Chumley

What the heck. I haven't posted in months, but I'm a daily reader. Here's one of me:

Kevin, I just want to say thanks for that post - you made several excellent points! Would you mind if I printed it for my own reference? I would like to add one thing - the "right" time to ask a woman for a date is when I realize that I like her enough to want to know more. (Assuming she's available.)

I write left-handed, but I do almost everything else like a right-handed person: I play guitar, swing a baseball bat or golf club, and throw right-handed. Once summer when I was teaching pistol marksmanship, I tried shooting left-handed and got the same score I had the day before when I shot right-handed.

The album "2112" by Rush has a reference to Ayn Rand. I read Anthem in high school (early 80's) because of that. I picked up a copy of The Fountainhead in 1990, then read Atlas Shrugged, PWNI, the Voice of Reason, and everything else I could find by Ayn Rand.

My case is similar. I was frustrated at not finding good Objectivism-related discussion boards. SOLO HQ at least talked about Objectivism, so I was reading it regularly. Someone linked to a thread here and made some critical comments about the people here... I followed the link and became a regular reader. And SOLO is no longer bookmarked in my browser.

It's not a "radio station" but you can listen to her show live over the Internet, as well as a few weeks of archived shows. Go to Dr. Kenner's radio show page and you can listen from there. I have only listened to it over the web links, do I don't know if this would work in iTunes.

Thanks, jedymastyr, for the reference - I just re-read it. I didn't pick up on this from reading OPAR before. I also just ordered the Tara Smith lecture from ARB. I have been thinking about my own purpose in life, and this is something I need to learn more about.

I've read OPAR twice, many years ago, and cracked it a few times since to look up a specific topic. I don't recall reading about a "Central Purpose of Life" in it. In fact, the only place I've heard of a "C.P.L." is in this forum. The Ayn Rand Bookstore has this lecture by Tara Smith that talks about purpose: The Value of Purpose I have not listened to this so I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but it looks close. In fact I'm going to consider buying it for myself.

I managed this about 8 years ago. I did it by repeatedly doing a visualization exercise from David Burns (A popular cognitive psychologist) and eventually I convinced enough brain cells to have a majority. Seriously, I wish you well in quitting smoking. It took me years of repeated trying - and failing - and trying again - to finally succeed. I'm proud of the fact that I don't even desire a cigarette any more. It also helps to remember that my father had a heart attack at age 42, and quit smoking cold turkey that very day.

Here's a posting from Dr. Michael Hurd's web site. I thought this would be an appropriate thread for sharing this link: http://www.drhurd.com/long-live-materialism.php

No, he didn't. I remember hearing him refer to writing a book on "the one in the many" a few years ago. Is that the book you mean?

I happen to have a copy of Impact handy. To quote Peikoff regarding the publication date: So we have a few years to wait.

Neal Boortz talking about Arafat today: "It's not nice to say something about a dead person unless it's good. Well, he's dead. Good." That about sums it up for me.

I just heard on the radio that Arafat has finally died. Unfortunately, it's many years too late. Has anyone else heard details?

I enjoyed it as well. It even inspired me to work out a little more, as right now I somewhat resemble the middle-aged, out-of-shape Mr. Incredible. I also like the theme of going from insecurity to confidence, as Violet learned to use her powers and developed self-esteem as a result of her achievements. The only downside was having to sit through 2 advertisements for altruism from the Foundation for a Better Life. Arrgghh... but seeing the preview for Revenge of the Sith made up for it.

Done. At 7:15 this morning. I was in line at 6:10 AM. It was a relief to get it over with! How long until the 2008 campaign starts?

You are asking 2 separate questions. One, what sites are good places to legally download music; and two, what software is good for managing and playing the music you download. Am I correct? I have a membership in e-music (www.emusic.com), and I also use the Apple iTunes store for my iPod. E-music gives me 65 tracks a month for $14.99 and I can buy more downloads if I want them. Most of the music is a bit older, so you won't find newer popular music, but there is a lot of good jazz and classical music available. The iTunes store has a wider selection. I think you can download the software and use it even if you don't have an iPod, but I'd check around to be sure before spending the money. One the song is downloaded it's registered to one computer, but you can register it on up to 5 PC's for no additional charge. Individual tracks are $0.99 each. Albums are usually $9.99, but can be more or less depending on the number of tracks. One drawback is that the songs are in an Apple-specific format so you need to use iTunes to play them. If you have music already downloaded, WinAmp and MusicMatch are pretty good players. They are free, although MusicMatch will nag you to pay for the upgraded version. Did this help?

I noticed his work in your gallery a little while ago. Beautiful! Will you be carrying any prints of Tom's work?

When I heard this, I thought to myself that if Bush wants to lose my vote at the last minute, this is the way to do it!

Michael, My suggestion is to treat this as a learning experience. If I were in your place, I would not expect to "win" an "argument." I would try to learn as much as possible about this professor's disagreements with Objectivism, so I could later subject them to my own critical analysis. Because this person is well-educated, he may be able to come up with a lot of arguments that appear good at first glance. Take your time and don't expect that you have to answer every one of his arguments on the spot.

Actually, I think a comedian (Maybe Steven Wright?) once commented about Braille on drive-up ATM's. Of course, the real reason it's there is because we can't expect the dog to both drive and use the ATM, can we? I found some commentary on this here: The Straight Dope talks about Braille on ATM's. To add to the silliness, the manufacturers went ahead with putting Braille on the ATMs, knowing that that it wouldn't help much, because you need to read the screen to know which buttons to press!

Here are a couple: Dr. Michael Hurd Cox and Forkum

Maybe they're not hostile and malevolent, I think they're quite... loony! What's with that estimate of a 168-year average life span by 2020? (From the manifesto on their web site.) This is what gave me a clue that this was Neo-Tech - it's similar to other stuff I've read from them. Although if you really want to read stuff written by raving loonies, go to the Neo-Tech site and read the negative comments. (I won't post a link here - wouldn't want to defile the temple!) -- Chumley

The Capitalism Party web site lists the founder as "David L. Hunter." I searched Google for his name and the word "capitalism." I found an article by Hunter with the following title: "Immortal Riches - Replacing the Illuminati for eternal prosperity" At this point I realized there's no point in reading more.

I see your point about the plot outline. I think that the similarities are fairly superficial because much of the content was left out - especially discussions from the classes on "History and Moral Philosophy ," and Johnny Rico's thoughts on the meaning of his service in the Mobile Infantry. I don't think it would be necessary to cover these in as much depth as the book, but I would have liked the movie better if at least tried to develop them.