9thdoctor

Lennon might have been happy about it.

I don't see it available online for free; good chance the whole book is available somewhere, The Virtue of Selfishness is. The OP ought to buy it, it belongs in the library of anyone studying Rand. The essay is about a demonstration in Red Square in solidarity with the Prague Spring uprising in 1968. The people involved went to prison.

The relevant Rand essay to read is "The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy" in The New Left.

It wasn't ok for Phil to call Ellen a cunt, but it is ok to call WSS a pedophile, with numerous (highly vulgar) variations on that theme? Note that if it were "pedophile-enabler" or "useful idiot" I'd have no objection...I'd disagree, but wouldn't feel any need to speak up. What's with the special treatment? You may as well let Lindsay Perigo join. Mr. Letendre desires that WSS not address (or interact with) his posts on OL. However, this is a public forum, and he has no control over the guest list. There are plenty of other places he can express his views while maintaining control over the dialogue. Evidently the poor dear needs a safe space. He could try Facebook, for instance. Or he could host his own site (Kahmi has hers, and she deletes Jonathan's posts as soon as they're made...as is her right). FWIW, my own attitude towards interacting with him has long been guided by a quote attributed to Mark Twain: Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Casting doubt on pedophile conspiracies more outlandish than an Al Gore weather forecast opens one up to this type of abuse? Things used to be very different around here: Seriously, MSK, WTF?

Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a libertarian. She writes for Reason Magazine. Leftwing hack? I gather you disagree with her about something, but there's got to be a more accurate Homerian epithet you could pin on the lady. http://reason.com/blog/2018/12/13/sexual-harassment-in-congress-update

First heard of him because of this: For anyone not yet familiar with Minchin, here's a masterpiece:

Now you're really talking about a scam of epic proportions. I don't think we're talking gravy, them's the potatoes.

According to the ACLU, no friend to the idea of for-profit prisons, they account for only 7% of State prisoners and 18% of Federal prisoners. https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/private-prisons To blame them for decimating inner city black communities is a rather much. They date from the 1980's, the Nancy Reagan Just-Say-No era. But Thomas Sowell (among others) traces the decline/reversals in the black community to the War on Poverty, the 1960's. https://civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-rights/private-jails-in-the-united-states.html Elitist insiders invented crack cocaine in order to grow the prison population so they could maximize their profits? I've got a better one, elitist dentists introduced heroin into the hippie culture, which originally was all about pot and LSD (the good drugs), because heroin addiction ruins teeth, leading to increased demand for the services of dentists. That's the conspiracy theory uncovered through the plot of the novel Inherent Vice.

I asked if you were concerned that companies operating for-profit prisons make campaign contributions to the more "tough-on-crime" candidate. This ties in to your first numbered point, specifically when you wrote "On the government side, this con need laws and aggressive cops on the take to put as many people away as possible. When no crimes are committed, they need laws that will make crimes out of thin air." Grok now, water brother? There might be data available on who these companies direct campaign contributions to, and in what kind of volume. I seriously doubt they're even remotely as influential as say, the NRA. Clarification: when I wrote that "we'd argued about this some years ago" I meant there'd been a discussion on OL. But there hadn't, I'd taken part in a discussion on OO, where it was me vs. everyone else. FWIW, I haven't boned up on the latest reform proposal, but if it's simply a matter of preventing miscarriages of justice like these: http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/30/obama-commutes-sentences-of-111-more-fed then I'm all in.

Sticks and stones... Funny thing, I saw your post and recalled that we'd argued about this some years ago. Turns out no, it was on another site. You can preview the rebuttals I might be likely to employ: http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/23506-self-labeled-objectivists-and-private-prisons/&do=findComment&comment=293155 IMO politicians have been running in a "tough-on-crime" arms-race since Dukakis (probably forever); it's all about persuasion, narrative control, and ultimately getting votes. Private prisons aren't a serious causal issue, IMO. You're concerned that these companies make campaign contributions to the more "tough-on-crime" candidate? I expect they direct their contributions to the more "private prisons are ok" candidate, whichever party they belong to. Is there data on the subject?

Had me fooled, good job. Jeff Riggenbach seems to have gone silent for years now. Anyone done a welfare check on him recently?

Roland, is that ewe?

More from the front lines of the War on Christmas, this time the belligerent is Amazon: A mother sent her five-year-old to his school nativity with a 'shepherd' costume she bought online - before realising it came with a blow up sheep sex doll. Helen Cox, of Alloa, Clackmannanshire, bought her son Alfie the £16.99 fancy dress costume on Amazon for his play and he was delighted it came with a blow up sheep. But she was puzzled when a teacher told him to take the sheep home - until she blew it up and found it had a huge hole in its bottom - as well as red lips and eyelashes. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6470809/Boy-unwillingly-takes-blow-SEX-DOLL-sheep-school-nativity.html

Dr. Eric Sprankle, a professor of clinical psychology, wrote that "the virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario. Happy Holidays." http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/12/06/mark-steyn-blasts-sprankle-saying-god-impregnated-mary-jesus-without-consent My copy of the Bible (King James Version) has the Angel Gabriel telling Mary she “shall” conceive; there are quite a few “shall”s, so it hasn’t happened yet. She finally replies with the bit about being the handmaiden of the Lord. Sounds like what Rand might have called an engraved invitation, no? Though with the unequal power relationship between the parties, Almighty God compared to helpless teenage girl…I suppose it would have to qualify as statutory rape at least. Indeed, the Holy Spirit ought to be on the sexual predator's registry, for life. This goes under the heading of the War on Christmas that Fox News always finds a way of rehashing every December.

So, what to say about him? NPR is keeping it positive, repeating (repeatedly) that he was responsible for the smooth ending of the Cold War. Things certainly could have gone much worse back then. In any event, 94 years is quite a good run.

Non-Euclidean geometry?

One of the less-discussed reasons for leaving the foreskin intact: it can serve as a natural hiding place. https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/24/man-pulled-back-foreskin-to-reveal-bag-of-cocaine-during-strip-search-8174589/

I bet you'll get a kick out of this book: https://www.audible.com/pd/What-If-Audiobook/B00LV6V4UW?qid=1543259710&sr=sr_1_2&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_2&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=937185ZF6VDX1DS4PPHC& Here's a sample:

Notice that the Broward recount resulted in more votes for Scott (the Republican). If there were a conspiracy afoot, with Snipes using incompetence as cover, wouldn't there have been lots of new votes found for Nelson? Like, the 12K that were needed? OTOH, they submitted the new totals, with the higher vote numbers for Scott, 2 minutes late, making it so the extra votes didn't count. Scott’s campaign charged that Snipes intentionally submitted late results so that they would be invalidated. In the recount, Nelson, lost more votes than Scott -- meaning Scott would have seen a net gain of 779 votes if Snipes hadn't been late. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/broward-counts-the-wrong-ballots-as-florida-races-to-finish-manual-recount-ahead-of-sunday-deadline So once again, her incompetence favored the Democrat, as you say. Heuristics, such as Hanlon's Razor, don't provide certainty.

And it's all over, both Democrats lost. Concerning the elections official in Broward County, now is a good time to review one highly valuable heuristic: Hanlon's Razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Or in this case, incompetence. Not that I'd put it past her to steal an election, but the fact is that her most outstanding characteristic is incompetence. This heuristic also applies to the recent mail-bomber, none of whose bombs went off. Sure, there was a certain probability that it was a false flag operation, but the more likely explanation always was that the perp didn't know how to make a working bomb. Even the Unabomber batted far less than a thousand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I only took that shot because I saw the story (about a new series without Cruise) and remembered there'd been a discussion here, so I thought I'd append it to the thread. Then I got a big reminder of what a pointless asshole Phil was. I wasn't even knocking Tom Cruise that hard, and I get this kind of reaction: "Nihilist Dipshit", I mean really. At this point it's safe to say I've been proven right. Though I saw both of the movies with Cruise, and thought they pretty good. I particularly liked Werner Herzog in the first one. I liked Night School.

I think I saw an episode of this, I was just flipping channels and stopped when I saw him. It wasn't a comic role at all. It seemed good to me, though. But as a comic actor he's simply off the charts, IMO.

The author said he “really enjoyed” working with the “Top Gun” actor but wanted to be true to the character. “But ultimately, the readers are right,” he said. “The size of Reacher is really, really important and it’s a big component of who he is. The idea is that when Reacher walks into a room, you're all a little nervous just for that first minute. And Cruise, for all his talent, didn't have that physicality,” he continued. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/tom-cruise-too-short-to-be-jack-reacher-lee-child-says Anyone miss Phil? No.