Some of the left wing bloggers have come with the idea of having a labor union for bloggers. Here are some of the reason why this is a silly idea. I don't know about other bloggers but I work for me and my readers. I am the owner. I determine the content. Unions are made up of employees. People who work for the person who hired them and provided the job. One of the items these bloggers want is health care. They have been told that there is right to health care. Now these left wing bl
Durham in Wonderland is written by K C Johnson. The blog is about the Duke Hoax. Professor Johnson has written since April of 2006 about the Hoax. The blog has been about the case and the reactions to it. As a professor Dr. Johnson has had a great deal to say about the Duke faculty and President. Much of his focus has been on the 88 professors who signed an ad the appeared in the college newspaper now known as the "Gang of 88. Dr. Johnson has ably followed the criminal case as it fell
The last day. We begin with the David Kelley lecture on the Objectivist Ethics. This is good material that I want to listen to again. Ed Hudgins talks about The Anatomy of Belief. People believe many wrong and bad ideas. Why is this the case. Exposing wrong ideas requires patience. Stephen Hicks second lecture is full of great reports. In the US under a partially free art is flourishing. Dr Hicks pointed that poetry books are selling very well in the United States. Chris Baylor fin
I've recently started reading some books in the Oneworld Thinkers series. These are introductory works on important thinkers. I've read Ed Feser on Locke and Harold Noonan on Hume. The length is about 200 pages each, so they are a bit more detailed than Oxford Past Masters (now part of the "Concise Introduction" series) or Wadsworth's series, but still manageable. I would be interested in knowing what books or series that others have found useful in studying intellectual history.
Tom Stone has a blog called Philospher Stone that I very greatly enjoy. He has two humour entries which are very funny. One is a list of children's books that don't make it One is how to have fun with scissors. He posts about philosphy, sports and baseball in addition to humour. Check it out.
Day Five started with David Kelley continuing his lectures on the Objectivist Ethics Advanced. This is very advance material so I will talk about the next lecture. Fred Seddon gave a great lecture about David Kelley "The Art of Reasoning". Fred is very good lecturer and always fun to listen to. Now one of my favorite lectures and lecturers. The lecturer is Stephan Hicks and the lecture was "The Fate of Art under Capitalism. Most artist think that capitalism and capitalist hat e art Dr.
A cunning lead in to what is actually quite old, my first online clang! on Objectivish subjects, in which I compare Atlas Shrugged to Battlefield Earth [from freedomofmind, at yahoogroups, post number 23918, posted Wed Jun 8, 2005 -- I think I may have killed the thread. Note that Monica Pignotti is known as an apostate of two totalistic systems, The Callahan Technique and Scientology, and is a recent convert to a healthy, normal skepticism, though still touchy it seems on the subject of Rand] S
I noted, rather stupidly it turns out, in a thread called Shyness at Objectivism Online, that "evidence-based" psycholtherapy, such as CBT, DBT etc, was a testament to some of Rand's prescience (i.e., her insistence that the emotive-rational hinge was key to mental strength and moral compass). In the back of my mind (on the old grey chesterfield with the aging fellow who does my research, watching Trailer Park Boys and eating Cheetos) was the voice saying, "Who was that guy that kinda agreed wi
With a comment Jeff Kremer about stakeholder theory. Stakeholder theory is based on democracy. Objectivists don't believe in democracy. The United States is not a democracy. The United States is a constitutional republic. Democracy is unlimited majority rule. If you get half the voters to support an idea that idea can be carried out To put the idea in its starkest forum if 50% + 1 had expected Hitlers idea of killing the Jews it would have alright. In the United States you still need s
Everybody is back from the off day. David Kelley is giving his advanced Ethics course. One of first points is that Rand's divides theories of Ethics in three. The Objective vs. subjective and intrinsic. The Objective is the correct one. The next lecture was by Robert Bidinotto on "Is There an Objectivist Sense of Life?" Bidinotto makes the point that one can come to different conclusions about works of art and still be using the correct method in analyzing them. He cited as an example D
Only one lecture today. William Kline finished on Business Ethics. Kline said that a sound theory based upon the Objectivist ethics would resolve almost all business ethics problems. Rest of the day tried to sleep. Went to the library at Towson. Day off is great idea.
William Kline continued on Business Ethics by talking about stakeholder theory. He discussed Milton Friedman's statement about business only having a responsibility to turn a profit.Kline discussed property rights theories and utility maximization. He made the point that these two theories may lead to conflicts. I then attended Dave Mayer's on Judicial Activism. This was a great lecture. Dave Mayer always gives a good talk. I wish he would fly and attend those on the West Coast. He cite
I will try and fill in some of my previous posting about Summer Seminar 18. David Saum and I got to Towson about 5pm. We checked in and meet some of the other arrivals. I have a theory that the first people you meet at an event suggest how the event will go for the week. The frist people I meet were all great. I then went to the barbecue and meet more great people. There seemed to be a great ethnic diversity than previous Seminars. The next day the conference proper began. The first t
Has at it here in a post taken from the http://www.peikoff.com/ site, front page, in response to a question about Ayn Rand and smoking. I will search diligently to find out what the heck this snippet means. Q: If Ayn Rand were still alive, would she smoke? A: No. As a matter of fact, she stopped smoking in 1975. When the Surgeon General in the 50s claimed that smoking was dangerous, he offered nothing to defend this view but statistical correlations. Ayn Rand, of course, dismissed any alleged
When I weighed in at my weekly Weight Watchers meeting yesterday, I found that I had lost 4.4 pounds. Woooooohoooooo!!! That was a huge amount for me to lose in one week. I felt I was down for the week, but didn't think it added up to that much. After all, I had eaten at Chili's Saturday. (BTW - I just found out their chicken cobb salad has 28 points!! That's twice as much as my naughty little margarita chicken. Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.) Generally, I have been taking of less than a
Oh, who am I kidding? I will restrain comment on this fascinating bit of self-promotion by Diana Mertz Hsieh on Objectivism Online: By Diana from NoodleFood,cross-posted by MetaBlog Source: On Ashland University - Objectivism Online Forum Address : <http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.p...ic=9972&hl=> http://www.objectivismonline.net/archives/002667.html
Summer Seminar is over for another year. I will be reporting in the next few days about the speakers new and old. I hope in my postings I can convince more of you to attend. More will follow.
Over on our sister site, I had occasion to pull the nose of Catholic Thinker Bill Tingley. I have prepared an MP3 of that screed, and hope it gives value to my fans.
"Bill Tingley and The Catholics Vs Them, They and the Other"
Original post here, with the fatuous, unfocussed and demented comments of the Glorious following its appearan ce.
Dayaamm! I took a little vacation over the 4th of July holiday and gained 1.4 pounds over the last two weeks. I went to Hollywood and ate at the world famous Mel's Diner and some other places that were not so good for my diet. Where is an Applebee's Weight Watchers menu when you need one? Traveling is such a challenge because you are eating out every meal. I slipped this time but I just have to get back with the program.
This will be my last posting for the next week. I will be at the Atlas Society Summer Seminar next week. My schedule if full and I don't know if I will have any inter-net access. I will report about the conference when I get back.
