Charles R. Anderson

Roger, That reporter must have thought an awful lot of your playing to put your parts of the article in bold. Great work.

Well, if you do such a study as who has the most accidents, there has to be some subset of people who will turn up as having the most accidents almost anyway you have previously distinguished them. But, there was a recent study that babies born at a certain time of the year, I think late winter, were more subject to some developmental problem or other. So, what if these signs clumped at a certain time of the year and indicated some other problem, such as a concentration deficit brought on by the mother having a vitamin D deficit late in her pregnancy (just to make something up)? But, when I looked up when Libras, Aquarians, and Aries were born, two might fit some seasonal correlation bill (Aquarian 20 Jan - 18 Feb, Aries 21 Mar - 20 Apr), but what would link Libra (24 Sep - 23 Oct) with them? Ah... too little Vitamin D for Aquarians and Aries (or is that Arians, or is that ARIans?) and too much vitamin D for Libras. Ok, now we might have an issue worth making a meaningful study of.

I am pretty happy with the outcomes. That Pats/Colts game was a good game. So, the Colts are finally going to the Super Bowl after overcoming everyone's playoff nemesis. Since Chicago won more handily, they really looked like the NFC team with the best hope to handle the Colts. But, with the Colts playing much improved defense lately, the Bears and the NFC once again look to be hard-pressed to win the Super Bowl. I'd rather play sports than watch it, but sometimes watching people do anything well is fun. I will also remind people that humans are animals and not just ethereal minds. It is, as the Greeks understood, a good thing to exercise and physically challenge your body. It is an essential part of the integrated man. I sure liked playing baseball, basketball, and, especially, football as a kid. I really liked the pure physical pleasure of tackling on defense and always led my team with tackles. On offense I usually played receiver, which was odd given my size and speed, but if I could touch the ball, it was caught. I never gave a fig whether anyone was going to hit me when I was laid out across the middle. Hell, the hits were fun whether I was hitting or being hit. This physicality seemed to complement being one of the best students just fine. Not being big enough or fast enough or inclined to submit to discipline enough, I did not play varsity football, which was a very serious business in Tulsa and still is. Instead, we played tackle football without pads at the local park. We often played hard for 2 hours straight on a Saturday afternoon, took a 15 minute break and played another hour. Now and then, a varsity or JV player would play with us against the coach's orders. A few of them got hurt, so the coach knew what he was doing. Usually they played with us out of season. In the 3rd year of my Tulsa high school's existence, the 2nd with a senior class, they shared the conference championship. The quarterback went to West Point and later worked as an engineer. Two of the first string linemen became doctors, one of whom was a good friend of mine. I convinced our calculus teacher to give the quarterback an A, which she did not want to give to a jock. But he and a girl were on the cusp and she was well inclined toward the girl. Turns out that the quarterback had worked extremely hard in this class and that getting that A was one of the prouder moments of his life. We talked about it at the 15th reunion when he told me about how much he liked being an engineer. There is nothing wrong with sports, as a part of a balanced life. When life becomes sports, then they are a problem. There is also nothing wrong with someone who does not have the physical attributes to be good at sports. But, playing can be a confidence booster and as Jeff has pointed out, there is plenty of room for thinking in sports. Paul has elsewhere talked about strategy in soccer and how important that was in his thinking about perspectives. As a grad student, I played a lot of handball and racquetball, and thinking is an essential part of those games. This is probably why Coach Joe Gibbs was once a champion racquetball player during his earlier tenure as coach of the Redskins.

Jenna, Wonderful to see you happy.

I figured that was where the number 323075 came from, but it worked well for humorously turning the tables on him. By the way, I have not visited the site, so I am not one of the 323075 people.

Hmmm..... If he is the best, how come 6 billion people minus 323,075 are as good as he is or better?

So, the cat is curious and trying a little experiment to see if he gets a response. Clearly the cat was too good for Saddam. The cat seems to be of this world.

Michael, I very much agree with you. Dianna Hsieh is especially egregious in paraphrasing David in a manner to give his argument a strawman meaning, taking a statement out of context, or defining a word in such a way that it means something very different than the meaning David used it in. Others have criticized David for being too aware of the complexities of the real world with their complaints that his pronouncements are not simple enough for them. I commonly see that as a sign of their simple-mindedness. Robert Tracinski's recent essay series What Went Right? makes some good arguments for benevolence and tolerance, even though he never uses those words. Perhaps he is afraid of them, given how shabbily they have been treated within the ARI or LPI crowd. Nonetheless, they are essential in making society work rationally and efficiently to allow us all "normal" lives as Tracinski describes the aspirations of those of the underdeveloped world who are making the leap into more developed societies.

It would be very desirable to have a small book collection of essential and brief essays on critical topics of interest to people written from the Objectivist viewpoint which would be suitable to distribution at reasonable expense to high school students and the general public. This essay could serve as a model for the other essays in terms of making a stark and clear contrast between a philosophy of reason and those widespread ideas that stand in opposition. If a small collection of such essays were made available to high school students, I believe it would stimulate thought for a significant fraction of them. They are fed so much pro-government propaganda and such a steady stream of socialist pablum that such hard-hitting rational essays would capture the attention of many a student. The shock of seeing reason in play would capture the attention of many. For the first time, many students would become aware that ideas could be justified without either the Christian viewpoint or the socialist viewpoint being the starting point. I would have added a further sentence to the last paragraph of Barbara's essay. It would have been: If I am forced to work for others by the State, how does my condition differ from that of slavery?

Roger, Thanks for posting this very succinct essay on the essential conflict between capitalism and socialism. In the last paragraph, 2 to the last sentence, should it not start: "Is it not man's right to exist ...." The first two words appear to have been inverted in order.

You can find more of Patrick Michael's writings at Patrick Michaels, CATO Institute.

If there even are any anthropologically induced global warming effects above the noise, they have been greatly exaggerated in the climate models which are commonly used to scare us. The principal warming effect of the last few decades has been to make winter temperature in cold and dry areas a bit warmer. This is most likely more a good than a bad thing. The actual measured warming commonly runs about one-third that predicted by the climate models, which are often used to make predictions despite their known limitations. What is more, the average temperature record back to 1610 is known and generally before that we suffered the Mini Ice Age. From 1610 to 1650, the temperature fell about as rapidly as the temperature rose recently from 1970 to now. The temperature held steady from 1650 until about 1710, then it started rising rapidly until about 1780, when the temperature fell rapidly until about 1810. Remember the horrible winter of 1812 when Napoleon invaded Russia? The temperature rose rapidly from 1810 to 1840. From 1840 to 1880 there was a small decline and then the temperature was steady until about 1910. From 1910 the temperature increased more than the recent increase until 1950 and then it fell into the 1970s. Since then we have had a small temperature increase. The temperature increases from 1710 to 1780 and from 1910 to 1950 were greater than or comparable to the present temperature increase. Most of this history of temperature variation is explained by variations of sun output, though some of the recent variation may not be, so man may have added a small amount to the natural variation. The 1710 to 1780 temperature increase is not due to man increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Even the 1910 to 1950 increase is not attributed to that cause. It seems to me that man was managing fairly well in 1780, in 1950, and even now. The fearmongers are certain that man is the cause of it all and that it is a disaster. Hogwash! This thesis of theirs is sustained by the very selective use of data in a manner which is utterly disgraceful. Read Meltdown by Patrick Michaels, published by CATO Institute in 2004 to learn far more about the disgrace of climatology and environmental science. It is an amazing story.

When I lived in Virginia, Rhode Island, and Oklahoma, my younger sister got to take classes in Virginia, Rhode Island, and Oklahoma history. I only had to take Oklahoma history, since it was a requirement for graduating from high school. Guess these states used to think you should be familiar with the local culture. I had Music Appreciation in the 7th grade in Rhode Island. We listened to Finlandia, The Grand Canyon Suite, and An American in Paris, which curiously enough were in my parent's very limited record set in the classical music area. I cannot remember anything by Mozart or Beethoven. Charlie Brown introduced me to them. Charlie was a physics major at Brown who decided to leave physics, not the cartoon character who taught the younger generations everything they know about Beethoven!

Michael. The Arab Socialist Baath Party started in 1947 and opposed European influence in the Arab lands. They had a platform of Arab socialism, nationalism, and Pan-Arabism. They were relatively secular and had groups in many Arab nations and areas. Both in Syria and Iraq, they came into power in 1963, though in Iraq they were quickly out of power until 1968. Once the parties had tasted power, they split and became rival organizations.

Tonight I read Robert Tracinski's first five parts of What Went Right? To my pleasant surprise, I was impressed by his maturation in the last few years as a thinker. Please see my more detailed comments on this article in the ARI Corner on the thread started by Robert Campbell on this article. On several important issues his viewpoints seem to have matured and become very compatible with mine.

And like those at the Atlas Society. Well, several years ago I read a few articles by Robert Tracinski and I got into a few list discussions with him. I concluded that he was a lightweight who suffered from the sin of trying to treat Ayn Rand's ideas as primary and reality as something that had to be consistent with and fully explained by her ideas. He knew too little history, he was too pessimistic, and he underestimated non-intellectuals. In short, he was a great example of an all too common ARI dogmatic mentality and I have used him as an example of that mentality on several occasions. I read the first 5 parts of his What Went Right? series tonight. I am delighted to say that I found it very interesting and that it gives impressive evidence of the mental maturation of Robert Tracinski! One of his points that I particularly liked was his coming to understand that many people who are not Objectivists and who hold philosophical ideas inconsistent with and even in some ways antithetical to Objectivism, make very positive contributions to the maintenance of civilization. In addition to Julian Simon mentioned in posts above, he uses the economist and now Prime Minister of India as an example. This understanding is enlarged to make it substantially consistent with my views pertaining to the reasons why in a civilized society we should be broadly benevolent and tolerant. He is treading dangerous ground here and will likely be accused of being a tolerationist, as I am. But he has come to realize that most people in earning their living have developed and acquired specialized knowledge as an individual and that this knowledge is of value to many others of us. In talking about the surprising lessons he learned upon taking on the job of writing TIA Daily, he says, In talking about other reporters, commentators, and bloggers he respects: As an applied scientist, I face the same reality enforced constraints, as do engineers and others developing technology. Indeed, Tracinski claims that scientific and technological education, global capitalism, and representative government are driving forces that cause men in ever larger numbers throughout the world to become persuaded that rationality is efficacious and that the life of man in Western Civilization constitutes the normal life one should aspire to live. Tracinski also says: These are all views which I have long held and I really enjoyed finding that I have an ally in a very unexpected person. I will take advantage of the 30 day free trial subscription to TIA Daily and give him every chance to further impress me. I hope others of you will do so as well. It appears likely he will lose some ARI subscribers. It would be very unfortunate if his very development as a valuable thinker were to be his economic downfall.

I wrote off Tracinski as a lightweight a long time ago, having read several of his essays and exchanged a few comments with him about some short answers he gave on a list. One of those that really struck me as insipid was a comment that American Indians should be grateful that their way of life vanished. Now, I grant that the Indian way of life had to give way to Western Civilization and that Western Civilization makes life much better, but one should also be able to recognize that it was tragic when an Indian tribe was hit with an epidemic of smallpox or yellow fever and 60% of them died. One should also be able to understand that nothing justified the forced removal of Cherokee and Creek from the South after many of them took up Western life styles, became farmers, ran for and won public office, and yet were marched over the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. He thought there was nothing wrong with this. It was simply great and glorious that the Indians were killed and shoved into smaller and less desirable areas. It was nearly inevitable, but it was not all great and glorious. But, from comments made elsewhere on OL, I am given to understand that he has acquired some semblance of wisdom, so I shall have to look into whether he has grown up since then. I would not care to have an out-of-date negative opinion of a man who deserves better.

The Constitution is actually a pretty good document as is. Our biggest problem is that the average citizen does not understand that it is a fairly simple and straightforward document that they can understand pretty well simply by reading it themselves. Then, there are those many who desire power over others who twist it and distort and re-define words (regulate, for example), until it is taken to mean very different things, much more convoluted in meaning, than it actually does. One of the most abusing interpretations takes the references to the general welfare as granting government many powers not explicitly enumerated. In the preamble, the reasons we need a constitution are given and among them is that it will be for the general welfare. Yes, a highly limited form of government is key to improving the general welfare. This is exactly what the Constitution went on to provide for, not a means to give government any power it deemed consistent with the general welfare. If that were the intention, then there is no need to enumerate the powers given to government, most especially not to the level of giving the government the power to build armories, etc. In Article 1, Section 8, the major powers that Congress is given to make law to address are enumerated very explicitly. However, at the start of that list is the power to tax for the purpose of paying the government's debt, the common defense, and the general welfare of the United States. This list of the limitations on how our taxes may be used has been turned into a free grant of power whenever Congress claims that they are authorized to tax for any purpose they claim is for the general welfare. Clearly, it means that Congress can tax to exercise the list of enumerated powers below, with the added requirement that when an armory is built, the brother-in-law of the Speaker of the House cannot be paid 4 times the market rate to build the armory. You can readily see why such a further restriction on the power to tax is required! So, it would have been better if the clause on the power to tax had been at the end of the list and had said explicitly that this power was only to be used to exercise the above explicit list of enumerated powers, within the further restriction that it could not be exercised in a manner contrary to the general welfare. It would have been very good if further protections were provided for property and income, but the framers of the Constitution could hardly have conceived of the abuses that have occurred in this area. They generally believed that every man had the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. They understood that one's income and property were central to each aspect to that trilogy. Often, it was said that every male had the right to Life, Liberty, and Property. The pursuit of happiness was chosen for the Declaration of Independence because it clearly also covered property rights and still more. It was more inclusive of our rights. Now, we have a government that takes the attitude that property is a luxury rather than something central and necessary in our lives. One reason that property was more highly regarded in 1789 than now was that people were even said to have a property right in their bodies and in their life. Property was truly central to life then! Another much abused power is the Commerce Clause, but that was intended to free up trade between the States and with other nations. Basically regulation meant that trade should be freed up and facilitated, not restricted as the states were often doing during the Confederacy. Those eager to expand the power of government simply re-defined the word regulate until it allowed them to do what they wanted to do. Another issue that should have been addressed more emphatically in the Constitution was the requirement that it was the responsibility of every government office holder to defend the Constitution. It should have been made clear that the President and Congress were not simply to allow the Supreme Court alone to determine whether a law was Constitutional or not. In fact, the early Presidents used their veto power almost entirely for the purpose of preventing laws from taking effect which they thought were contrary to the Constitution. Later Presidents used it for whatever they did not like, but often failed to use it when they thought an act was unconstitutional. A recent horrifying example being when President Bush failed to veto the McCain-Feingold Election Act violation of free speech.

I do not really think that the word addiction is quite right with respect to my need to think and my need for sex, due to its negative connotations. Frankly, I think I am at my healthiest and happiest when I have enough to think about and when I have enough sex. The mind's chemistry changes when it is almost constantly engaged. At least mine does. When I shift down from having it engaged to a much less engaged state, the mind's chemistry changes. Now, I am sure there is a low-engagement chemistry that my mind would come into equilibrium with in time if it were long disengaged from heavy thinking. However, it clearly takes at least weeks for my mind to make a transition from the good-feeling chemistry of hard thinking to one of little thinking which is not accompanied by headaches. The dynamics of that chemistry changing process is complex and various changes happen at different rates. While these chemical changes are occurring my mind is a mess. This phenomena seems to apply to some other people, but apparently not to everyone. While work is the primary means of keeping my mind engaged at the desired level of concentration and focus, there are some other means. For instance, having interesting conversations with someone who is intelligent or visiting OL both work fairly well. We know that sex also changes one's brain chemistry. Some of these changes are thought to be very healthy for an individual. But again, when I do not get enough sex, my brain chemistry gets out of whack for a while. I do not know that everyone's chemistry gets as messed up as mine does, but I do know that of some others apparently does also. Those of us who have such let downs when we stop feeding our mind's enough to chew on and when we are not enjoying enough sex, have to take these biological needs into account. Fortunately, my lab, reading books, and OL provide me with pretty much enough intellectual stimulation and Anna provides me almost enough loving and sex to get by. But, what would someone do who did not have an Anna? Well, they may not be able to always hold out for the best and the highest, though that may be where they would find the best sex and love, if they could find it. Really good women are quite rare and even now with much improved communications and many more ways for compatible people to try to find one another, it is still very hard to find the best and the highest. In fact, now that Dagny has decided that John is her best and her highest, whatever is going to happen to Francisco and Hank? I really feel very sad that two such fine men are without the love and sex they deserve. The world needs more good women!

Should the last line read: Nine out of ten new ideas ...

Wow .... It took me two nights to read the 204 posts in this thread. It has been an interesting read. I especially found Ellen's college adventures interesting. There were dozens of ideas I would have liked to have commented on, but so much water has flowed past the bridge .... So, for now I just want to toss in something of my own perspective on sex and the desire to have it with someone. When I was a teenager I did not experience thinking about sex once every five seconds, which I have frequently read is the case for the average man, let alone the teenager. I had too many other things on my mind. Besides, somehow I was unable to think about sex without thinking about who I wanted to be very intimate with. It seemed that my desire to be intimate with anyone only followed finding them to have a very interesting mind and the knowledge that I judged them to be a good person. So, while I rather liked a lot of people, it was almost never the case that I encountered a young lady to whom I felt any strong attraction. Boredom was much more common. Usually, I discovered in time that the young lady's virtues were substantially a product of my desire to find someone to really admire. Well, my standards were pretty high, even before I read Rand and decided I was an Objectivist. I recall very little interest in having sex with any girl through my teenage years, though there were a few who were friends. So, we are all very different and we have a wide variety of sex drives. The week before I had to report for induction and was subsequently sent to Vietnam, I met an undergraduate in her Junior year. We were having a disagreement about the nature of the Vietnam War, but for the first time I felt an immediate and strong desire to be intimate with a woman. We had one fine date and I was gone. When I returned to grad school, I looked her up and we dated for a few months. She was exceedingly intelligent, highly spirited, beautiful, but insistently religious and prone to huge emotional swings. I came to love her, but we both knew that we were not right for each other in time. We never made love, but for the first time, I wanted to make love to a woman. A few months later I met Anna and it was not long before we were lovers. I discovered how heavenly sex could be and was immediately insatiable according to my Anna. I had had no idea what I had missed until I experienced it. But I had not experienced sex with someone I did not love. No, I was very deeply in love with Anna. There were times when simply looking at her was very nearly too much to avoid cuming. So, I became a sex addict! If I go a day without working, I get grouchy and I get a headache. If I have to go a week without sex, I get grouchy and I get a headache. Yep, pure and simple addicted. So, in my life sex is good. It keeps me happy and functional. How odd that I managed so well and easily before Anna without it and now I cannot live without it. I find it a marvelously complex and fascinating part of life. It is one of life's central pleasures. Now, clearly, almost no one else has a sexual history like mine. So, you are all immoral, unnatural, base animals! No, I am only kidding. I expect you simply had a different biochemistry than I did. The more I have learned about people and the more I have learned about one of the things that most differentiates them from one another, namely how they love and what they think about sex, the more I appreciate how individual we are. We are also immensely complex, with little about us being more complex than our sexuality. This is one of the things that makes sexuality such a fascinating topic. Sex and sexuality being a fascinating subject, it seems right to me that one should study it. One good way to study it is to find out something about other people's experience with sex and what turns them on. Many Americans, and I dare say others in this world world, would learn a few things by reading erotic stories. It really disgusts me when people classify all erotic stories as pornography, with all of its negative moral connotations. Sure, there are disgusting acts that some people do in the name of sex, but there are many sexual acts that are far more loving and pleasurable than the ignorant believe them to be. As with most very complex areas of knowledge, theory alone can lead you astray. Experiment tests your theory and forces you to make it consistent with reality. As with most areas of knowledge, it is worth finding out something about what other people know and doing some experiencing and experimenting yourself. Sometimes you will learn that there are more natural acts than you believed beforehand. Ignorance being the handmaiden of prejudice ..... I sympathize with those who really, really think sex with someone you do not love would be disgusting, since this is the way I felt and thought for a long time. I still have no desire to have sex with someone I do not love, but I can understand that if I had had the desire when I was young to at least have sex with a woman I liked, perhaps I would have learned more about women and about sex than I had. I am not sure that would have been a bad thing. On the other hand, what if I had become addicted to sex before I had Anna? Horrors. Well, who knows? This is too complicated for me to make predictions about. What I do know is that making love to someone you love is to bring heaven to earth. Or is it to bring earth to heaven? But not everyone is me. Some people were addicted to sex perhaps as teenagers and if they could not function without it, maybe they had to have sex with little emotional commitment. It gave them the relief they needed to study and then go to college and take up a career. Perhaps without it they could not have achieved these things. We come in many varieties. Those of a different variety are not at all necessarily bad and immoral. Of course, I am bad. I think sex is largely good and often heavenly, there are at least a few women worth loving and many of them are quite experienced sexually, and not all erotic literature is pornography. Disgusting me!

Thanks Ivan. I hope it gave Victor a chuckle also. I was just funning with him and playing with the idea he started with.

Theoretically extinct? Or do you mean maybe instinctive, which does seem to have much appeal on many campuses? Or maybe the culture and the perspective of woolly mammoths is as good as anybody else's in those dim academic minds? Or maybe the woolly mammoth is due payback for the past sins of man in oppressing woolly mammoths? Yea, those academic intellectuals should stand frozen in the face of the woolly mammoth stampede. In fact the governments should put out RFPs open only to minority woolly mammoths and shunt the bulk of academic research funding to the woolly mammoths.

Mikee, I very much agree with your post about our voracious need for the knowledge of others. One person can only learn so much and experience so much. The company of other fairly rational men provides us vastly more nutrition for our minds. This epistemological treasure chest provided by others in our rather rational Post-Enlightenment societies was a cornerstone of my arguments that we have many reasons to maintain a benevolent attitude toward others and also that toleration for ideas that recognizes the value of the ideas we learn from others. Of course, we also like the recognition of other good men, too. Not to mention the love of a great woman.

Victor, I fully agree with you that friends should be able to throw a surprise party without having that fact blown up into claims that one is dishonest and deceitful by nature. Where is an understanding of friendship in Valiant's analysis? If love is exception-making, then doesn't friendship have enough love in it to make it a bit exception-making? Doesn't the broad context of a friendship matter? Of course it does. It became quite funny, though disgusting, that Valliant tortured so many interpretations of ambiguous events, and even many that were benign, into major criticisms of the Brandens. These tortured interpretations necessarily showed little understanding of many concepts, of living life, of ambiguities, of the need to judge without bias, and oft times of simple logic. There was almost no fact that could not be twisted, often with the addition of many assumptions, into another condemnation of the Brandens. Valiant would often make a great show of proving one part of an argument, then smuggle in an assumption, which together with the proven fact led to a conclusion which was always damning of the Brandens. In a broad way, this is an assault upon logic, since he constantly made a great show of making very logical deductions from something sound coupled with some nonsense. The great build-up on logically establishing the sound observation makes his process appear logical. But, a logic deduction follows from a complete set of sound observations, not a mix of sound ones and nonsensical ones. Sorry, but I have found the book utterly beneath contempt. This is not to say that it is uninteresting. It does reveal many of the problems that dogmatic Objectivists have. It reveals a great naivety of life, a severe tendency to look at one tree and then proclaim great truths about the forest, a desire for simplicity and certainty which denies the existence of complexity and uncertainty, and a failure to appreciate the value of individuality in the individual. This is just to name a few complaints I have with this book. This book should never have been written by an adult. It should not be the work of anything but a somewhat precocious child. Charles