DavidMcK

In a party with 23 people attending there will be a %50 chance that someone will share a birthday. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

Part of the myth that is interesting is that Atlas was relieved of his burden temporarily by Hercules...to go pick some apples. The representations of the world are interesting especially since people weren't convinced of a round world until Columbus/Galileo et. al..The circular representation as Dragonfly points out were the heavens..with many constellations in them and I seem to recall from Aristotle that he talked about planetary and stellar spheres...hard for us to understand since they were apparently solid in his mind.

http://www.blackstoneaudio.com/Search.cfm?search=George%20H.%20Smith Thanks George for telling us about these....I wasn't aware.

Happy Birthday Chris, from someone who has gotten a lot out of "Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical".

What is AFDC? I'm assuming it is A..something F...something Day Care.

I've just noticed that I used the word 'want' for 'won't'...I can't edit it out now and it is very embarrassing. I used to be a terrific speller but I haven't written a lot since college and I'm older so I seem to have lost something. Thanks for the comments, I liked 'The Road to Serfdom' also, and the fact that the other side hated it is probably indicative of how important it is. I think he will be remembered for his approach and concepts concerning social issues than his actual positions. I'm thinking of his famous triangle (the structure of production); his development of von Mises' idea about the lack of information in a socialist economy, and so on. The welfare state positions he takes can just be ignored.

I noticed in Reason magazine that the next freedom conference in Las Vegas (I forget what they call it) stated that D'Souza would be debating an atheist...I thought it might be you but I guess not.

I mean that most of us click on 'View New Posts' so if no one has replied to a topic for longer than a day it becomes a dead topic, and people most likely won't* view it. Didn't mean to be obtuse, just wanted to see if people enjoyed this video as much as I did. I'm surprised it hasn't showed up on MSNBC or somewhere else. Thanks for your input Selene. * NOTE FROM MSK: See here.

Keeping the link alive one last time: http://www.econstories.tv/home.html

George, I recall you writing about being an anti-war protester early on (against Vietnam); I would think that someone's position against an unnecessary and unjustified war would be even more critical than their drug policy. Granted that seeing the connection of libertarian principles and doing something to your own body is more obvious than foreign policy, but war is a far greater threat...we've seen that war is the health of the state over and over. The reason why the libertarian movement seems to be so easily hi-jacked is that there aren't too many libertarian/Austrian/Objectivist types who seem to have the charisma and speaking ability of the hijackers. Ron Paul is about the only one who seems to be able to hold his own on television...who else is there out there to present the libertarian/objectivist point of view? Mostly the movement is still in a deeply reflective intellectual stage, and intellectuals don't like going around rabble-rousing...it seems beneath them.

That would be an interesting experiment, and then ask who won the debate as with Nixon/Kennedy. As I'm sure most know on here the radio audience thought Nixon won and the TV audience thought Kennedy won.

I'm going to keep this thread alive, I'm mesmerized by this video and watched it about 5 times. The words are posted at http://www.econstories.tv/home.html I suppose what I like about it is that Keynes and Hayek are given equal chances to make their case. Surprised no one has commented on this.

Here's a link to the rap between Keynes and Hayek " I want to steer the economy ... I want to set it free". It is surprisingly detailed with most of the important concepts from Keynes and Hayek, and it is kind of catchy...unlike anything else you are likely to see on youtube. http://mises.org/daily/4095 I don't know how to embed a youtube video, thus the link.

I wonder if she knew that Betty Blackhead was a Nazi.

Gates didn't strong arm anyone from buying Apple with its own operating system. The real reason Windows is so fantastically successful is that the main alternative to Windows was invented by a Swedish kid (Linus Torvalds) instead of a money hungry American kid, so he just gave the system away (Open Source) instead of developing it and charging money for it and providing stiff competition to Gates. In another universe Linux would be to Windows what Pepsi is to Coke, or Avis to Hertz (We're number two, we try harder), or AMD to Intel. Instead it was slowly and painfully developed by thousands of amateurs until it was finally usable instead of diverting a few billion of Gates money into an alternative.

"The Six Pillars is (I believe) his last book, which sums up all the rest...a very important book. As far as the child-selves that is an interesting point you raise, that I have wondered about many times. whether he believes that different selves are a metaphor or an actual part of your subconscious. I remember in his memoir he talks about his interest in hypnosis and how he hypnotized someone in front of Ayn Rand to show her that it was a real phenomena, and he took she (the patient or subject) reverted back to an earlier age. At any rate, whether he is being metaphorical or not, his main emphasis is what affects your level of self-esteem and how to you improve/maintain it. I hope you like this forum, it is sometimes trash talk, sprinkled with some really smart people and important arguments.

How is George Will's mention of Atlas construed to be positive? He doesn't say a single positive thing about Ayn Rand's philosophy, and as far as I know never has.

Welcome James, for personal development I highly recommend the writings of Nathaniel Branden, especially the Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, and How to Raise Your Self-Esteem. Personal development to me means improving my understanding of how the world works as well as how I work.

This project is for nothing but my own use. What I'm doing now is very time consuming: I download the Daily Racing Form for say tomorrow's races at Aqueduct, then using Open Office spreadsheet I put all the 'Beyer' numbers from a certain horse's record into the spreadsheet (Beyer numbers reduce how well the horse ran down to one number), and then using the formulas that I have embedded in the spreadsheet I can make box plots, have a better idea how 1 horse compares to another, etc. It takes me an hour and a half to do this for one racecard, and I was thinking that if there was a software program that could do this instantly after I download it, as well as save it to a file on my computer it would be time-saving. I'm not selling the software, or offering it on a website, just my own use. The problem is that dfr.com encrypts their .pdf file that you download, so that you can neither copy their raceform to another program or add something into it (the properties page said it is encrypted with 128 bit encryption), but they also offer a comma-delimited file that might be able to be used. Any way, that describes the problem and I just wanted to make sure I was asking for something that could be done before I made a fool of myself. Thanks for the suggestions Mike and Kelley. I use Windows Vista right now, but re: the next suggestion I might re-partion my hard drive and put Suse on it (I've used Linux before). That would work well with OpenOffice. P.S. What does this have to do with Objectivism? Remember in Galt's speech he talked about the moron's who like to watch horses go around a track? That's me!

I was hoping the more software savvy individuals on here could suggest a website where I could post a software project (involving manipulating data from the Daily Racing Form for thoroughbred racing). So far I've found a few websites that seem what I'm looking for, and since I'm willing to pay up to 1K for my project I thought I would check with the people here first before I commit myself...any advise? P.S. The problem is that the chart comes as a .pdf file which seems hard to copy to another (open office) program and add info or manipulate data (such as putting the data in a 'box and whiskers' plot). I'm not sure if .pdf files can do anything except be read since they seem to be encrypted.

"When The Ominous Parallels was orginally being published in 1968." This is much too early, I think 1982 is closer since Ayn Rand mentioned it in her last speech in New Orleans. Also, I don't think bashing Peikoff helps, since I actually like some of the things he's done. This book is actually a different history of one of the most analyzed events in recent history, and my thoughts were after I finished reading it that it was helpful. I always thought that it needed an answer...like "The Hopeful Non-Parallels" or something like that; something that shows how different the U.S. is from pre-Nazi germany. As some of you know I'm not in the pure Objectivist gang, but instead believe in giving credit when it is due.

Welcome Jay, I want to comment on how rapid your development has been since you discovered Rand. Some of us who are older had the sense that there was something very right about Objectivism but also something else was needed; we had to wait while Nathaniel and Barbara were writing and making their own discoveries. I also know what you mean about working in a quasi govermental type atmosphere...I worked for Raytheon for a year near Dallas Tx and they did a lot of contract work for the military. It was awful..a place for ex-military people to go, and they tried to run the company like a squad of soldiers. I knew I didn't belong there when my supervisor told us that there was no place for an individual in that company (we were working on maintenance of the P-3 Orion aircraft-a sub chaser), so I quit after not getting along with hardly anybody there, and got a better job at TWA (now taken over by AMR). Your progress is remarkable and inspiring, and I suspect anyone who gets you as a teacher will consider themselves very lucky. David

"The threat to the future of capitalism is the fact that Reagan might fail so badly that he will become another ghost, like Herbert Hoover, to be invoked as an example of capitalism's failure for another fifty years." Note that this ghost has been evoked many times in the present crises...almost30 years after she wrote this, so she is at least more than half right!

"Who should be at all surprised that those subjected to this "twelve-year sentence" end up duplicating the despicable behavior of those in "real" prisons?" And who should be surprised at Columbine-like events also? There was almost another similar event here in NY, and the left keeps blaming gun control laws (e.g. Michael Moore).

Yes it is self-evident and beyond question, because of the law of causality: That an entity acting will act in accordance with its nature and circumstances. If it acts differently in the further reaches of the universe there must be something different, without the law of identity applied to action you have no science whatsoever. The objectivist causality principle is best described by H.W.B. Joseph, in his 'Introduction to Logic' (he might not have liked the association with objectivism btw).