Fran

I wanted to post a new topic on dumb laws because I think the EU will always win.

[in Cyprus all the street signs, labels and menus are in Greek and English. It's in their best interest to do so as their main source of income is from tourism - nearly all whom are British who come to escape from the miserable UK weather...]

Cyprus joined the EU last year. Here's the latest dumb EU directive:

"All medicine and supplements must now be labelled ONLY in the country's mother tongue."

So we have everything else in Greek and English, but supplements and medicines must now only be in Greek. This has got to come from the French.

I've been hearing some really interesting stuff about Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (which tied for 9th with Australia, Estonia and Luxembourg in Cato's 2005 report on the freest countries in the world). Does anybody else have information on Dubai that they would like to share, whether negative or positive, because I would certainly enjoy hearing it? I plan to go and visit in September as it's only a 3 hour flight away from Cyprus, which is where I'm living after escaping the encroaching police state of the UK.

Apparently, there is no income tax, capital gains tax, or inheritance tax and with only 5% import duty. There are free zones, with a 20 or 50 year guarantee that there will be no tax on businesses there, if the laws on tax do change (hmm, worrying in itself as it implies that they might). These free zones are also ruled by common law rather than Islamic law. Islamic law also only seems to apply to the natives. So immigrant women can go around wearing whatever they like and they do (according to a friend's eye witness accounts).

It doesn't have a democracy and instead is ruled by a benevolent ruler whose aim is to make it the most prosperous place in the world. (I know that many people, myself included, would have serious misgivings about its being run by a 'dictator'.) Only 15% of the population are natives with the rest being immigrants (you get automatic 3-year renewable residency if you buy a property), and anybody (no matter what their skill level) can get a work permit if a business sponsors them.

The rules are: you don't speak out against the ruler, you don't speak out against Islam, and you don't try and convert muslims to another faith. Ok, so there are restrictions on freedom of speech, but if he has created this fairly free society, then I have no reason to speak out against him as he's not affecting my life and instead has created a prosperous nation in which I would like to live, neither would I have reason to speak out against Islam as their way of life would not be affecting me (unlike in the UK). I don't what the penalties would be for breaking these rules, but for other crimes like theft, I've heard that they stopped chopping people's hands off many years ago.

He seems to be succeeding in making it successful, rumour has it that one in eighteen of all the cranes in the world are in Dubai! I have a friend who didn't believe this rumour until he went out there, but now thinks that it is true.

Yes, I know that it's not Galt's Gulch and there are probably problems with it that I am missing and won't find out about until I try and live there, but it seems to be possibly the closest thing that I'm going to get to a free-ish country in my lifetime. I know somebody who is heavily involved in politics in the UK and he hopes that there will be a tax reduction there within the next 20-30 years - that's almost the rest of my lifetime!! I'm not prepared to wait that long.

I want to suggest another angle for that question about the abandoned, starving child.

If you saw a passer-by, with plenty of food in his knapsack, ignore the abandoned, starving child on the roadside, there would be another question to be asked beside the question of whether or not one should ask for government intervention.

It is simply this: What do you, the bystander, the observer, think about this passer-by who walks on doing nothing to help the child? I think a high percentage of us would feel moral indignation.

Nathaniel's argument misses the point that it takes more than one meal to help an abondoned, starving child. What would the man do, feed the child and then walk on, knowing that the next day the child would be in the exact same predicament? Is it a case of hoping that everyday another passer-by will do the same thing, essentially feeding the child for a decade or so until he/she is an adult?

A child is fairly helpless and would require an adult to take care of it for many years, something the man with the knapsack may not feel that he is willing to do. He could take it to a home for children, if one such exists close-by, and hope that it was the sort of home that treated children kindly (but again this would need to be run by people who want to spend their life doing this sort of thing). I'm not intending to be callous, I wouldn't want to see starving children in the street, but neither would I want to spend my life looking after them.

David

It takes self-responsibility (discipline) to practice and hone a talent that you have. You could show talent as an artist, but if you never paint anything, your potential will never be realised.

It's like Ayn Rand didn't suddenly sit down and write Atlas one day having never written any fiction before in her life, she had to work at her skill as an author, and only then after many years of practice had she acquired the level of skill necessary to write Atlas.

Fran

I momentarily grew horns and a forked tail the other day.

I wrote a review for NB's Six Pillars on Amazon.co.uk, gave it 5* and said how excellent I thought it was and why. I wanted to use a pen name and the example given for pen names was "Mark Twain"...

...which got me thinking about female authors...

...and then it came to me, I could use 'Ayn Rand' as my pen name...

...then it would look like Ayn Rand was now writing rave reviews for Nathaniel Branden's books, presumably having forgiven him for all his past sins...

Oh the temptation to be mischievous!

However, I figured it would annoy more people than it would make smile, so I didn't.

My halo has returned.

I love being an Aunty - it's like all the joys of being a grandparent without having to go through the parent bit first! I enjoy sharing some of the funny things my now 6-year-old nephew, Eliot, has said over the years. [sadly, my sister is not an Objectivist or even close. They live in the UK]

Last September Eliot was at school and his class were mixing different coloured paints together to see what new colours they made; they could then paint a picture with these colours and give their painting a name. Eliot painted a swirling, orange mass and called it "The Circle of Morality" by Eliot, aged 5.

When he was 2 (nearly 3 and talked really well for his age) he came downstairs one morning and my sister asked him: "Eliot, would you like some breakfast," to which he replied: "No. I'll just have a glass of wine."

When he was 4, he was going through a phase of telling everybody that he was 33. He said this to a lady visitor, who said: "Oh, are you, you've worn well." Eliot then patted the back of his head and responded: "Well, I've just had my hair done."

Are there any dog-lovers around here??

Well, I'm really glad to hear that you're all going to the TOC summer seminar as it means I will get to meet all you guys in person. I went for the first time last year and had a wonderful time.

I didn't know Branden was planning on remarrying. Is that Leigh Horton he's marrying? - she was at the 2005 TOC conference and she seemed really lovely. Congratulations to them both.