mweiss

Sorry. I was referring to an adult human, skipping the child growth stage. I meant a viable adult, capable of self-sustained life.

The connection to this was the notion that people who thank God for abundance usually hold the corollary belief that man's labor belongs to all mankind (Socialism). Perhaps that connection is a bit tenuous, but there is my attempt.

Now as for feeling gratitude toward diety and producers, I have never gotten that impression from the people who thank God for abundance. They're attitude is exclusive about this matter: one cannot have abundance without God. Therefore, I extrapolate that man's production means nothing without God. Therefore, thanking God is a condition where those who do so, deem that man's productivity is conditional, because only God makes that productivity possible. And there in lies the slap in the face of the rational producer.

Does that argument make sense?

James, I appreciate your heartfelt thoughts. I think you are probably right, that you (and I) will likely pass this mortal coil before (effective) immortality is developed. And that's a shame, because it would be a blessing to manking if your lovely soul were to continue being a life-giving force in the world for another century or two. I hope that you are making plans for your essays and poetry to be preserved for posterity.

REB

My thanks to you and Rich for your kind thoughts above. I have been thinking about the meaning of greatly extended lifespans under the influence of Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near", which I read earlier this year. I think Kurzweil may be wildly optimistic to talk of the capacity for a limitless life span being achievable for baby boomers, but this man is certainly a respected scientist and not some nutcase, so I think it is possible that greater advances in longevity are on the horizon than we would have thought reasonable to contemplate a decade ot two ago. However, it is the quality of life that I find much more interesting than its length.

What Ray is doing is probably quite possible, from a purely scientific standpoint, but when I passed around an article this week about his work in this field, it was met with a lot of Socialist jealousy. Therefore, I am reminded that politics will ruin this chance, because it increases the vast gulf between the haves and the have-nots. That would be a shame, but in the government's tradition for egalitarianism, it would be regulated out of existence, put on trial and burned by the religious right-wing, and left out to pasture, like some abandoned junk car. In short, eternal life would scare the bezeesus out of the Social Security Administration. And then there are the people that have no clue where all the population would fit, if not in the ground or in crematoriums.

I have to admit that I don't hold much hope for this coming to pass in our current political climate. But it would be nice. Certainly if it does happen, it will be available only to the very wealthiest people for some time. And it may stop there due to political pressure.

Getting old is not fun. I first started noticing my age when WWII vets started conversing with me at the barber shop like I was one of them. But it's how I feel that reminds me every day could be my last. I repeatedly make promises to myself that I will start some small exercise regime, and I keep forgetting to carry out the plan. Forgetting has lately become a major aspect of my day to day existence. It brings to mind the later scenes in 2001: A Space Oddyssey where HAL 9000 is being disconnected and he's stating "I feel my mind going... Dave.... I can feel it..." Today, it has new meaning for me, that phrase, when I go into the kitchen to do something and when I arrive there, I forgot why I entered in the first place. The scary part is that whatever diminishing of mental ability I am aware of, it seems to be accelarating at a disconcerting rate.

Losing one's mental faculty has got to be one of the worst states of existance. I'm constantly on the lookout for vitamin supplements that will enhance brain function and also for treatments that slow the effects of age-specific brain degeneration. Hopefully Ray Kurzweil's nanobot technology will address brain issues and soon. Although it may already be too late for some of us....

In our dining room, we keep a whiteboard for teaching our daughter, Amanda, about alphabet, numbers and pictures.

This evening, after our Thanksgiving dinner, she drew a rooster on the whiteboard... only one slight problem: the rooster had FOUR LEGS.

When I pointed out to my wife, who's from the Philippines and who lived around fowl much of her life, she was absolutely mortified! It was the best laugh I've had all month. :hyper:

'Just thought I would share that. You can user your imagination about what she drew on that whiteboard. ;)

Mark,

I didn't mean to spoil the good vibes. This is a long subject and I hurt myself badly once trying to ignore "the given" (and that is Rand's expression) in exercising my will.

I agree that production is important and needs to be remembered. But so is "the given." I certainly didn't will myself into being. I just happened.

I completely disagree with the interpretation that when a sincere person is giving thanks in prayer, he is blanking out acknowledgment of the people who produce. Most of the religious people I have been around very much appreciate the value of hard productive work, even when they give thanks to their God.

When I look objectively over my lifetime, I have never known any sincere religious people who are slothful parasites intent on slapping producers in the face on holidays like Thanksgiving. I know they must exist somewhere. I just have not met them.

I am not sure that President Lincoln was one, either. I always got the impression that he valued human productivity.

Michael

Michael,

Let me ask you a question: Do you hold the position that because a person is born (as you say "happened"), that he has an innate right to the spoils of others (Ie., the labor and production of others)?

This is a very fundamental point that separates Objectivists from Socialists and Fascists.

Ha! Man, I dread the day I say something like that. *assumes 90 year old man imitation* "When I was your age I used to have to walk fifteen miles to school, uphill both ways, in the freezing snow, barefoot, with no sidewalks because all we had was dirt roads that you'd slip on unless you were careful. More careful than you youngins these days." Ha! I'm just playing.

There is a saying, "The older a man gets, the farther he's had to walk to school as a boy."

Oh geeze, I did not realize til now that this is the teenie bopper's forum.. the 'search todays' messages' encompasses all forums... oops... I'll go back to my Geriatric forums now.. :aww:

Mark,

I fully agree that we should give thanks to the men and women who created wealth, but I really have trouble with things like the following passage from the essay:

Many Americans make Thanksgiving into a religious festival. They agree with Lincoln, who, upon declaring Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, said that "we have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven." They ascribe our material abundance to God's efforts, not man's.

That view is a slap in the face of any person who has worked an honest day in his life. The appropriate values for this holiday are not faith and charity, but thought and production. The proper thanks for one's wealth goes not to some mystical deity but to oneself, if one has earned that wealth.

I don't believe that it is a "slap in the face any person who has worked an honest day in his life" to feel a "metaphysical" gratitude for being alive, being born and living in a land where things grow with ease rather than the North Pole, and having a rational capacity to be able to produce to begin with.

I also don't think it is "slap in the face any person who has worked an honest day in his life" to set aside a day where it is OK to feel benevolent toward the weak and fragile among us and nurture feelings of wishing to share our abundance and make like easier for them.

And I also don't think it is "slap in the face any person who has worked an honest day in his life" to reflect on what existence as a human being means in terms of basic survival and wishing well for all of humanity. We all have to die, anyway, so we might as well go out on a full belly.

As a producer, I see nothing wrong in feeling all of this AND thanking the other people who produce, including myself. One set of feelings does not wipe out the other.

What an idiotic false alternative.

I HATE this side of Objectivism where people try to ape and twist Ayn Rand's rhetoric, holding it a virtue to try to eradicate their empathy and feelings of gratitude for being alive, and finding fault with decency towards others as a member of the human species. It is perfectly possible to be a rational and productive egoist, be aware that the universe is larger than oneself and feel lucky to be a part of it, and even care about other people, all without becoming Hank Rearden before he joined the strike.

In fact, it is good to be that way.

Michael

Frankly, on the surface, I find nothing wrong with the two paragraphs you cited. I myself have been in situations where I slaved for hours, preparing a breathtaking TG day meal, and one of the guests thanks God. I felt like throwing that woman out on her ear! It was MY labor that put that meal on the table for all of us to enjoy that day. Some people are so stuck in the religious that they almost think it's a part of required table ediquette to thank "God".

While I agree that charity to those less fortunate is perfectly okay and a good thing to do, I don't think Gary's point was to bash those who practice it. That you can interpret the above paragraph in that manner disturbs me slightly. It means that the dozen or so Socialists that I sent it via e-mail to this afternoon will probably take it even farther and call me a "God-hating, poor person-hating heathen".

I think those two paragraphs sum up my own stance on the issue, and I believe in giving to those less fortunate. My friends know that I, a person living below the Federal poverty level for most of my life, am very generous with the little bit of surplus that I do have. While I agree with you that there are those with genuine hardships and that it's good to help them, I think you misread Gary's overall position with this article. He is simply pointing out the difference between the producers and the slothful parasites (by their own choice).

Gary Hull published a wonderful article on the Objective meaning of Thanksgiving in Capitalism Magazine.

He argues that it is man's mind, not God, we have to thank for the plentifulness of our existence in America today.

Read the full article here:

http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3279

Mark is pretty sure I'd be asked to stay after school and I think he's correct...

Oh Lord, what would Miss Rand say about that?

Well, as much as I love her writing, it's fortunate she's not everything there is out there...

Some people not only find the liberation in her work, but sometimes they also get comfortable with the structure. There's always going to be mystery in life, praise be. The thing is how you decide to be knowing that fact. To be secure in the not knowing part.

The thing is, dyed-in-the-wool Objectivists will make a very logical argument for the nonexistence of that which they have no evidence exists, and will tell you to check your premises or go read up on the Metaphysics portion of Rand's essays. I've heard some pretty complex arguments that essentially, between the lines, suggest that after you have read all there is on Objectivism, if you still believe in the unexplained, then you've not "gotten" Objectivism. I'm not so sure about that. Especially the older we get. I don't know how much time I have left, but I think that it would be nicer if there was some pleasant form of existence after I leave this mortal coil. The older I get (and the more relatives I've outlived) the more I contemplate the state of my being after death.

I'm more or less retired, but still working when I can find work, but when I'm not doing that, I'm either at the Kurzweil synthesizers, composing my next symphony, or just relaxing and playing the piano. If I'm in a mood to work on visual projects, I might spend some time in Alias Maya, constructing scenery for an animation that I've been working on for the past 24 years. Or I might be editing videos of my various travels to faraway places, or of my daughter. In between all that, I post on "heathen" forums that are filled with Socialists and Statists and try to annoy them with Objectivist ethics. And when I'm not there, annoying heathens, I'm here, looking for my sanity.

Aout 20 some odd years ago, I think it was in an issue of Prevention magazine that I saw a comic strip which portreyed two doctors having a discussion. One doctor said to the other, "There's no doubt about it.... LIVING causes cancer."

So if we all die, we won't get cancer, right? Sounds preposterous. I'll go back to eating my egg pie and Danish butter cookies now...

I think you're right about this, because I remember when I had my second stroke in 1992, I had eaten McDonald's food in the morning, and then a friend took me out to Subway that same evening for a sandwich. Hours later, I had a stroke, and I can remember thinking about it in the days that followed, how I had had an exceptionally fatty diet that day. The combinatio of McD's and Subway is deadly.

Regrettably, my diet has shifted away from healthfoods to pleasure foods. My wife loves to cook, but sometimes it is my turn to cook, and frequently I make Fettucine Alfredo, which everyone knows is "a heart attack on a plate."

We're having a traditional turkey dinner tomorrow, with mached potatoes, corn and stringbeans, and turkey stuffing with cranberry as the sideshows to the main attraction. We'll of course have lots of leftovers and be eating a lot of turkey sandwiches for the next two weeks.

Hard to believe another holiday season is upon us already!

Oh Lord, what would Miss Rand say about that?

I think that this is one of the downsides of Objectivism: it shuts down any propensity to believe in miracles, so one's life is completely shut out from experiencing the benefit of the Law of Attraction.

Wow... Being a self-UNemployed bum, I never realized all the fun I was missing. 'Sure glad I took early retirement in '84. The BS you kids live with today, strains my ability for belief!

Here's something historical about the pipe organ:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx8FQju0SXk

But the most unique organ work I've ever heard was this rendition of Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre:

What's with all the washing machines on stage?

I know, Mark. It's mega lame. And it is laced with hostility, too. These people may very well know the guy who drew that cartoon.

Somehow I just KNEW you were going to bring up that cartoon. ;)

The fact that my Jewish friend considers Rand a joke, fits about right with the comic strip and that YT video.

Ayn Rand's Matchmaking Hour :heart: :heart:

[more lame than funny, but funny because it's so lame]

I stumbled into this video about a month ago while searching "Ayn Rand" in the YouTube search field. It made me want to puke. They can't even pronounce her name right. C'mon, what a pathetic attempt at satire.

Okay, since someone started a YouTube music video thread, I thought I'd start a parents' kid vid thread.

Have you caught your kid expressing his or herself in a humorous and entertaining way? If so, post it here and let's all enjoy it.

Last Christmas, my daughter, Amanda, received a Cabbage Patch doll from our relatives in Florida. Here was her amusing reaction. I set it to Quebert's Canasta, which adds a nice mood to the whole thing:

Okay, not really a "music video" but it's one of my early YouTube uploads...

...it's a Bass Pig thing, if you catch my drift......

Our daughter turned 2 in April. While we have had some minor success at teaching her to feed herself solid food and drink from a cup, lately she has regressed to refusing to eat and wanting her milk bottle.

Last spring, I grew rather frustrated. She becomes violent when asked to do something she does not want to do, such as eat what's on her plate. One particular time, we were eating in the livingroom, which has w/w carpeting, because our dining room was being renovated. We were trying to guide her to take a forkful of spaghetti and put it in her mouth. She resisted and the second time we tried, before I could register what was happening, she took the entire plate and tossed it overboard, landing it face down on the carpet. Fettucine Alfredo, on the rug. What a mess. I gave her a little slap (which was minor compared to what my dad did to me when I was two and threw my plate over in the high chair). I found that for a while, she started to behave and eat her food after that slap. But as time went on, we got lenient with her and her lack of interest in solid food became more of a resistance to being fed.

I did discover that she likes cookies though. She has no problem with cookies, potato chips and cashew nuts. In fact, she asks for them by name. But at the dinner table, unless it's something she really likes, 95% of the food we serve to her is met with 100% resistance. No matter how hard we try, she resists with almost super-human physical strength, pushing the arm holding the fork away from her face. She looks at what's on the fork and if it doesn't match the image of what she thinks she likes, there's no way that food's going to enter her mouth. And that's final, so asserts Amanda, age 2-1/2.

My wife is concerned because she only weighs about 26 lbs and she thinks the girl isn't eating enough. She's also constapated as an eighty year old woman, having painful and strained bowel movements every 3 to 5 days. This is likely because she drinks so much milk and not enough roughage. Fortunately, she will eat Oatmeal, which is very good for brain development and is a source of roughage, but the rest of the meals are met with impossible resistance.

So my question to the parents here.... how do you overcome your kid's resistance to accepting and eating what is served for dinner? Do you give in and let them eat cookies instead of supper? Do you spank until they eat? Do you send them to bed hungry if they don't? What methods work? I would love to hear your comments.

I have accumulated several questions over the course of my life with regard to certain dreams, experiences and emotions as a toddler, but now that I am raising one of my own, I'm even more keenly interested in the display of what I perceive to be certain innate preconceptions.

For instance, my daughter, who is two years of age, reacts with intense fear to a little plastic figurine that a friend gave me from a McDonald's happy meal. It looks like a Nick Park character, a fat man with a long nose, perhaps the nose of a mouse. My daughter, when shown this toy, runs from the room and becomes very agitated, such that her heart pounds that I can feel it when I pick her up.

Last year, she displayed great contempt for a cabbage patch doll that she got for Christmas from a relative. She was not afraid of it, but she treated it like a piece of trash, always throwing it down on the floor. One time, she even stripped the doll or all it's clothes and left it lying face-down on the floor.

Now, as far as I can tell, no one taught her to be afraid of the plastic figurine, or to dislike the cabbage patch doll. Curiously, she has developed some fears that she did not possess before. A year ago, she was not afraid of anything.

Where do these fears come from? If she has not had a man who looked like the plastic figurine abuse her in some terrible way, why would that figure upset her so?

As to my own childhood, I have often wondered where the rich and often alien content of my nightmares and dreams came from. When I was between 2 and 3 years of age, I had a series of nightmares about falling backwards down a flight of stairs. That I can understand. I had seen stairs and the stairs in my dream were recognizeable as the celler stairs in the house that we lived in at the time.

I also had nightmares of being in a yellow room, and the feeling of being asphixiated. I was always alone in these dreams, the only one in the room. Those were the most terrifying dreams because I believed I was dying in those. Years later, I formed a hypothesis that I was recalling a past life--that I was put to death in a gas chamber.

Then there were the dreams where I was surrounded by refrigerators--their backs facing me with the condenser coils, and they were on fire.

I had never experienced these things by the age of two, yet I was dreaming about these things. Where do these images come from, if not from some level of memory we don't understand?

My daughter developed fears of some of her toys, where she had none as a baby.

My daughter also has a very well-defined set of asthetics. She likes only certain toys and hates most others. Usually these toys are 'realistic' and not 'distorted' in their features, for instance stuffed animals and dolls. She picks all her own toys and has done so since age 1. Anything a relative sends to her, she disdains and summarily tosses aside. I find this curious that she has formed such definitive likes and dislikes at this early age.

Over the years, I have made some rewarding musical discoveries. When I started to lose interest in hearing the same three versions of a European concerto, or the single versions of some modern/New Age music, I stumbled into music from Japan, specifically, movie soundtrack music.

Soundtrack music, unlike general music, is written with a purpose in mind--to tell a story in music. As such, I found it to be an extraordinary experience, with Japan's refreshingly different, yet somehow familiar qualities imbued in the music.

I think that most of these sample excerpts would fit Rand's sense of life, being that the music is overwhelmingly positive, uplifting and required great thinking effort to create and orchestrate.

"Sophie's Tomorrow" from Howl's Moving Castle, animated by Hayao Miyazaki, based on the novel by British author Diana Wynne-Jones is a joyous and sincere theme for the main character in this film:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-Howl...9;sTomorrow.mp3

"Dark Energy Hunter's Trap" from Sailor Moon R, a delightful shoujo anime, with an extraordinary and mysterious symphonic soundtrack.

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-Japane...r'sTrap.mp3

"Requiem" from Mononoke Hime This music, by Joe Hisaishi, is some of the most sophisticated work of the modern era and one of my favorite pieces of all time:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-JoeHis...ite-Requiem.mp3

"Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind" from the film of the same title, music by Joe Hisaishi (this is the one that caused me to render the term "sonic narcotics" when I first heard it:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-JoeHis...eyoftheWind.mp3

"So Kyo ku Sento" from Magic Knight Rayearth a sophisticated and metaphorphic piece of music:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-MAGIC_...TRA_VERSION.mp3

"Reunion-Main Theme" from Final Fantasy VII Nobuo Uematsu's magnum opus work, a metamorphic work that is ever-changing, yet always in-context.

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-NobuoU...n-MainTheme.mp3

"I Will" by Norihiro Tsuru, from CD entitled The Ancient Sun This jazz piece seems to speak in wordless communication:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-Norihi...ntSun-IWill.mp3

"Awakening" from Please Save My Earth soundtrack by Hajime Mizoguchi is the perfect music for the perfect sunrise:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-Please...e-Awakening.mp3

"Before You Know" from RahXephon a beautiful work of melodic development:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-RAHXEP...foreYouKnow.mp3

"Utsu kushiku Mo Hitsu u Na Tatakai" from X Original Sountrack is a hypnotically-etherial piece of music done in the realm of synthesizers:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-X_OST2...uuNaTatakai.mp3

"Omoi" (Remember) X TV Original Soundtrack a symphonic piece that speaks with the voice of Sincerity itself:

http://www.dv-clips.com/MP3/Excerpt-X_TV-OST2-Omoi.mp3

-

Daniel Craig has mercifully rescued Fleming's indomitable hero from this multi-decade campaign of campy cinematic vandalism, returning to his roots as a cold, dedicated, hard-as-nails killer. He does some incredible things; but you never doubt for a second his ability to pull them off. His James Bond is no longer Cole Porter with a pistol: he is Jack Bauer in a tux.

You certainly make a good case for the quality of the story, as a spy story, but only if we don't look at it through the filter of "James Bond" expectations.

It was not the gadgets so much as Bond's problem solving ability that made his character in the earliest Bond movies. However, many will not remember those early films, and hence this new characterization of Bond will be confusing to many expecting more of the same as the last handful of Bond movies.

I think I'll rent it when it comes out on DVD.

Hi Michael,

I think that government has created this monster that now, as a result of emulating the ethics of corrupt government cronyism, needs to be regulated.

I've been torn over the issue of regulation of business, because on the one hand, what right does government have to interfere with private sector business? On the other hand, we see almost weekly, major scandals uncovered that went on with big business, often swindling the public out of large sums.

Another area where I'm undecided is common carriers and whether some regulation is necessary there. Cable and telco providers have ensured monopolies in their given markets. Without competition, the prices rise and customer service becomes a sneering, unfriendly "we're the telephone company, we'll do as we damned please" attitude.

But it is true that ultimately, government always benefits from regulation, whether it be rising taxes as price of commodities rise, or from fines and sanctions against these corporations.

The problem of regulation is that it distorts the market. California's electric energy industry is a classic example of this. Forcing power companies to sell power at a fixed price, even when that price is lower than what they paid an out of area provider--all because environmental laws prevented the power companies from building enough generation facilities to supply California's increasing demands for electricity.

I agree that big business has learned to use government to it's advantage, and that condition is detrimental to us.

Lobbying should be illegal. It destroys the impartiality of government and it's ability to act as a neutral force of law and order. Special interests imbalance government so that it empowers the rich and hurts the poor. Eminent domain law is one example of this.

There is probably more I can say on this, but another time...

All they would have to do is get some former looters from the old world and say “Look, you wanna live? Then get to work, bitches.”

Now that's a scenario I would give my right arm to witness!