groups of fish that are used for fishing. I recall hearing someone ( I believe it was Alex Epstein) talk about how in the early days of oil wells if someone discovered a deposit of oil, people would buy up the land around where they discovered the oil, then tap the same oil deposit and quickly drain all the oil without the consent of the original discoverer. The example was meant to illustrate how property rights must be instituted in different ways depending on the specific sort of property. I would imagine that a similarly unique institution could be put in place for fish populations.

I don't see how the recent revolutions in the middle east could influence North Korea, As far as I know North Korea's population has absolutely no contact with the outside world save for some contact with a few radio stations broadcasting over the South Korean border, but I doubt any information passed in that way would be able to penetrate deeply enough into the country to spur any action.

I didn't even know anti-polish racism was a thing that existed in North America, What reason would someone even have to not like the polish of all ethnicities?

I can't say I would have the courage to counter protest a large OWS demonstration, The kind of people at these things seem like exactly the type that if they wouldn't explicitly attack you, would do something else unpleasant like spit or throw garbage or food at your way.

I think you people severely over analyzing something which is, in fact, a piece of amateurishly written furry porn. This is just the work of some dude, trying to pass off his weird fetish for anthropomorphic rabbits fucking in a graveyard as some magnificent piece of art. Dude, you wrote a piece of porn, a piece of weird furry rabbit porn where people have sex in a graveyard. Beyond the fact that you occasionally spout off that the characters(if you could even call your weird rabbit people that) spout off that they think life is meaningless, I really don't see any deep philosophical meaning in the work, and why should there be. I watch porn all the time, but I don't feel the need for the actors to start spouting off philosophical observations while they have sex, and I don't feel the need to justify what I'm watching by saying its some great piece of art or social commentary. You like to get off by writing weird stories where rabbit people have sex, ok, accept that and realize that other people are going to think that's odd, and unless they share your niche fetish, they are not going to be interested in your sex stories, and they are not going to be kind to the story if you try and pass off your fetish as art.

I was on the anti-facebook bandwagon right up until I graduated high school, now I'm on it all the time simply because it the easiest way to stay in contact with my friends who despite living in the same city, have different schools/places of work, making Facebook the easiest way to stay in contact. I can understand where the anti-facebook people come from though, if I had gone twenty years without interacting with my highschool/college friends I probably wouldn't care to reconnect with them via the internet.

You were surprised that the daily show cut up an interview and took statements out of context to make the interviewee look stupid? Thats like their M.O.

This seems to be a common use of xtranormal, using it to argue with an imaginary opponent, here's a lovely one from a liberal of some sort that although being mostly stupid has some mildly entertaining remarks about homosexuality and serves to illustrate my prior observation.

Your saying that space isn't a vacuum, and has a bottom for these gases to rest on, right.

I had this same question, one would think that an Asexual would just be uninterested in sex, not openly hostile, and traumatized by it. I must say that I am highly convinced by the idea that if one has no hormonal problems, then their asexuality must be the result of psychological problems or unadmitted homosexuality. I also have to wonder why this boyfriend would even stay with the OP, I mean if they have no sexual desires or motivations whatsoever dosen't that make their relationship something more compairable to best friends? If I were him I would have to seek out someone else as an actual intimate romantic partner, and if possible keep the OP as a friend, as that appears to be the relationship they must have already.

I don't know about that, at least in Canada, I'm pretty sure that as long as you don't require constant hospitalization, you can attend a public school, regardless of what mental or physical state your in. I've seen people in my high school that I'm sure haven't progressed in a meaningful way since the age of about 7.

The comments on that article were scary reminders of what some peoples view of Ayn Rand and Objectivism is.

I can't believe that the Canadian public school system would ever use a book like Anthem as a part of their curriculum, knowing the philosophy the book represents. I read The Fountainhead in the begging of the 12th grade (this year), and had to put up with several of my teachers seeing me reading it and commenting about how Ayn Rand was a fascist.

I see no reason why this method of evading the reality of death has to be anything instinctual, it could just as well be a voluntary evasion of reality. I also feel the need to throw in that I never in my life felt any overwhelming involuntary desire to perform any sort of worship rituals, or believe in any gods.

I would finish the book before you pronounce yourself to be Peter Keating. Though I will comment that if "The Fountainhead" is your first exposer to Objectivism its rather likely that you may relate to Keating. Simply because of the degree to which he is as confused and ambiguous about his goals as the reader. Theres also the fact that Roark's confidence and distantness can make him seem kind of alien to a Ayn Rand virgin.

It was on youtube for a while but then it got taken down because of a copyright claim by the ARI. Felt like a douche after having watched it without realizing it wasn't supposed to be up there.

Thats from his Capitalism vs Socialism Debate. You can buy the whole thing on the Ayn Rand bookstore. http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/prodinfo.asp?number=CP01DV

I believe the argument that social contract people try to make is that the government owns all land and resources in the country, and them controlling what you use those resources for is like a landlord controlling what someone does in a condominium.

He is right that Anton Lavey(founder of the church of satan) largely plagiarized Objectivism in writing the satanic bible among other things, but the connection is very small. He kept some ideas about selfishness, but threw out everything about rights, reason, and morality, while making absolutely no effort to explain the ideas he did put fourth, and in the true nature of a religion or cult essentially asked his follows to take the ideas on faith. LaVeyan Satanism is a cult because it is based on faith, operates according to dogma, and entails the performance of rituals. Objectivism does none of those things. In the end what LaVey created was pragmatism dressed up in skulls and A black robe.