ramKatori

Suppose you are the jury of the Nobel Peace Prize. Which person would you nominate as most contributing to peace among nations in the last few years? I think George Bush.

When one marries the spouse would usually take precedence unless some other explicit declaration exists. If the parents can prove the marriage was false or that the husband is acting in malice as some allege then that is different. I ask myself that if he really acted for money then why not take the recent offer from someone for a million dollars. More about this case is available at this site.

In school they fed me Malthus: population increases in geometric progression and resources increase in arithmetic progression and that is why China and the east is poor. In college it was Marxism. The college library had von Mises and I read it because of Ayn Rand's suggestion. Hated his epistemology. Menger made some sense. His theory of value was almost same as Objectivism. Still I could not see where I could go with his theory. Reisman's book was a brain dump. The only good book was by Henry Hazlitt. I'm still waiting for a good economist.

Anybody know how the recent eminent domain case is doing at the supreme court?

How can a journalist be objective? Does it mean no opinion? Does it mean not putting opinion as fact? Does it mean not slanting the facts and showing only one side of the story?

Is it gross obscenity to say a parent should decide certain things for a child? If sex and abortions should be an exception, make the case. If 17 year olds should be allowed to decide more than 13 year old I agree. "if the parents don't believe in abortion..." then their decision to force the child to have a child should be legal. Yes I use the word "force" for if the parent and the child agree then why discuss whether parent or child has legal priority. This is a situation where a legal system is being asked to decide whose view should stand by force of law. You say a pro-life view "is a moral position to hold, so long as one does not hold with restricting the rights of other individuals to have abortions if THEY choose". Maybe this has been dicussed previously in posting. I disagree. Yes having the child may be moral and aborting may be moral. Depends on the detailed situation. Forget others. I say that a woman who has blanket and context-insensitive anti-abortion stance PARTICULARLY in regard to herself is holding one immoral view. She may be very moral in other situation.

Deciding that the act of conception was irrational, and changing one's mind is a perfectly rational reason to have an abortion. The original act may have been irrational. The old movies -- sudden act of passion. Irrational? yes. (Wonder if Franscisco & Dagny used protection that first time.) Subsequent abortion could still be rational. About a kid who should ask her parents about whether to abort. I disagree with that. If she is too young to decide, she should not be allowed motherhood. The baby must be aborted. Legally parents should decide. Morally, they should decide to abort.

In this example something else applies. We may assume that one means of communication is superior to others. Still, spmeone can use the inferior one effectively.

Saw "The Truman Show" yesterday. Interesting "what if" scenario. Impossible but interesting. Someone listed it as a favorite in a previous post. I think more could be done with the idea. I don't know what could be done. I think a good author would have a way to do something with it.

Won't do your homework. Will help with this hint about looping. (Using Code formatting, like poster above.) Print Year means: LOOP 12 TIME PRINT-A-MONTH END-OF-LOOP[/code] Print Month means: [code] LOOP from 1 to ?? PRINT-WEEK-n UNTIL no-more-weeks/days

Hear! hear! Can this forum be a palce where international objectivists like to come? Let's bring Prodos here... he's an Aussie with spirit. Hear! hear! Let us help Felipe. There are posts with too much quotation. Lazy. Help Felipe formulate a good rule.

I agree that freedom of speech is a necessary condition before a country deserves the rule of law. It is not a sufficient condition. If the democratic will of the people takes me closer to slavery, there will come a time when I will have to disobey the law, even if I the law lets me protest my predicament. Oakes: do you morally condemn Martha Stewart?

There seems to be consensus that certain things are definitely porn (e.g. the "hard core", primarily anatomical, photographs published with the sole intent of sexual arousal. So, at least for such porn, I'd like to go back to the question raised by the original questioner. Is consumption of this type of "hard core" porn immoral? [basic Questions Forum, moderator note: Edited with permission of poster, to remove note about an earlier post that was in violation of Forum Rules. To all members: Use the !REPORT button, rather than the thread itself, to report violations. Burgess Laughin.]

I've found that the search does not like words that are 3 letters or less. So, searching for D. C. Stove will not work, unless you search for the entire text, by putting it within quotations, thus: "D. C. Stove". Ofcourse, this has its downside, so you might simply search for the word "Stove".

Great post BBrown. I'd guess that is it not uncommon in history that someone who starts thinking along a new line also retains many incorrect ideas of his generation. When we finally bring the new line to full intellectual maturity, it is rude (if nothing else) to curse the person who pioneered the new branch for not taking a wider step to the side. Rather we should be thankful, regardless of the size of the step, for it is little forks in the road that lead on to vastly different futures.

Because you are compelled to pay it (by force of law) whenever you consume. The income tax was unconstitutional according to the original constitution. It is constitution under the amended one we have today. This sounds like intimidation rather than argument. In the same tone, I'd say: Conservative statists and all other worshippers of complexity try to use ideas like the "Fair Tax" or the "Flat Tax" to try to make us think the problem of big government is a very complicatred one. It isn't, it is simple. You want smaller government: just do it. Cut the rates. PS: All this has been said before in a previous thread.

There are contexts where one has to do just that. On the other hand, one must not make that an excuse never to stand up for one's convictions. It depends on the nature of the "swallowing" and the honesty/openness of the other person or institution. There have been other threads here that discussed similar situations: typically a student trying to get a decent grade from a professor who had philosophically diametric views. If you can do so (at least to a limited extent), I'd be curious to know the nature of the questions that a corpoartion would ask on an "Ethics test"? I can see the sense of questions that attempt to figure out if you will contribute to retail "shrinkage" (as they so politely term robbery). Not sure I could construct such a question, but if I could, I could see the point. Did they as stuff that was not relevant to the job? For instance, did they ask if you were involved in community projects and things of that sort? Though I would not recommend it, if they did, someone who is not hired might have a legal case against them.

The first post in the thread asked whether a specific tax proposal should be supported. Your post, the second post in the thread, began with the words: "I can't imagine why you wouldn't support a step toward freedom." I'm sorry I mistakenly construed this to mean you were advising the first poster to lend his support to the particular proposal. I do not want to misinterpret you, so let me ask this as a question: do you want a tax system that is extremely difficult to evade?

I guess NIJamesHughes regrets having destroyed the evidence. I can easily see that he might not have considered it a major issue at the time if he evaluated the posts as being rude without adding to the conversation. If my son had been the victim of something similar, I'd have advised him to take it up with his teacher or the coach instead of taking his ball and walking away from the playground.

I am. You said yourself that you used it as irony. Irony contains an element of distancing oneself from the word used in its vanilla non-quoted form.

I should have explained the use of the term "short-sighted". From my knowledge of history and of prevalent philosophical beliefs, I find it impossible to believe that a sales tax will completely substitute an income tax for more than a certain number of years (if that). At the end, we will therefore be left with both a Federal Income tax and a Federal Sales tax. If I thought differently, I might actually support a Sales Tax over an Income tax, even though I do not agree that it is more transparent nor that it is fairer on US companies.

Now I'm really curious. I will go search for it, but a link from here would help others who come this way. PS: Mr. Speicher's did help many people who had questions about Objectivism on this forum, and he will be missed in this regard. However, personally, I have never found his posts insightful once they get beyond Objectivism-101.

Now, you're the one in trouble wishbone: you forgot to capitalize the "O".

I have an idea: term limits for moderators! (Just kidding.)

I'm curious why Stephen does not mention how the owner of the list responded when this was brought to his attention. Since Stephen does not read the forum any more, we can now only get one side of the story; still, I'd be interested in seeing the owner's reply.