SteveWolfer

Many decades ago, I learned that one of the people who would be teaching an introductory course in photography at the University had been one of the senior photographers for National Geographic. I decided that I'd fill in some fine arts requirements towards my degree. This was before the age of digital photography. We learned to develop the black and white on our own in the dark room, were taught basic principles of composition, and of course the applicable physics, like depth of field, and so forth. And then we spent all semester shooting roll after roll after roll. What I learned was that my eye for composition improved a great deal. I learned to see things like when I needed to move from where I was standing least the picture look like a telephone pole in the background was coming out of a subjects head. I'd say that I still only got one or two nice shots out of a hundred with the rest being snapshots that turned out to be a waste to develop. At least in this limited sense one can learn to 'see.' The other thing that I learned, later, was that my 'eye' faded. Without practice, I settled back into shooting snapshots.

I think that is a stretch. Saying "He won't let you down" is almost expected in trying to convince the electorate that Trump isn't going to... well, let them down. Here is what Melania said: "He will never, ever give up. And most importantly, he will never, ever let you down." Here are the lyrics: "Never going to give you up. Never going to let you down." Rita Ora has a song titled, "I'll never let you down." so does Kanye West, and there is an awful poet who recites a poem of the same name, and many a bible thumper has told us to put our trust in the Lord, for he will never let you down. I like Melania. I think did a great job and is very personable. I think that the staff let her down. Someone screwed up and should be hearing the Donald say, "You're Fired!"

When Burns got started with his commencement speech, if he hadn't hung the male pronoun in there, I'd of thought he was talking about Hillary and her lies. But, hey, why is this commencement content? If I'd just graduated from Stanford, I'd like to hear something that was inspiring, congratulatory, and gave me some sound advice to frame the next stage of my life. Not this twit's political rants. And speaking of plagiarism, that little fellow didn't source the oft repeated hyperbole about the Internet causing lies to circle globe three times before the truth gets out of the starting blocks. But he is right about the constant process of lying becoming a new normal and not being challenged (he's wrong, of course, to lay that at Trumps feet when Hillary has been hip deep in it for more than a quarter of a century). He talks about how incredibly perilous our situation is right now.... No kidding. Having to choose between Hillary and Trump while the world is on fire and the economy is giant slow-growth bubble and free enterprise is hated and socialism is now seen as not so bad. Perilous is putting it mildly. It is stunning that he can't hear himself and grasp that what he condemns could be progressivism as much as Trump. He is clearly unable to think outside of those progressive elitists talking points. I like where he says, "It is just time to say, 'No!'" He'd be so upset to realize how close he was to quoting Nancy Reagan.

Copyright has nothing to do with plagiarism. Copyright violations are civil legal issues. A person can plagiarize a school paper. Plagiarism is "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." (Internet definition) That is my guess. I think the two paragraphs were copy-paste notes of some sort, that they may have been put in a rough draft with the idea being to keep the concepts but change the language, and maybe there was a change in writers... maybe the person who was putting it together was pulled off for something else, and Melania picked up where he left off, not knowing that those paragraphs were still in there. Trumps campaign has been successful for its bold abandoning of politics as usual, but it has also been, at times, like amateur night. I'm offended by the dishonesty (not so much with Melania - I'm guessing she was mostly an innocent bystander... well, except where she said she wrote it herself), and I'm offended with the plagiarism (especially that example of Obama - you should see that video!) and, Michael is right. We should all be offended at being offered trite platitudes and tired old concepts - Where's the meat?

Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorites. That man can write!

I agree the acceptance of pot legalization is growing rapidly. But what Johnson appears to focus on will be amplified by the media, especially when it is the least bit controversial, and that is why a politician has to choose where he says he will expend his limited political capital. It is a juggling act between what he can convince the population to get excited by and what they should be excited about whether or not they know it. I suspect that pot legalization will be a de-facto, state nullification of federal laws. I believe that is the way that repeal of the Prohibition Amendment acquired momentum. Right now (and it could change), I will vote for Trump IF and ONLY IF on the day before the election I believe that he will keep his word on only nominating Supreme Court justices from that list. Because that would change America's political trajectory that would extend over generations. We could once again become a constitutional republic in practice, or lose the constitution totally in practical terms. (Remember Ted Keer? He and I squabbled on RoR over McCain versus Obama versus voting Libertarian. I argued that we should vote principle and help empower libertarian principles by voting Libertarian. Ted said, we had to vote McCain if for no other reason than to stop Obama's Supreme Court appointments. Ted was right.) I see Trump as more of a con man than a politician (how's that for drawing a fine distinction!). What make it easier to vote Trump is how easy and solidly I'm NEVERHILLARY. If I can't trust Trump on the Supremes, I'll vote for Johnson. I'm in Arizona. The state has fairly harsh laws for recreational use of pot, but it voted in a medical marijuana initiative. So, things are mixed. We are on the cusp of a generational change in liberalism/libertarianism due to baby-boomer demographics and the greater chasm between generations (due I'd guess to the educational system being more political and due to social media changing communication patterns). Would I be rooting or groaning? Yes. Rooting for Johnson to do well. Rooting for the exposure of libertarian principles. Groaning when he behaves like a lightweight. Groaning when he lets himself be trapped again and again by Trump, Hillary or a moderator on silly anti-libertarian jabs (like his pot use, or like making him out to be an isolationist). True (with the caveat that politics is unpredictable), and sad, because even if he is irrelevant to the outcome, with more gravitas, and some good coaching, he could bring libertarian principles to lots more people and they could shift the Overton Window a bit.

There are two points here. One is that doing evil will get to the person who is doing it... eventually. It doesn't have to weigh the person down with guilt or shame till they collapse, because people can keep generating defensive actions - emotional repression and projection for example. What cannot be escaped is the inevitable loss of self-esteem and a loss of personal power from the practice of defensiveness. But if someone thinks that this so well balanced out that evil will be automatically curtailed, or left powerless, because of the psychological negative effects they would be wrong. The second point is about Rand's evaluation of evil - not its psychological after-effects, but rather its place in mans life. This is more of a metaphysical approach. Good is reason and productivity - they have a real power to benefit man, to help man flourish. Evil is deception, destruction and theft. Those are impotent in terms of the benefit of man. As moral systems, as sets of practical behaviors, we can see that only those acts that are rational and productive are going to be efficacious for man, qua man. ------------- I don't think man is good or evil by nature but he has a nature that if followed leads to good. By this I mean, man's nature has the capacity to exercise reason in an individual,l productive drive. It requires going against reason to blank out, but that is a choice that's available. Having choice, any individual can choose to act in evil ways.

Melania Trump plagiarized a couple of passages in her RNC convention speech last night from the DNC speech of Michelle Obama. This is going to look bad since Melania said that she wrote the speech herself (but now the Trump campaign is talking about a "team of writers"). Some of the Trump supporters are doing the business of pointing out past instances of plagiarism on the part of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Of course, pointing out that someone else did something bad doesn't justify anything, but if you are someone like me, who doesn't like any of these people, it becomes like a buffet of disgusting bits and pieces. Melania pilfered a couple of passages from Michelle, but then in that same 2008 DNC speech Michelle appears to have plagiarized Saul Alinsky. Barack Obama lifted a theme and the exact words of a speech given by a former governor of Massachusetts. He must have like that speaker's turn of phrase, because in a later speech he plagiarized yet another of the Governor's speeches. (Obama can deliver a lively campaign speech, but I watched a YouTube video of that governor, and of Obama - the governor was better.) Hillary stole lines from former senator John Edwards. Then in 2016 she stole lines from Bernie Sanders - twice. And Joe Biden was caught stealing lines for a speech he gave, and then researchers found out that he plagiarized a paper in law school. He said, "Everyone does this." Actually, when I step back this is a small and silly thing. And, why would someone expect any of these people to not do whatever they think they can get away with? Why would anyone expect honesty from them?

In my mind it is both... but by far it mostly the way Johnson does it. If I envision my idea of an ideal libertarian candidate's answer, it would be that, morally, the government doesn't own a person's body and has no right to tell them what they can or can not take into it. And that constitutionally, there is grant of power in this area. But politically, because there are so many issues of much greater impact on our nation that as president I would not expend any political energy attempting to legalize marijuana... (or something like that). When I watch Johnson, it is like the teenager within him is too much in control and he is almost giggling over politically 'mooning' the culture. Is he getting a kick out being a kind of 'shock-jock'? That it will ensure you won't get elected? That it gives the electorate a view of the candidate as something of a single issue candidate - "Oh yeah, Johnson, he's that pro-marijuana guy - the one who said he was going to give up using marijuana while he is president." That Johnson is giggling about edibles while the middle east is on fire, open warfare against our cops has started, that race relations have reached the point where killings are weekly, where inner city crime accounts for more deaths in the US than Americans killed soldiers killed in wars in the middle east, that the largest stock market in the world may be a bubble, that the regulatory state is now such a burden that it costs business more than taxes... and so forth. Maybe it is me, but I think he makes himself into a kind of clown and gets a kick out of it. To me, he doesn't come across as serious.

I don't think we are that far apart. Blanking out, avoiding thought, and 'refusing to choose' are individual acts - exercise of the will. They don't happen to us like a virus or an avalanche or a dust storm. We cannot blank out except as a choice. People only blank out when they are presented with an option of not blanking out in a given context. And, refusing to choose is almost a contradiction in terms... It is choosing to not choose. I think I know what you meant, but I want to point out that each of these things is an act of will. And, let me point out that "blanking out" - when and if that is the act of evil in question (which we both agree it can be) happens with or without the sanction of others. It wasn't my intent to argue a point, but rather to explore the question of what sanction consists of. I completely agree that sanctioning evil makes it possible for evil to flourish. But evil can and does happen without first being sanctioned. A sanction is to evil what gasoline is to a fire. If we go too far in blaming evil on a victim who we see as sanctioning the evil it becomes too much like blaming the victim for the act of the aggressor (where it is that kind of evil).

Lots of people make a mistake of thinking they have to find a new idea. Often what works better is finding an idea that is already working for other, mastering the details, then doing it better. Michael is right when he says this is shooting in the dark. If you are reasonably young you can learn by working for someone in a business to learn it from the inside out. Why Peru?

A woman I knew many years ago wanted to help preserve the rain forest. She worked with plant experts to find certain seeds, leaves and such that could be harvested, but only if the rain forest was left pristine, and she worked with manufacturers of shampoos and such to incorporate those natural ingredients. This created an economic incentive to leave the rain forest as it is instead of cutting it down. I don't know if there are now acres of rain forest that are there only because of her, but I do know she ended up making a lot of money. What ever you do watch out for the unexpected barriers that can arise from import regulations. Twice there were things I wanted to do outside of the US that were killed by import regulations (one had to do with peanuts and the other with leather goods - thought I'd better mention that least people let their imaginations run wild)

I don't believe that evil requires sanctioning. Sanctioning helps encourage more evil in the future, and makes it easier for present evil to go unpunished, but each instance of evil is an act that comes from an individual by the exercise of their will. I think that this is more a case of a society that doesn't understand what it should of individualism and free enterprise. I'd agree that there is far too much toleration of lying, corruption, and just plain dishonesty in politics - but I wouldn't call it a sanction. (Maybe I'm just quibbling on that word.) --------------------------------- I brought up the Ayn Rand Lexicon page for "Sanction" and here are her comments: "To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." ------------ "One must speak up in situations where silence can objectively be taken to mean agreement with or sanction of evil. When one deals with irrational persons, where argument is futile, a mere “I don’t agree with you” is sufficient to negate any implication of moral sanction. When one deals with better people, a full statement of one’s views may be morally required. But in no case and in no situation may one permit one’s own values to be attacked or denounced, and keep silent." ------------- "To combat petty larceny as a crucial danger, at a time when murder is being committed, is to sanction the murder." -------------- "To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims. The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: 'Judge, and be prepared to be judged.'" -------------- "A forced compliance is not a sanction. All of us are forced to comply with many laws that violate our rights, but so long as we advocate the repeal of such laws, our compliance does not constitute a sanction. Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom." ----------------- What I noticed is that the context where one might sanction evil is a situation that calls out speaking up - where one is practically on the spot and have to say something. At that point, they must not say something that acts as a sanction. What I'm trying to say is that it isn't a duty to speak up against all evil one becomes aware of and to do at every occasion. Sanctioning is more a case of not saying the wrong thing (not condoning, not equivocating, not positing moral relativity, not giving a false impression - even with silence). Examining Rand's quotes, one could say, - "If you don't discuss evil in a way that implies neutrality," - "If you don't stay silent where silence can objectively be taken to mean agreement with evil," - "If one doesn't treat a small evil as equivalent to a large evil," - "If one doesn't [when it is in front of one] fail to condemn an evil," Then one isn't sanctioning evil (in so far as any of her quotes is concerned).

If I were a Republican and tuned in the Convention on the TV, I'd change my registration tomorrow. It isn't just that I don't get excited by funny hats, lots of yelling and cheering over nothing, and just how much flag and sign waving can we tolerate (personally, I've overdosed already). One of the speakers was this bearded, religious guy whose claim to fame is that he is a business man (he makes duck calls and has a reality TV show about his family who are part of the company that makes duck calls), and former Governor Rick Perry (who was a GOP primary candidate) but from what I saw Perry only introduced a former Navy Seal. The former Seal was pretty hard to follow - a very disjointed speech that was mostly about how we all should die for the country. I won't go on... it is too painful. Maybe it will get better.

Trump has captured enough of the establishment insiders to be the one who gets to rig the system. That's what the crooked voice vote was. Trump has enough delegates that he will be nominated and the NeverTrump forces were bound to lose. The establishment would have been wise to let them lose in an open and above board fashion. But they didn't (or at least haven't yet). It makes Trump look bad.

I didn't think Trump was even serious about running, back when the Primaries were just starting - just pumping his brand. Then when he actually ran, I didn't think he had a chance. So, I've been totally wrong from the get go. But, having said that, I don't think Trump has a chance to win the general election. I can now see that Trump had a winning concept for the primaries that had to do with spitting in the face of political correctness and political cowardice and political inaction and doing it by disparaging both parties. Those are things worthy of attack, but his attack is clearly costing far more general election votes than they gain (again, I have to remind myself that I was wrong before). His way out of this might be to have Pence talking to those that are right of center, and he, in the mean time, completely switches on key issues to appeal to independents and to the more conservative democrats. That and continue to point out the horror story of a Hillary candidacy. I don't think it will get the job done. At this point, I see him as having a kind of con-man's genius for scamming the primary voters, and like a con-man the process is a range of the moment maneuvering and his problem is that the kind of maneuvering that wins the primary, doing it in his style, fouls the ground for general election. I just don't see anyway he gets enough women, blacks, Hispanics, or millennials to vote his way. And some of the Republicans just won't go to the polls.

I don't remember where it was, but I saw a retired general on the tube who said that no senior officer would plan a coup for when Erdogan was out of town. Instead, Erdogan would be at the top of the list to capture and to be made to issue stand down orders and to dishearten any opposition. Coup or fake coup, it is clear that it is being used as the excuse for a radical transformation of their power structure. We may soon see another Islamic theocracy in the middle East.

Me too!

What I see is the consequences of ideas. If you don't think anything exists but physical matter and energy and there is no such thing as volition, then how does one take seriously issues of morality, innocence, life or death. Just shifts of protons... right? I think that hard determinism will always lead not to a better understanding of reality, but to a divorce from reality and to a mental/emotional distancing - to seeing life as a floating abstraction - something less than full real. There is a loss of meaning.

That's a quote from Gary Johnson in the Thrush interview. It just struck me strangely. First, I like that he recognizes that Congress must declare war, and by implication, that congress is representative, but what is strange is that he hasn't given an indication of his opinion... he would be the nation's leader. What would he say to sway the people and congress to get the vote he believed was best. Does he believe we should have a declaration of war or not? And if they gave him a declaration of war, how would he carry it out? And where are his enthusiasms? Here is what I too often see. We have the extreme of the Neo-con who really wants war, in my mind, everywhere. They want to impose "democracy" and operate on the thin rational that it would be in our national security. My gut tells me that they have some sort of emotional drive that neither they nor I want to look closely at. The other extreme is the libertarian who, in serving the non-aggression principle, forgets that the government exists to protect us from attacks. They seem to be overcompensating for our current and past excesses in interventionism. It would be nice to say that there was a middle ground somewhere among the existing political representative, where neither of those extremes appeared, but that's not the case. The 'middle' position seems to be ignoring (or at most) moaning about unnecessary interventions going on now, while being unwilling to use the military where there are real threats that being left to grow and fester.

You are welcome... I miss him too. Among the significant regrets in my life is that I didn't spend more time with him.

Some of the evils we see and endure today, have roots that go back a long way. Our government, along with Great Britain and others, allowed thug-like governments to nationalize oil fields, equipment and structures that were the private property of publically owned companies. Most of the shareholders were American or Brits. The immediate loss was to the share-holders, the next and on-going loss was to the rule of law as an example was set with the early instances, and the final loss is still being accounted for as the thugs spend money to terrorize their citizens, retain power, and in some cases fund terrorism against the rest of the world. Here is a list of the countries that used guns to steal their on-going oil revenues by nationalization. The dates are not to be taken too seriously because there have in some cases been multiple instances of nationalization in a given country, and in many countries it wasn't done all at once: - Soviet Union (1918) - Bolivia (1937 and 1969) - Mexico (1938) - Iran (1951) - Brazil (1953) - Iraq (1961) - Burma (1962) - Egypt (1962) - Argentina (1963) - Indonesia (1963) - Peru (1968) - Libya (1970) - Kuwait (1975) - Saudi Arabia (1980) - Ecuador (1992) - Venezuela (1996) - Nigeria (1999) - Russia (2000) Look at all the horrors that have been finance with stolen revenues. All the deaths. All of the money that would have been in the free market, providing jobs, satisfying desires, providing capital, and doing research instead of flowing to people like Stalin, Khomeini, Chavez, Muammar Gaddafi, etc. If ever there was a proper use for the Marines, it is to send them in to retake any stolen oil fields with a notification to the country that was trying to nationalize them that any further attempts would be seen as an act of war. Between letting government thugs take private property of our citizens and then taxing our sentences to send them foreign aid makes us culpable in a history that is far more oppressive and bloody than it would have been.

As everyone here knows, we already have some private roads (e.g., gated communities, and private toll roads). Even some of the freeways owned by governments are being turned into partial money makers with pay-for fast lanes (that's not privatizing, but rather stealing a private technique to increase government revenues while pretending that it isn't hypocrisy to convert the Diamond Lanes to pay-for go-fast lanes). But every now and then I let my mind wander to what could be done with a simple residential street. I imagine that while building a subdivision, or laying out a new road of any kind, that a huge trench would be dug. Then roofed over, strongly, leaving a large tunnel below and the road above. This would allow pipes and electrical conduit and cables to carry water, trash, sewage, electricity, and internet signals where the wires and pipes could be maintained without tearing up the roads or interrupting any traffic. Trash pickup and mail delivery could be underground. And all of the service providers could be paying rent to the street owner for this and it would cost them less than other ways of doing this. The space above the road, up about 30 feet above, would be a good place for overhead mass transit like the Sky-Train in Bangkok. All private. And the thing is, that far more innovations and uses and improvement would start to appear as soon as it was underway. (When the personal computer came out, they were trying hard to find reasons for it... "You can keep a list of record albums on it! And your wife can store her recipes there!" And now look at where we are with the PC).

I agree. And it takes over the media and our political focus and it taints the way we feel about life, and part of what we lose isn't visible.... it is what we would have been doing instead. It steals from our ability to feel higher levels of benevolence towards our fellow man. It is a far uglier and more costly thing that first glance would reveal.

She needed to compress the broadest of abstractions - the role of man's mind - into a story that because of the theme had to show the place that a philosophy - individualism - a philosophy that arises from the proper understanding of the nature of man, his mind, and its role in his life - would have in politics, morality, epistemology, economics, romance, and art. And it had to be done in the form of a novel where a story line presented conflict between opposing value so as to represent the philosophy in opposition to altruism/collectivism. And it had to do so in a way that held excitement and resolved the conflicts. I don't agree with most of that. She believed that art was a selective recreation of reality and she believed that people such as she depicted were possible (she was the best example that she was right). She didn't show them as perfect - we saw their struggles. She didn't do anything to demean her heroes which modern literature's standards would require. But that is nearly all that I need to know about modern literary standards. I don't want to have the artist find a wart to present on what is otherwise a beautiful woman. There are a lot of reasons for problems in her followers. There are some built in pressures on those who are above average in intelligence to start with, and then finding the clarity of Objectivism, combined with its celebration of intelligence, and the permission to feel passionate... well, it was too heady a tonic to take for many without them losing their way a bit. Branden once said something about Objectivism was about more than the principles, but also the ability to apply them intelligently. Objectivism taken full on, at an early age, should have come with a bit of wise counseling... but who knew back then. And back then there wouldn't have been anyone who could have counseled as needed. We disagree on their being a deficiency such as you mention. I think she was dead on as to the power of philosophy - today's society is made of puppets dancing to yesterday's ideas.