There are only two holidays mentioned in Atlas Shrugged. One is Thanksgiving and the other is the one we celebrated today. While I hope everybody has a lot of fun. Let us not forget the men and women who as thinkers, and fighters gave us this great country. I am going to reread the Declaration of Independence today. It is always worth reading on the 4th of July.
What a marvel. He writes on lots of topics. He loves reason. He is one of the best writers around. I recently finished his "God is not Great". I was already an atheist but I found great arguments well offered. I am pleased to see that this book is a bestseller. I hope lots more people read it.
July the 7th is Robert Heinlein is 100th birthday. I have to confess I have not read as much as I should of him. His book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" gave TNSTAAFL. There's no such thing as a free lunch. His screenplay for the movie "Destination Moon" inspired thousand of people who participated in Apollo. He was also an American patriot. Its not a bad record and should be honored. Read some of his books instead of watching Al Gore's concerts.
Michael and I are off vacationing in LA for a few days. It is really nice out here and the weather is great. We've been visiting with my brother and Barbara, and it has been quite enjoyable. My brother took me on a very scenic ride to the ocean, Venice, Santa Monica and through Topanga canyon, which is absolutely gorgeous. We also went over to Hollywood and checked out the sights. We had a rough start coming out here. We had a stopover in Las Vegas where I won sixty big ones on video poker
Beverly Sills died yesterday July 2nd. I had heard she was ill but it was still sad news. She was the anti-diva. She wasn't Italian. She wasn't fierier. She was American. Her nickname was "Bubbles". I must confess I don't know as much of her body of work as other opera singers. She had many things to be admired for. There is one thing I'm sure of. She will be missed.
While I am a regular commentator on OL I have decided that I will also post reviews of books I am currently reading. I also hope to look at TV shows and movies I enjoy and are of some value to other Objectivists I will occasionally post these comments on OL proper but this blog will be the main place for them. If you have disagreements with me you can contact me through OL. I welcome all comments and suggestions. I think this will be fun.
[Will re-post as audio file][removed from 'Objectivist Living Forum > Outer Limits > Rants > Exposed!']Hear hear. I'm with two zones, here. In the red zone is where you don't go, you don't cross some fuzzy humanist line into gratuitousness, schadenfreude, invective for invective sake, snuffling in other people't crotches. In the red zone is my hope that Angie and Victor prosper in love, however they met, and however the spectacle (which I basically ignored, all 670 I-luvs-you-too-booboo
Hi World Does anyone who has studied Ayn Rand's Epistemology asserting that emotions are the product of prior Ideas foun any scientific,empirical or psychological evidence or foundation for the assertion? It's an amazing notion that all of our emotions could be true, beneficial and without conflict or doubt if only we permit true ideas and concepts in our memory and minds. Do you agree that her System is totally deductive, starting only with self-evident perceptions and building hierarchically
Kick Ass Guidelines for Kick Ass Posters Anyone who signs up to [link] is free to post here, unmoderated. (except for a list which we do not publish or comment on, which includes Michael Stuart Kelly, Kat, and whoever the hell else Perigo feels like banning) Anyone who is gratuitously rude or abusive, will, however, be moderated in the �play pen� for children, after reasonable warning. (except for, well, anybody except those Perigo currently has no problems with, and, well, whatever . . . we hav
[2 minor search and replace operations later, the original posting from our sibling site speaks the same meaning]I find the OL site to be very impressive, with so many tools for communication. Props to the team.I am coming to the faith that a truly free site (which OL now mostly is due to the light touch that is Michael and Kat's genius) may be like a map of the world.Looking out through the OL window on my monitor, I do believe that the varied strands of Rand-influenced thinkers and actors and
My worst, in no particular order, as noted in passing: Unintelligible Incomprehensible Mannered Arrogant Indisciplined Uncaring Cold Mean Aggressive Unforgiving Hateful Selfish
In a forum thread somewhere upstream, Emperor asked me if I wanted to discuss Daniel Barnes's good qualities. I do! The comment thread is open. If you are amusing enough, I might enable anonymous comments. If you are a poo poo head, you get deleted. . . . in other regions, discussions I would pay good money to have engraved on gold plates. Or not:
Chocolates and liquor to the first person or entity™ who correctly identifies the politics of the artist. Clue: c'est si dur de tomber si bas, quand t'as était si haut. A love song in the Abba Love March genre, suitable for O™-ish tweaking. What the O™ world needs is some pop success. A Lilith Fair for the selfish™, rational, capitalist O™-hole in all of us . . .
Actually, not. I lied in the subject line. This is actually another dumb test -- a video. With regard to my lies about ABBA's greatest hits, I regard all of the big sellers as love marches, and have imagined these marches as great propaganda tools for occupying armies. Love love love. March march march. Just think "Voulez Vous" as the slow march of stern objectivish love, with lyrics to help the conquered understand that the new regime took over out of benevolence towards the suffering people
I am testing a notation scheme in my text-aloud program. Please excuse the clutter. I will delete this later. For an aural treat, listen to the forthcoming mp3 test. I will award a gold disc version to the person who can tell me about Mitsou`s big hit and the city it dominated. [Q.1]What are you talking about? [ . . . ] [s.1-2] often I disagree with Daniel. I have perceived that he does not like to be proven wrong and when he is proven wrong, he gets really uncomfortable. [ . . . ] [s.3-4] He me
Oceania is kinda of a spoof. I am experimenting with podcasts and new communication software at work. Leave a comment if you want the test links. Raw at the moment. It is sort of a riff on Orwell with reallly cheesy organ. I record a wav on a handheld, then IBM voice-recognition puts it into a .txt, then I paste that into TextAloud and record. Then I mix in sound effects and music for our online training web. But I think I should skip the mixing part. Did anyone listen to the first one, I
I am experimenting with a Text to Speech program. Here I post an mp3 file featuring my musings on Death (from the thread Does the "fact that life will end imbues life with vitality and meaning") MP3
Playoffs started. I played a great game except that I struck out (second time since the start of the regular season). We beat the other team but we didn't hit that well and won because they weren't great hitters and our pitcher was on top of his game. Tuesday we play the number 1 team in the state so that'll be interesting. That and I get out of school a few hours early for the four hour drive down to their field. On a separate note I got 2nd team all-league which means that I'm no where near w
Jan 7 2007, 03:01 AM Very recently, I put my name in the hat, so to speak, to have a chance to bid on a video shoot and production job, working for the bicentennial committee of a nearby town. The project was to be an historical video about the town and would be broadcast on PBS and possibly some local television stations. This would involve interviewing some of the oldest residents of the town, who could recall things, historically, that were not contemporary knowledge, in addition to shootin
Dec 30 2006, 08:49 PM Being out in the field, in shopping malls, supermarkets and warehouse stores, I am frequently prospecting for people to join in the financial services business that I am in. People make business move, and so there is a strong emphasis on recruiting new people with a passion to break out of the dead-end job they’re in, but who are also motivated to achieve for themselves and their families. This past week has been increasingly frustrating though, as nearly every person tha
Dec 11 2006, 09:11 PM I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, in the process of trying to solve my income problems. I’ve run across a number of fascinating articles. Some of which are rather disheartening, others, conventional wisdom. I’ll discuss a bit about what I learned. Also, I have some theories about poverty, crime and drug abuse, and how people get that way. First, the statistics that are eye-openers: 69% of wealth is inherited. 4% of wealth is acquired through marriage. the remaining
Nov 11 2006, 09:32 PM Today, I was having an e-mail conversation with a lady who works at one of the radio stations where I occasionally do some work. She was encouraging me to stick it out and be persistent with regard to my Primerica endeavours. The events of today were another disappointment. When I returned home, I wrote the following reply: The challenge is getting an audience with that first family. So far, in cold calling, I get a few lukewarm responses, but they don’t show up at the ca
