Robert_Bumbalough

Hi Carol. Is Doug palsy-walsy with PM Justin I-Never-Met-A-Victim-Group-I-Couldn't-Exploit Trudeau?

Whoa! More Winning. Supervisor is allowing me to get sample of wire the factory uses by the mile at like half price for a savings of at least $20K by EOY.

Pow. Bada-Bing-Bada-Boom. Bola-Bola. Being productive. Yeah! Baby! New lumber vendor set up. First order about to be placed. Crate it. Ship it. Call Dagney and set me up a box car on the siding spur line out back. Gotta love Taggert Transcontinental!

I love the smell of productivity in the mornings. --------------------------- A.B. Beverage Racks Up Productivity: Kudos to Doug Varadore V.P. & G.M. https://www.mmh.com/article/warehouse_system_report_a.b._beverage_racks_up_productivity

I love these types of stories of human success and achievement; there's plenty of other cool stuff in the current edition of Plastics News. I exclaim, I love capitalism. http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180430/NEWS/180439992/ackleys-career-path-took-him-from-entry-level-to-president

In Atlas Shrugged part 2 chapter 6 the gang of looters lead by Wesley Mouch and Fred Kinnan discuss the eight points of directive 10-289 that assert draconian control over all business activity and severely limit personal freedoms. Did Ayn Rand's description of those eight points adhere to the edicts issued by the Leninist Bolshevik rulers after their revolution and civil war victory? Did she fabricate that part of the story or was she writing from memory of her personal experience? Then later in chapter 7 the scene where Rearden is walking to his new apartment after moving out of his house and starting divorce proceedings for Lillian and meets Ragnar who give Rearden a gold bar and explains his mission to eliminate the ideal of Robin Hood from the minds of men gave me pause to think. Ragnar asks Rearden what he looks forward to and for what does he live. Yikes! Slackers like me with little to no purpose in life other than keeping on to merely be keeping on for the sake of keeping on are challenged to find a crusade and a mission. Well off I go to do something productive.

In this blog Dawson discusses a comment by a reader asking how to distinguish between dream states and reality by use of Objectivism's basic metaphysic axioms. I first learned of Objectivism from Dawson Bethrick's blog and have often found his writings useful in understanding Objectivism and the lack of justification for mythological beliefs. http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/2018/04/existence-and-perception.html

Hi Mike. Nice day. After finishing AS part 1 I watched the Atlas Shrugged Movie part 1. The movie is a pale bare outline of Ayn Rand's master piece although I thought the actors did a okay job. The editing and stage lighting are sub par, and some of the dialog is not found in the book, but it is entertaining. I wish John Aglialoro had chosen to use some method to emulate an all knowing narrator as Rand made herself in the novel. I've no clue how that could be done without resorting to a narrator describing the psychological states and conditions of the characters or presenting the characters thoughts as if the audience were clairvoyant mind readers. How does a director and producer get the actors to exhibit the emotional and psychological states without seeming to be over acting? That would be hard. What do you think?

Hi Mike. All good. I agree. The guy who did the analysis leg work showed up Piketty's many errors, so the later's rehash of Das Kapital was a flop. Those darn lefties though don't care and still tout Piketty as if his stuff was the real deal. However, I probably should stay the heck off of Twitter. Too many trolls. My block list is as long or longer than my following list. When my panties get into a wad, I spend too much time watching rebuttal vids or reading on mises.org instead of doing my yard work or something actually useful. But thanks for the clue about the AS movies. I ordered the dvd set this morning and started Part 2 of the novel last evening. I'm starting to think Ayn Rand was projecting her own sense of self into Dagny's character. But what the heck do I know; I'm nowhere close to being up to speed on her stuff, yet I hope that something of Rand is portrayed in the characters. Chat ya later.

Hi Pete, Mike. Ms Ayn Rand wrote her definition of happiness into the script of that darned ole Galt's speech. //Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.// //Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction,// It's not about having money or even earning money or possessing toys; she put an example in her character Rearden in dialog with the "Wet Nurse" character or Roark's defense at his trial. Both were talking individual creative achievement that was their intellectual property and source of their pride. My design drafter job lets me approach that sort of an ideal, but I'm still far from it. My works are variations on a theme created by the company founder. After he passed, his kid took over. Lucky thing she's not some closet Marxist looking to turn a cash cow business into a charity, so maybe I'll get to be more inventive. If so, then I'll be in pursuit of happiness. Hey Pete, you like my cat? He's a handsome dude. Oh but them claws!

I finished Part 1 of AS and think the author's depiction of Dagny's interviews with Ivy Sterns, one of those who may have leads on the identity and location of the static electricity motor (John Galt), may be contender for most overt presentation of anti-Marxist collectivism. See Part 1 Chapter 10 page 322 of 35th Anniversary edition or location 7817 of the Kindle version. Dagny listened to the muddle headed Marxist mystic drone on about from each according to ability to each according to his need while she was breaking from burning incense, praying and worshiping Hindu deity figurines; meanwhile Dagny's sub-conscious mind was protesting she should pay attention and remember this "pure evil". Good stuff. I love that Dagny, at least in part, represents part of Ayn Rand's own character and personality. Holy Shiva Batman, it'd be cool to date a babe who thinks like Rand did. AS audio book on GooGtube CD 1 part 93a of 94 whereon Dagny's interview with Ivy Sterns is read: (important ideas in the Give me Liberty or Give me Death vein).

Yeah, #metoo. I wish I could be an O-ist, but I'm too mushy. I'm stuck in everyman status, like Eddie Willers. I wouldn't mind working for a super hot hard charger capitalist engineering babe like Dagny Taggert; the money the money the money, sorry but no honey, but a Hank Rearden or John Galt I'll never be. I'm working on my sales skills. Hey, I'm all ears. Tell about what it is that'll make you come out of this deal smelling like a rose! .... Well what a coincy-dink, it just so happens my offering fits you to a Tee. So would your pals think you're cooler with the sporty macho man package or the super black velvet sexy lady deal? Oh good choice sir, lips-hips-and-fingertips make the world go round. Gotta love the second handers. Their psycho-epistemological motivation to live for other's approval makes them good customers. Plus as an added bonus, there's always brownie points to be earned by giving em opportunity to sacrifice themselves to some faceless feel good warm and fuzzy "charity" (cough-cough-wink-nudge). After which their non-explicit guilt will compel them to go for the $50 buck comish for bringing in another sucker. They're the gift that keeps on giving.

Yaron Brook answers a question from Ben and speaks about Ayn Rand having solved the is-ought chasm or gap. "Sam Harris's foundation of objective morality is based on well-being do you find any relationship between your view and Sam's?"

https://www.mises.org/library/anti-piketty-capital-21st-century David Gordon asked: Why do egalitarians such as Piketty hold that equality is somehow a virtue?

Craig Biddle discusses the distinction between altruism and second-handiness.

Good post. I asked Mike to give ya a reputation point. Very nice. ?

More NOAA surface temp falsehood and scientific fraud

Store an ax and ladder in your attic. Keep some food and water and so forth handy. Lindzen's classic lecture on climate sensitivity still has merit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2czGg3fUUA

Hello Peter. I'm fond of Rush and if I had to pick a favorite song, that'd be the one. In Atlas Shrugged part 1 chapter 5 there's a long flash back sequence where Dagny recalls her childhood sometimes playmate Francisco D'Aconia including a scene setting up contrast and conflict between D'Aconia and James Taggert with the later blathering on about socialism. Francisco tells James to buzz off. This seems like a post event foreshadowing Francisco setting up the socialist government of Mexico and Taggert with the fake copper mine that was nationalized in chapter 4. This was a nifty literary device, so I can forgive Rand's clumsy dialog she put into the characters. She's been raked over the coals since the first edition, but it's the ideas that matter. She decided to have Francisco blow off James' appeal to socialism because collectivism is so stupid and vulnerable on many fronts. This passage seems to be about politics, but I think it's somewhat to do with a rational sort of love. The theme between Dagny and Francisco is performance of excellent quality work in serving customers so that they gladly trade their money value for the product (copper) or service (freight hauling) that Rand through her characters identifies as the source of good stuff needed to live the good life. Thus in Rand Land, loving one's own self means working well to satisfy one's customers. Thanks for the comment.

Maybe Rush "Tom Sawyer" http://www.metrolyrics.com/tom-sawyer-lyrics-rush.html

Hi. Thanks for taking time to craft a thoughtful reply. (Please forgive my poor composition. I'll edit the text to remove the badly formed sentence.) I need to get a clue, so I'll move RM up to the top of the read list.

Hello OL; I'm reading A.S. (as I should have done forty years ago; hey I finally found a round-to-it.) and have a question about what Rand intended the reader to infer about Dagny's mental state depicted in chapter 4 section 1 where Dagny is worn out from work and in her apartment listening to Richard Halley concerto no.4 and becomes disturbed by reading a newspaper story regarding Francisco D'Aconia visiting New York. Rand ended the scene with a metaphor "The great cords of Halley's music went on, filling the room, piercing the glass of the windows, streaming out over the city,. She was hearing the music. It was her quest, her cry." Halley's music wasn't described earlier in the story other than indicating it was a catchy tune whistled by the brakeman on a train or that some opera fans really hated it but 19 years later a different lot loved it, but Rand used this metaphor to illustrate Dagny's mental state upon learning of her past boyfriend being back in town, but I don't get it because Rand didn't describe Halley's musical style and how that style related to the "Who is John Galt?" theme of don't ask useless questions. So what's up with this scene?

Rand wrote an interesting piece in ITOE about definitions. I thought these two passages particularly thought provoking in context of the big picture of saving the United States and Capitalism from the horde of young brain washed would be socialists who are hoping to pillage corporate America. For that reason those who grasp rational philosophy is the alternative to rule of the primatives by brute force have an interest in knowing how to argue against one of the main tools of the socialists, the analytic synthetic dichotomny. Rand in ITOE 44 & 47

Hello BC; Thank you for replying to my message and allowing me to interact with your comments. Doing so is produtive for me in that it enables me to review Piekoff's ASD essay published in ITOE. It's been at least ten years since I last read it. The point made by BC fails to validate the ASD when the ASD is restated in what I think could be a contra-positive formulation as did LP in his essay, and which I'm quoting. By reformulating the ASD into its logically possible vs empirically possible form and then applying it to the bachelor example, the reducto ad absurdum is revealed.

I think BC incorrect and disagree. Definitions can't make a statement true. If a definition is an instance of the pure self reference fallacy, then it can't have truth content or infer truth. An example would be the statement "God exists." There is no evidence of God so nothing can function as a fact from which a valid concept of God can be integrated, but the statement is claimed by religious charlatans to be true by definition. Valid concepts integrated from actual states of affairs properly related by correct syntax form true statements. Other analytic statements involving valid concepts are themselves higher order concepts and thus open ended so that new previously unknown data can be integrated. And synthetic statements are also concepts that are also open ended awaiting integration of newly discovered data. Since both A & S statements can be modelled as open ended concepts awaiting integration of new data, there is no dichotomny except in regards to degrees of probablity of certainty. The communists and socialists, our enemies, wish us to ignore this so they can claim Marx's and Engles' statements are true because they say the definitions of the terms used make labor theory of value and exploitation theory "ture", so they can motivate their followers to seize your money and means of production.