Dan Haggerty

Live long and prosper. As a Birthday gift I'll also let you in on a secret - The answer is 42.

I think the picture sums up the purpose of life nicely. The fact they are posing means they know it too.

Does a birthday have meaning to someone who counts centuries? Here's to many more and good luck in your ongoing war against the mindless shells that have been imprinted by copy/paste mode to achieve perfection. What? I'm talking about the cybermen.

Forum necromancy? As for Solo I have read exactly one thread linked by the Doctor and have not bothered since. You're doing a good job of making me feel like it was the right call.

You know, when it comes to the Bush clan and I can make arguments both ways. The issue is likely due to the fact Bush Sr. only got four years to review. I'll have to agree that he was the better President of the two. Plus he had Barbra. The Silver Fox was class.

Your just geting started. Live long and raise hell my man. Happy Birthday!

Oh my, no and double no. I need to repeat something I posted on OO:

I have to agree with whyNOT. I don't see myself as a group but an individual. When I was a truck driver people assumed I was poor to middle class when the truth was I made a damn good wage. When I took the office management job people thought I was middle class or higher but the realty was I took a wage cut to move into the office. When I had the corner office people thought I was rich but I was still making the same wage as a truck driver (although the benefits were better). Now that I cashed it in for health and sanity reasons to start over people assume I'm middle class due to my job and upper class due to my "pro-business politics" when the truth is our household income is usually lower then the person making the claim. Middle Class is cultural and not objective in how it is used. Or if I can pretend to be the good Doctor for a moment, this explains my answer to that question and the occasional 99% nonsense: @#$% - I couldn't get the embedding to work so here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/embed/zalndXdxriI

I see the "sex trumps politics" theory continues to build evidence. 30. Ryan is not Obama 31. Ryan at least understands the parts of Atlas Shrugged he disagrees 32. Ryan is not Biden 33. Ryan is a fresh conversation in a landscape stinking in predictably bad dialog that wasn't good 100 years ago when it was new 34. Ryan makes firing Obama more tolerable 35. Ryan is a step in the right direction even if it is a small step

Agreed... Agreed. It wasn't set up very well. It wasn't explained very well. It wasn't done very well. There are moderators and there are moderators. Some are necessary and some aren't. Some are good at what they do and some aren't. It's up to lists' owners. This is the only Objectivist list I can breathe on, except, ironically, SOLOP, where I hardly go any more though. I'm not moderated. I'm not worried some kid for some reason known only to him and God might push a button and one of my posts disappears. I can't stand the thought. Without this safe feeling I'd simply stop posting. I might start my own list but that'd be me, myself and I. I do know that if Michael does delete one of my posts it'd be to save my butt about something or it'd be an accident. Fix it up later. There's a bigger issue with what is going on in my personal life that exacerbates all this with me. I'm not characteristically this nasty. There's some PTSS which I didn't bring home from war, but which I now have. Some, not much. --Brant Baggage is a bitch, I more than understand.

On a paleo diet? --Brant or did you just comment on her diet? Sure did, as well as her sexuality and sense of life - girl is way, way too tense, condescending and controlling. For some strange reason I read this and thought of Dee Snider before congress. He told Al Gore that the song "Under the Blade" was written about the fear a band member experienced when he had surgery, so that is what Dee sees when he reads the lyrics. Since Gore's wife Tipper went looking for S&M she naturally found S&M. Evidently Gore about came out of his seat. Strange thoughts as one begins the day with the first cup of coffee.

What is with the tone in this conversation? I would think a mod showing up from another forum to explain and apologize to a person for an unfortunate incident would be a good thing.

Good job with the video Doctor. I know it is painful for you since we are our own worse critics but as someone who also has to learn the slow way by trial and error when it comes to tech I commend the effort. I remember trying to learn how to build a website for work with my ancient knowledge of 7 inch floppies and punch cards. Judging from the finished product on your first stab I bet you’ll be cranking out some great things fast. And as an aside, it is also no surprise. With your love of embedded videos to make points this was the obvious next step.

That would make a brilliant essay.

I'd complain about the heat too but I know I'd eat those words come winter, so now I wait for fall and the ability to sleep with the windows open.

Good post. You made think about this more, and more ironically defend the Christians. I haven’t posted on religion much here but trust me when I say I usually end up being the guy really blasting the established religions. I disagree strongly. The protestors are indeed a group and they do want to create social pressure against this example of a bigoted viewpoint. Why is this wrong? It is not a violation of free speech to socially pressure people you disagree with. It is an exercise of Free Speech. I’m not saying they do not have a right to do it, as long as they are not invading someone’s property or disturbing other people in the process they can do what t hey want. But a bunch of kids crying over what someone thinks as if it hurt them is nonsense at best and it today’s progressive political climate a concern. When I was a kid if someone said I would be forced to buy products from a Government regulated cartel I would have scoffed, but today we have Obamacare™. I don’t trust the slide down collectivist action (and mob reaction) one bit. That is why I said it would be justified if they complained about how he funded groups that tried to violate their rights, because that is action and is a problem. Speech is just ideas and do not harm anyone as long as it stays that. The protestors are the only one acting by their own admission and it is pressure to force someone to change their opinion. Now, do I think the owner should change his mind? Yes. It is an absurd opinion with an expiration date that sailed by with the invention of the scientific method. Would I create a mob and demand that someone think properly to cater to my whims? No. Free Speech is a negative liberty. It means no individual or institution (including the State) is permitted to use force, fraud or threats thereof to stop you from doing something. If they use persuasion or even boycotts or even public shaming, they are not violating anyone's right to Free Speech. They are trying to pressure someone to think with the mob. Bad place at the end of the rainbow, especially when the next mob is one with whom you disagree. The ends to not justify the means, especially when your one mob or election from someone capitalizing on your precedent. Incidentally, a boycott is perfectly fine. I don’t buy Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream ever since I discovered they funded the Occupy crowd. Showing up and drawing attention to it is not that. Ironically, this is like the parent who wants a warning label on an album to protect their child from hearing bad words. Ultimately the kid ends up motivated to listen to it to see what the big deal is. These idiots are only helping the man, but their irrationality is the secondary issue. The primary is an angry mob demanding compliance with the collective. "Two degrees removed from demanding a strong man to enforce it" is both 1) irrelevant, and 2) legally impossible. If any government official abused their power in such a way, the Courts would slaughter that official. The strong man's actions would be such a clear and naked violation of free speech that even Nanny-Statist Michael Bloomberg has recognized that it would be wrong to use the apparatus of the State to keep Chick-fil-A out of his city. It is very relevant. The next step would be the violation of rights (aka Occupy Random Locations) then the next step is political support which would end in a strong man. OK, I guess that is three steps. Anyway, we are there my friend. The Occupy crowd did protest people for what they thought (“Your Greedy!”) in addition it implied actions, and they did get political support exactly from Bloomberg. New York pressured the owners of the occupied property to not file claims to dislodge the little criminals. Property owners were threatened to allow the protestors to continue to squat on their property to the point they had to cancel actual events. The next step is direct political support en force, but are we there yet? Debatable. I don’t like our chances when a bunch of crybabies show up and whine over random speech and ideas. They had the highroad if they talked about the guy’s investments but they went the route of attacking his speech to force him to obey their ideas. Further, if they really wanted to do that they should have protested the corporate office at best. Going to a random store where the people on site have no control over this and pretending it has substance to the poor clerk working behind the counter is silly. I’m glad people showed up so no one working there was laid off due to poor sales. And even so, every accusation you make about the anti-Chick-fil-A "mob" applies equally to conservative Christians. They are easily led by charismatic strongmen, politically influential, and explicitly, repeatedly and openly demand the use of the power of the State to discriminate against non-heterosexual people (and other groups, too). Now I completely agree with this. 100%. We are on the same page! Which is why I find it disheartening to watch a group which I should agree do the same thing… Creating social pressure against certain opinions is not necessarily 'bullying.' Should someone that expresses the opinion "I think all Jewish people should be disemboweled in the town square" be free from any social pressure against their views? Civilization is the process of setting a man free from other men. It is the march towards privacy. Mobs chanting over speech they disapprove, as if that was a valid concept in the first place, is a trend in the opposite direction to put it kindly. There are plenty of ways to get involved to constructively do this without getting up someone’s rear. Blogs, news articles, support groups that put out positive PR, education, etc. Life as the nosy neighbor from Bewitched is not a virtue. Social pressure against bullying is absolutely a good thing. And yes, Chick-fil-A funds organizations which encourage, support, justify and rationalize bullying against certain targets. Focus On The Family, led by that Fundie nutcase Dobson, justifies the bullying of children by their parents, and the bullying of gay people by treating them as inferior, disordered and diseased. Fundamentalist Christian churches preach about the evils of Teh Gayz, is it any surprise that non-hetero kids often get bullied in school (by Fundie kids, too) to the point of killing themselves? St. Augustine approves of your tactics, gay or not. Guess who wins that compromise politically in the long run. Protests against Chick-fil-A are protests against a business which bankrolls bullies and bully-enablers and bully-encouragers. The protestors are not doing this however. You feel justified since you know this is a protest against a man doing this. The kids crying out front of a random store however are doing it to protests words and ideas by their own account. They are a mob forcing someone to change their view to theirs because God forbid people think differently. Get them in front of the TV now so the voice can teach them “socially popular ideas”! The sad thing is they are opening this up for others to do the same thing. Sometime down the road a gay person is going to say something a Christian doesn’t like and then you’ll have a mob of them showing up to peacefully protest his speech as hateful too. And guess what, talk radio will drone on how they started it. Precedent set. Protesting to control speech by mob action is acceptable behavior, just bring your own mob and the biggest gang will win. Privacy will loose.

While I agree that the owner should be called out for such ancient mystical nonsense as the whole “I care who gets married” non-argument, the issue is neither that nor the fact he funds groups that violate the rights of homosexuals. It should be but it is not. Why? Because that is not why the protestors are out there… If they claimed they were protesting him because of that funding it would be more understandable; although how kissing in front of the people who don’t spend the money is supposed to help is a mystery to me. The protestors showed up because of what the President said, not what he does, by their own words. They are protesting speech. They are creating social pressure to punish the wrong kind of speech. The owner is wrong but in the realm for speech he is within his rights. He only hurts himself by thinking and saying anything. The protestors are a mob and their intent is to intimidate others into obeying their views. They are two degrees removed from demanding a strong man to enforce it and that is why they need to be stopped. Lower rung of hell and all of that. I mean, next thing you know they’ll do something really stupid like invade Wall Street while chanting they are a number, not a human being.

Happy Birthday!

That is a failure to follow the principles in the Constitution, or more importantly a failure to impart enough protections in it to begin with. It also doesn't help that as a culture we took a left hand turn over the past two hundred years as well. No Government can stand to bad ideas run amok. That still does not change that it is a solid form of Government and I have yet to read one that would be superior. I'm open to the possibility but I have to see it.

Bela Lugosi's Dead *cuts wrist*

The fact America had slavery has nothing to do with the concept of a Constitutional Republic or the historical achievement it was to create one. Slavery was accepted as a compromise during that era, in the context of that era, to get the Constitution passed. The fact it was a compromise and immoral was paid with a high cost in the Civil War.

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects: The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity. Don’t even get me started on the parables. Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular. Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist. --Brant I’ve never understood pantheism. If your opinion is that God is the universe then really what you are saying is that God is existence. I’m God too? I’m part of God? God is in me? We are all part of some universal consciousness? Man kind as mass mind or mass soul is not something I would think of being an ideal. Sort of like the Borg from Star Trek but includes animals, dirt, and random weather patterns in the collective. - Nah... Still an atheist. So am I, actually, but dislike that word. The religious nutters can't deal with me but to call an atheist which is quite different than me calling me that--and they'd first have to think it all through. This is an experiment of mine. I would not tell a child this stuff. I'd tell him I was an atheist. --Brant you went too far with your speculative conclusions, in my opinion; pantheism is not a religion, cult, movement or philosophy, not for me--just another word for reality Ah, I see. You were being poetic and to be positive. Actually, I like that, it’s pretty cool. I like doing that too but unfortunately I missed it here since this is a personal pet-peeve issue.

If he is undead, can we get signed copies of ATCAG that will still gain value for a dead celebrity? There has to be an exploit here.

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects: The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity. Don’t even get me started on the parables. Let's keep it simple: God is reality and reality is God which is pantheism. No Supreme Being, just that supreme thing, both the totality and in any particular. Thus you need not say you are an atheist, just say you are a pantheist. --Brant I’ve never understood pantheism. If your opinion is that God is the universe then really what you are saying is that God is existence. I’m God too? I’m part of God? God is in me? We are all part of some universal consciousness? Man kind as mass mind or mass soul is not something I would think of being an ideal. Sort of like the Borg from Star Trek but includes animals, dirt, and random weather patterns in the collective. - Nah... Still an atheist.

Well that’s one way to properly dramatize religion since the Bronze Age To actually contribute this time there is two separate subjects: The Abrahamic deity doesn’t stand to logic. It doesn’t even stand against the basic axioms we see perceptibly every day. An omniscient, omnipotent, and unidentifiable entity breaks all the axioms. It is everywhere but nowhere at the same time, can do anything it wants, lives outside of existence somehow, and has a consciousness that is everywhere and in our consciousnesses as well. I mean, let’s be real, if a kid walked up to you and said he had an invisible friend who was all powerful, could read your mind and punish you for it Orwellian style, lived everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and oh by the way his friend kills people and threatens to torture them for eternity if they don’t obey… well you would rightly hope the kid would get help. Thus is the state of the Abrahamic deity. Don’t even get me started on the parables.