DavidMcK

I am offended at the racism of your link "That's why god gave them camels". This isn't what objectivism stands for to me, you don't blame a whole culture for what a small representative group of that culture does, it just isn't rational.

Hi Gatsby.

Thanks for the clip of Ian McKellen in Richard III; I remember that I saw this with a lot of doubts in the beginning, because of my experience with attempts to 'update' Shakespeare. In High School we went to a college to watch a production of Two Gentlemen, and it was sooooo stupid, motorcyle gangs with steel chains and so on. Then I saw McKellen and I loved it, the only update that seemed to really work. Remember what he was doing when he said 'My Kingdom for a horse" ?

My closest library was the New York Public library in Manhattan...none in Queens.

A naked woman with her hair streaming in the wind.

I opened my IE browser this morning (Sunday the 6th) and MSNBC has a story (the second headline) about Van Jones. I've found the media are not as biased as conservatives think they are, though they obviously are not libertarians or Objectivist. They are at their worst at reporting economic news; you see the 'broken glass' fallacy almost every night, and you don't see things like the recent rise of teenage unemployment to 25% due to min. wage laws; the list is nearly endless.

Thanks Selene, for the embedded Russian National Anthem. I remember that the Internationale was mentioned in 'We The Living' ; if I recall Ayn Rand (or Kira) stated that the lyrics were unworthy of the music (or words to that effect). Reading the lyrics of the Internationale is interesting, I'll include the link to the wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale and to the National Anthem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymn_of_the_Soviet_Union The National Anthem replaced the Internationale in 1944, maybe because it was written by Russians? According to the article it was thought that Russian soldiers needed something more patriotic than the Internationale which states its dream of worldwide communism. Notice it was imported from France: "The original French words were written in June 1871 by Eugène Pottier (1816–1887, previously a member of the Paris Commune)[1] and were originally intended to be sung to the tune of La Marseillaise.[2] Pierre De Geyter (1848–1932) set the poem to music in 1888.[3] His melody was first publicly performed in July 1888[4] and became widely used soon after." It has to be about the nastiest national anthem ever written, very violent oriented. I prefer the German National Anthem, written by Haydn for a string quartett (with wonderful variations).

"The economy is a perfect example: it is through theory only that the complex system of economics helps us to understand that current government spending may bring a potential collapse to the future economy. However, there is clearly no strong and immediate form of self-regulation on the government's spending behavior. Only theoretical prediction." The collapse of the economy IS the form of self-regulation...the limit to the size and spending of irrational government programs and policies is when they run out of people to steal from. Have you ever read a novel called 'Atlas Shrugged'?

Also, googling wilmington give 10 locations, including Vermont, ny and de and Mass. Reading Pa makes the most sense (as shown on your first map).

Does anyone know why drugs are so much more expensive in the US than Canada or Mexico? I'm thinking the existence of numerous FDA regulations are involved; can anyone confirm this?

I couldn't help but being very disappointed by the way Objectivists behaved....not because I thought they were Gods but because I thought that if any group would be anti-totalitarian and anti-mind control it would be a group of Objectivists. It still disturbs me to this day that if you can't count on people like the Brandens and Rand to repudiate control of others who can you count on?

Toilers of the Sea is a most wonderful book, I wish I knew which translation I had (my library isn't with me). Dostoyevsky was translated well by Andrew MacAndrew; there are new translations that are more plain by two people with impossible Russian names that are also good. Stay away from the 19th century translator Constance Garnett.

Galileo didn't trade truth for his life: He knew the truth wouldn't change no matter what he said; he traded stating the truth for his life.

welcome to OL John.

You can't pay back dead people.

"The public ones are for people who can't afford or don't want to pay for special treatment and the private ones for the others." This is my favorite part (from general semanticist's post #15). Notice that it isn't required that you are unable to pay, but is sufficient if you just don't want to pay...you just don't feel like paying for someone else's services...lol.

You aren't required to convert your class or professor to a better point of view. Just make your questions sincere and to the point, or quietly learn. I think that the greatest thing you can do is make yourself learn, you can't make other people learn when they don't want to. As for learning in a class that seems opposed to what you believe in, do what Ayn Rand did...she treated Marxism as an opportunity to identify what their errors were...Objectivism was born from the womb of Marxism.

Nice reply Phil; I was thinking that the teachers that were formerly (if education was privatized) in the government education system could set up shop in their kitchen..there might be 5 or 10 schools in one neighborhood, you wouldn't even need the rural building. You should also point out that the poor (especially the working poor) or already paying for education, in lost opportunities, in making kids 'well-rounded' instead of providing practical and marketable skills, and in dozens of other ways.

In addition to the two quotes in my previous post which helps explain this discussion, I would also submit the Objectivist idea that a mind that is certain of anything is certain of itself; a mind uncertain of anything won't be content with their own uncertainty, such a person must try to make everyone else as uncertain as they are.

I was perusing the Wikipedia article on 'the Big Lie' and ran into two quotes from George Orwell that seems especially pertinent to this long discussion and specifically to x-ray: “The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts”. “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed...”. Both are from 1984.

That's a relief that someone is doing something to create the grounds for a legal challenge to Fed health care; this would probably go to the Supreme Court. I can't help note however that doctors are some of the prime beneficiaries of state control: laws forbidding over the counter sales requires a doctors visit to get a prescription, licenses help doctors and reduce the supply of health care professionals, med schools are state supported and very hard to get into, etc.

I think he is assuming that we are all aware of basic economics: that labor is subject to the law of supply and demand like everything else, and that raising labor costs dampens demand for labor, thus minimum wages produce unemployment. The only good thing about inflation is that it mitigates minimum wage laws.

X-ray doesn't seem to understand when Rand is pointing out the contradictions that exist in society's philosophy and when she is being contradictory. I'm talking about calling Keating a 'ruthless egotist',: Rand makes it very clear that she is creating a portrait of someone who in the eyes of society is a ruthless egoist, and showing how empty of independent values they are on the inside, all selfishness outside and nothing within; the total lack of an ability to choose something because they want it for themselves. What has to be distinguished is pseudo-values (for example an alcoholic who wants a drink) and actual values...yes Objective values....those values that can be shown to be connected to the actual needs of human beings by virtue of what human beings are (rational, alive, requiring self-esteem etc.) Just because someone wants something doesn't make it subjective or objective: objective values have a subjective component (we not only need water but we want it when we haven't had any in a while) but subjective values don't necessarily have an objective component (the alcoholic doesn't need the bourbon and coke but may want it very much). A good model of a human being not only shows what human beings are but what they need to be.

I've run across an interesting web site that discusses personality theory, everyone from Freud to anybody you can think of (except N. Branden unfortunately), and there is a fascinating compressed exposition of Buddhism that some might find enlightening (Buddha means 'one who is awake'). http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/perscontents.html

What's awful about Anthem? You objected to her individualism, or the writing or to all her books?