Danneskjold

He's right. It does make it harder. For one, the person who shot up VT wasn't allowed to have that gun, it was illegally obtained. Since it was illegally obtained it probably wouldn't matter if there were more laws, if he was willing to go around that one he could go around plenty of other ones. For two, places with legalized concealed carry actually have the amount of crime including gun deaths go down. This is epitomized by a commercial I saw for a tv show. The guy was sitting in a car with this girl who was interviewing him for a school article (I think he was a defense attorney or something, I don't know) she asked him, "what do you think of robbing unarmed people?" (Why this was a question I don't know) he replied, "Well it's a whole lot smarter than robbing armed people." If you think there's a reasonable chance that a person owns a gun you're going to be a whole lot less likely to rob them. Experiment for anyone who wants to see if a person having a chance of owning a gun is a crime deterrent: put a sign out front of your house or any house in a mid-lower class neighborhood saying, "There is no gun in this house" see if that house is more or less likely to be robbed than any other house in an area with similar demographics.

Lets pretend that every professor at Virginia Tech had a firearm and was trained in its use. How well does that school shooting go now?

Not being aware of your surroundings- you will trip over them. Not being aware of your body- you will hit limbs on things. Rape- hopefully self-explanatory Add some more, there's got to be plenty that can be used (supposing you tweak them a little)

I'm on a mac right now. I love it. Why? Because I don't actually DO ANYTHING ON IT. I run World of Warcraft and use the internet and use iChat and then use microsoft applications for school work. He's right though. Mac users are generally pretty dumb with computers, like my mom who deleted half my files trying to install an anti-virus program on my laptop. IT DOESN'T NEED AN ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAM IT'S PRACTICALLY RESISTANT!

Michael, I always thought of the rape scene as one of her ideas blown up to extravagant proportions making it easy to hear what she's saying. This was where a whole lot of characterization happens for both Roark and Dominique. In many ways you see far more character development in those pages than in many other sections of the book. Similar things can be said about when Dominique destroys the sculpture she finds beautiful and literally dozens of other small things in literature. Rand takes philosophic concepts and applies them to things that they are not generally applied to. This makes people think "how strange" because they don't understand. Then you take the concept that she showed and apply it to something a little more subtle but where it is more commonly applied, suddenly it makes sense. With the statue I was explaining it to a friend and I used the example of things that she keeps to herself because she values them and doesn't trust other people with them, the most obvious was her body. People preserve their physical form, via sexual abstinence or generally not being a whore. I was reading We the Living in History class the other day and I came by a funny little paragraph that was stuck seemingly without purpose into a somewhat tranquil part of the novel. It seemed like space filler. The paragraph was explaining the "bourgeois" the little stove that the once wealthy, now poor people owned. It was then that I realized that literally every single paragraph in Rand's writing has a distinguishable purpose.

GaltGulch, you're wondering why Objectivism doesn't spread? Well there's your problem. As for myself, I've lent my Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged book to three people in the last few months. Once I'm also lending it to my friend again this summer who is going away to camp. Oh, and I got somewhere in the area of 15-20 of my classmates to read We the Living and give a presentation on it.

First off, ignore any implications in the title that something becomes more or less rational at any given time. It doesn't change from rational to irrational over time as we learn more for the same reason something doesn't change from true to untrue over time as we learn more. I think we can all gather the intention of the title though. Religion has often been described as old science, people didn't know much about the world they lived in and they didn't know how things worked. Because of this it probably seemedd like the only logical explanation is for someone to believe in some sort of diety to explain the world. If it wasnt' irrational to believe in a God or gods then at what point would it become irrational?

I'm self-centered, I'm damn proud to admit it, the interesting thing is that no one else ever calls me it. Being "self-centered" from the point of view of the average high-schooler, is the same as wanting attention from everyone and wanting everyone's focus to be you. That's why this is such a misnomer, people who are self-centered aren't the ones who focus on themselves, they're the ones who focus on everyone else. Really and truly being self-centered would have the opposite affect as this. If a person's main focus was themself they wouldn't be trying to convince everyone else to pay attention to them, they don't need to. People who are self-centered have their own self-confidence. They have this confidence because if a person says "I am my own focus" they have to know that they're worth focusing on. High school is a funny place, it's always interesting learning from other's mistakes.

I took the quiz twice, first time through I got Roark, the second time I got Francisco after switching some of the answers that I was debating with myself on. I think those fit pretty well. If not, they will.

This site is blocked on my library computer under "Adult". Hopefully my home computer doesn't share the view.

Aug. 11. Not aware of any peculiarities of it.

I've missed you guys. Been way too long since I was on this site (weekish). We had a baseball trip down to Arizona for a tournament at O'Connor high. We did pretty well, went 3-1 against a bunch of Colorado teams. I just got back up after my 6 A.M. flight which I had to wake up at 3:45 to get to . Anyway, I'm back now and I have the rest of Spring Break off. Geez, good to be home (this one and my literal one).

Jessica, simple, quit caring about them, what they think or do not think, and in general their opinions. I'm the same way as you are which makes things quite interesting some of the time. I used to be at least, now I just don't care. I'm pretty sure I have the rep for being the biggest asshole in the school due to my honesty and lack of caring for the people who I don't like. But what do I care? Read The Fountainhead (again?). Probably the most applicable fiction with a good role model for the situation. Ross, great story. My teammates actually found my copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal in my carry on while we were heading down to Arizona on sunday along with The Communist Manifesto that I keep around in case I need some tinder (really it's there because I wanted to make a comparison until I realized that there is none).

Fran, I think that pretty much covers the second half of your dislikes.

House is by far one of my favorite characters on tv. Perhaps the most, seeing as Jack has been somewhat dormant this year, House is pulling into the lead.

Just wondering what your likes and general dislikes about the philosophy as a whole are, whether or not you are an objectivist you can answer. Seems like there are a lot of people here who would have opinions about that type of thing that vary more than usual. fine print I reserve the right to use this information for an article for a unpublished article for my journalism class on school where I'm doing a feature article on Objectivism. Once again, posts from anybody works, Objectivist or not.

I just saw it today with my friend. Wow. All I can really say. That movie was incredible beyond all belief. I REALLY hope that comes out as a video game. I KNEW there had to be some sort of Randian element in there somewhere as soon as King Leonidas started calling the Persians "mystics". My favorite part of the movie was when King Leonidas was talking to the Athenian guy and the Athenian was reprimanding him for bringing so few soldiers. King Leonidas asks three Athenians what their professions are getting the responses "potter" "sculpter" and "blacksmith". He then yells, "SPARTANS, WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?" and is answered by a resounding "AHHROO AHHROO AHHROO". It was unreal, I loved it.

Hey, wutsup, this is my blog. Basically I'm not sure how much substance will be on this, probably a fair amount though. I'll also use this to post updates on my baseball team and funny snippets from conversations I have that I like. My baseball team is 1-1. I had a conversation with my sister yesterday that was real funny. It went something like this. Her: Why would you not worship a God that can accomplish so much that man can't? Me: Because I don't think that's possible. Her: Well can man fly without machines? Me: Well can God create a boulder so big not even he can lift it? Her: Why would he need to? Me: Why would man? I'll probably rant some on here too, nothing is coming right now though. What does the publish button do? OOOOOO, I needa click that huh....

http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=297 This site is hilarious. Based off the sale of "The People's Cube" a 100% politically correct rubics cube made of 100% red squares so that equality is guaranteed. I actually am going to order one of their "Che is dead, get over it" t-shirts to counter all the idiots wearing shirts with him on it at my school.

Victor's are all good ideas.

Comparing Ayn Rand and George Orwell is an interesting topic. I have compared them with my friend and I called them both anti-totalitarian. That is, of course, a non-specific classification, but it's about as specific as Orwell's book gets. I would disagree with your first paragraph there about Orwell believing that collectivism leads to self-destruction. He was a socialist after all. I would guess it was more along the lines of totalitarianism is death worship. The people in the books were not only supposed to sacrifice themselves in the economic sense, but also in the identity sense. They were supposed to be completely identical. So at least in the last paragraph I think you had it. The statement about 2+2=4 is more a declaration of reality than it is a declaration of the necessity of reason. I say this because later Winston was forced to see 2+2 as equalling 5 which is when he was able to be controlled by the state. So I think that is better fitting in your third paragraph. As for the third paragraph I would say that they both recognized that totalitarianism could not function without the denial, on some level, of objective reality. By the way, Rand was ten times the writer Orwell was.

Just thought I'd duck in here real fast. I saw we're going to talk about Tabula Rasa next and I'm running into some time constraints lately, so here's my argument. You grow a dog up around a human family after taking it immediatly from its family it still acts basically like a dog would. It still sniffs butts, growls at other dogs, and has all the basic dog instincts. There have been documented instances where a human child grew up without any parental influence and was raised, basically, by a dog or dogs. In such cases the human child mimics the dog's behavior. If this isn't evidence towards Tabula Rasa in at least a human nature/instinct situation then I don't know what is. People are more maleable and do not have the set in stone instincts that dogs have. I'll try to get back on more often, homework load has been heavy as of late.

Actually, that sounds something like what you say you plan to be in the future.

I help my friends all the time. Why? Because they're my friends and I need no reason other than that. I directly benefit from my friends being happy, especially with me, because I enjoy their company more when they are happy. So, there's nothing altruistic about me helping my friend. As far as some perceptibly altruistic actions go, they are not always as they seem. You see a person getting mugged on the street and you help out, you are doing little more than trying to make the place in which you live a little safer. Also giving the massive amounts of media coverage given to just such cases, I would say that it is valid do think that you are going to influence others to do the same. How about some elaboration on some of the other ideas. You said the philosophy is "full of holes" then proceeded to point out all the areas where you hold a separate opinion with no explanation or backup.

I've finished Lord of the Rings and Stranger in a Strange Land. I like them both. Books I can't finish...all of that acclaimed Christian literature that is only acclaimed because it's Christian. I've tried, I really have. It just sucks.