Friday, May 9, 2008 at 18:15:15 mst
Name: John Dailey
E-mail: phyrm_1(at)hotmail.com
~ It would've been nice if she quoted where this overall 'free-market' bias so generally advocated in our 'media' exists apart from Limbaugh and Beck; oh, these 2 are all 'the media'?
LLAP
J:D
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Friday, May 9, 2008 at 15:19:49 mst
Name: Jeff Montgomery
E-mail: jamontgom(at)hotmail.com
That is truly awesome. There is no doubt FIRM is making a difference against the intransigent irrationality of the socialist medicine advocates.
Don't you love how she (Michele Swenson of ProgressNow.org) portrays the newspapers as if they are blocking "the truth" rather than advocating it? Any "bias" towards free market is a bias towards that which is moral and effective and ultimately rational. This is the same as saying the reason we don't take poison is because of "bias". We don't advocate it because it's wrong.
And frankly I'm offended at their use of the motif and colors of the American flag on their web site, since their ideas have nothing whatsoever to do with what this country stands for. Most sites that have "progress" anywhere in the title actually stand for making things progressively worse.
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 20:14:26 mst
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2
Joseph,
You are right - the continuation of the ongoing decline of the United States is not inevitable. But how to stop it? The cause of the decline is that Americans - except for Objectivists, and for those scientists/Geeks who adhere to the epistemology of Enlightenment science in their lives as well as in their work - Americans have lost confidence in the ability of their own individual minds to deal with the challenges of life. And without confidence in one's own mind, a citizen devolves into a subject who expects others - Gods, experts, majorities - to make his decisions for him. Hence the rise of the regulatory state - and the decline of America.
This is why I think that in the current American cultural context, direct political activism only wastes time. Capitalism requires confidence in the efficacy of the human mind. If I were distributing books to schools, in today's America I would not only give high-school English teachers The Fountainhead - I would give high-school and college teachers of science, math and technology copies of Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Especially teachers of computing and modeling: the teachers already know that Object-Oriented programming and modeling methods work superbly, but without Objectivist Epistemology they don't understand _why_ those methods work so well.
The great advantage of India and China (and those few parts of the West where the foundations of scientific thought - the works of Archimedes, Newton, Darwin - have not been ripped out of middle-school curricula by supernaturalists or PoMos) today over the United States is, that a sound education in the scientific use of measurement and reason gives the student a well grounded confidence in the efficacy of her or his own mind. My greatest disappointment after being elected to the Marlboro Township school board was finding out that Archimedes' Principle was being taught to children (including my child) as just another random fact to be memorized without understanding. Back when I was a fifth-grade child in an Israeli school, I decided to become a scientist after learning Archimedes' Principle with its derivation - and thus knowing that reality is NOT just a collection of random facts - that its laws can be derived and understood by the application of Human reason; that my mind is competent to understand how reality works. My proudest accomplishment on that school board was putting the derivations of Archimedes' Principle, and of other natural laws, back into the primary and middle-school science curricula. When those derivations are back in the curricula of at least a majority of American schools, America will again have a chance at freedom and greatness.
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 19:15:28 mst
Name: Joseph Kellard
E-mail: theainet1(at)optonline.net
What's interesting about books like the one Paul writes about is that they take it as inevitable--perhaps as historically determined--that America's decline and fall is eminent, just like ancient Rome and the British Empire. The "idea" is that once America shows some real signs of decline (and there are enough significant signs to point to in contemporary America), and other nations show signs that they are on the rise (e.g., China and India), then it's only a matter of time that America falls behind these developing nations.
Yet America, while the wealthiest, most powerful nation in history, still has not nearly come close to reaching its full potential. This nation may very well go the way of Rome--but it won't be because that fate is historically determined. It could also very well go the way of the America of old, that is, the fastest growing nation in history--as status it reached pre-Objectivism. Imagine how much greater American can be with Objectivism as its dominant philosophy. America can and may see a rate of growth that far outshines its growth in the 19th century. Most non-Objectivist are blind to this fact. And, furthermore, China, because of its much greater political instability, can very well fall back to less economically prosperous time. Ditto for India.
Anyway, I'm not that old, but old enough to clearly remember the 1980s, when Japan was touted as the next nation to take over America's place in the world as top dog. That didn't quite pan out, now did it?
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 17:50:44 mst
Name: Flibbert
E-mail: junk(at)treygivens.com
URL: http://flibbertigibbet.mu.nu/
Candy for cuties, indeed!
Cantilevered shoes:
http://shoeblogs.com/2007/09/12/the-marc-jacobs-backward-heel/
http://shoeblogs.com/2007/03/04/junko-shimadaheels/
(But they do look like the crazy got a hold of them if you ask me.)
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 17:45:41 mst
Name: Andrew Baker
E-mail: smoke_owner(at)mac.com
Men's fashion hasn't changed because you can't improve on perfection. Is it the trend that women's fashion is emulating men's with things like pantsuits?
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 14:57:39 mst
Name: Ichor
E-mail: rspaas(at)gmail.com
This is very interesting because months ago I was listening to a podcast of which the subject was holocaust denial. I can't remember full details, but they were interviewing a historian about it. At some point the hosts inquired if people would ever try to dishonestly remove or steal vital historical property they would disagree with. He replied no, and in fact the exact opposite. The archives required extensive security and cameras to protect against people bringing faked historical property *in*. I'd have to wonder if they do the same.
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 11:23:17 mst
Name: Cheerwino
Oooo! Swish!
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 10:37:26 mst
Name: James Wadsworth
E-mail: ja_wadsworth(at)yahoo.com
On a side note, as you all know there has been an apparent rash of murders on campuses nationwide, particularly of young women. I just learned of the death of one of my own fellow classmate at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I did not know her personally, but in reading the news report and the comments made by her friends and family I have begun to notice a trend in the commentary on the character of these slain students. In every case family and friends always comment on how altruistic and selfless these people were. I wonder if all of these victims were truly selfless or whether they are just portrayed that way by friends and family who want to highlight what they believe to be good moral character. Here is the article about the girl who died at my school so you can see what I am talking about. What do you think?
Friends Plan Student Vigil
Charlotte Observer
by Deborah Hirsch
Irina "Ira" Yarmolenko had a sunny spirit, a quick smile and friends everywhere she went.
She wasn't supposed to die at age 20, friends and family said.
The UNC Charlotte sophomore was found Monday next to her car on the banks of the Catawba River in Mount Holly. On Wednesday evening, police still did not know how Yarmolenko died and how she ended up so far from campus.
Tonight, her friends will honor her with a candlelight vigil.
Yarmolenko was born in the Ukraine but grew up in Chapel Hill. Her brother, Pavel Yarmolenko, 25, said their family moved to North Carolina in the 1990s as refugees. Their parents found science jobs in Greensboro and later moved to Chapel Hill.
Pavel, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Duke University, described his sister as a dedicated student who loved to travel and learn about other cultures. She played piano and tennis.
"She was incredible," he said. "There's nothing bad about her."
She graduated from Chapel Hill High in 2006 and began studying at UNCC.
There, she was a member of the Russian Club and more recently, a photographer and occasional writer for the student newspaper. She also worked as a computer assistant.
Her brother said she'd always talked about doing something to help people make their lives better or easier.
"Everything that she's ever done was to help people," he said.
She'd planned to transfer to UNC Chapel Hill to major in public health after finishing this semester in Charlotte, he said.
Arthur Jackson, vice chancellor for student affairs at UNCC, said students and staff who knew Yarmolenko were offered counseling Wednesday. He said university police were helping Mount Holly investigators.
"It hit us hard," he said. "It's like losing a family member. She was connected to a lot of organizations on and off campus."
As her brother put it: "She knew everybody everywhere."
She had 630 friends on her Facebook profile. By Wednesday evening, more than 100 of them had posted messages there saying how much they'll miss her.
Her friend Tyler Robinson, a sophomore at UNCC, said she was "the most beautiful person I've ever met, inside and out. She was completely selfless."
Mount Holly Police Chief David Belk said he's hoping the public can help police figure out more about where she had been Monday between about 10 a.m., when someone reported seeing her at a coffee shop in the university area, to 1:15 p.m. when she was found by a watercraft rider.
Belk said she appeared to have driven off the road behind the Waters Edge development and the Stowe Family YMCA.
"It's strange that anyone would go to that area," he said, noting that there had not been reports of crime there.
Pavel said he hopes this tragedy will prompt people to think about all students who died too young.
"Don't forget to tell your loved ones that you love them," Pavel said, breaking into tears. "I didn't get a chance to, and I can tell you I wish I had."
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 8:09:36 mst
Name: Jeff Montgomery
E-mail: jamontgom(at)hotmail.com
They got one thing right: the guy carrying his phone everywhere. Although modern phones are more this: http://tinyurl.com/5npyrn
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Thusday, May 8, 2008 at 7:21:25 mst
Name: Kyle
After watching this video with my girlfriend, she turned to me and said, "Oh my god!... Where's your candy?!"
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 20:52:20 mst
Name: Dan G.
Adam, I believe your statement about regulation being a bigger burden is absolutely correct. I'm currently working to bring a diagnostic/indicator device to market and the EU is, as you say, orders of magnitude less of a burden to deal with.
My exposure to our regulatory bureaus has led me to an interesting philosophical connection; that the very concept of regulation is an inversion of the presumption of innocence (i.e. "prove that you aren't trying to poison your customers with your new drug/device"). So not only are there more tasks to be done to get new technologies to market, but it is demoralizing in that you are treated as though you are guilty from the begining.
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 16:48:55 mst
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2
Based on my own observations, reports of friends, and indexes such as the Fraser Institute index of economic freedom, America's so-called "regulation" of trade is several orders of magnitude more harmful that the "welfare state." Two countries that consistently rate above the US on the Fraser index, New Zealand and Switzerland, actually have more "welfare state" features than we have, but much less "regulation." My wife works for the US branch of a Swiss company, and whenever I travel there with her I'm struck by how much more energetic and generally free life there seems in comparison. A friend who recently moved to New Zealand reports the same.
I suspect that much of the "regulatory regime" that we have in the US is driven by fear, e.g., "what if I ate bad food and got sick and could not afford being sick - I need the FDA to watch over food safety" - and by infantilized cognition. The pervasive regulatory regime has infantilized American adults to such an extent that most are below the cognitive developmental stage of abstract operations for their entire lives, believe in "balance" between Creationism and science; go to church, read a paper with an astrology column... Just as it is an error to "work" on politics without a foundation of ethics, it is a worse error to try to "fix" a culture's economics without first reforming its education and rebuilding it on a foundation of Objectivist (or at least Enlightenment-based, as in Switzerland and New Zealand) epistemology. A culture with an Enlightenment-based popular epistemology can get out of the Socialist trap, as happened in New Zealand. A culture with a faith-based popular epistemology, on the other hand, can only go downhill - in its economics and in everything else.
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 14:04:29 mst
Name: Wendy
You can tell the relative sophistication of cultures by how they use their dogs. Very primitive countries don't use dogs at all, less primitive cultures eat them, more sophisticated cultures use them as workers, and hey, look at us! Dogs are companions.
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 8:49:35 mst
Name: Jeff Montgomery
E-mail: jamontgom(at)hotmail.com
I'm sure that book will provide good fodder for presenting our ideas.
Contrary to Zakaria's assertion, our country actually *benefits* from political stalemate, since most of the laws our government would enact would be harmful attacks on our freedom. Reality forbid they should enact them all, and quickly! We need the extra time to fight them.
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 14:47:24 mst
Name: Burgess Laughlin
E-mail: burgesslaughlin(at)macforcego.com
URL: http://www.aristotleadventure.blogspot.com
One of the striking features of the photo of the puppy is its attentiveness. Even casual acquaintance with dogs shows how much time they spend watching humans, especially the dog's master/leader, if they are in a room together. Dogs often respond to "signals," intentional or not. Presumably in the 15,000 years or so of contact with humans, dogs have been selected for this ability to "read" humans.
http://www.dawn.com/2002/11/23/int10.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2498669.stm
From the first link: "Brian Hare, of Harvard University, and colleagues from Germany and Massachusetts, may have the reason for that success. They compared dogs with wolves raised by humans, and with chimpanzees. In the experiment food was hidden under one of two containers, both of which smelled of food, and a person dropped a heavy hint as to which hid the titbit -- by reaching toward, touching, or even marking the right container. Nine of 11 dogs picked the right container, outperforming both chimps and wolves. Even puppies with only the slightest human contact did the same."
I do not know if the experiment was properly conducted, but the conclusion presented here matches my informal experience.
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 14:10:45 mst
Name: Wendy
What a cutie! As a long time Golden Retriever owner (I have three: nine, three and 14 weeks), I truly appreciate the fact that dogs are man-made. Interestingly enough, the traits for which I love Goldens (their love of people, cuddliness and appearance) were just a side effect of breeding them to be good retrievers and water dogs.
I am certainly not a believer in animal rights, but as I mentioned in the thread about the parrot who could identify items, I think that they should not legally just be considered property as they are now. They are unique consciousnesses with unique personalities, and the loss of a pet is the loss of that personality, not just "a dog".
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 12:54:39 mst
Name: Adam Mossoff
E-mail: amossoff(at)law.msu.edu
My parents own a golden doodle, which they purchased about 2 years ago. Her name is a lot more boring than yours, as they simply call her "Honey." I must agree that golden doodles are an absolutely adorable breed, and we're all better off for the great ingenuity of man in creating new dog breeds.
More to the point, I really like your point that all breeds are "designer breeds." I've read that dogs are the most varied species on the planet. That is, no other species comes in as many sizes, shapes, colors, etc. It's cool to realize that dogs are that way only because of man: we bred dogs to be a value to us--hunting, guarding, swimming, retrieving, playing. Every AKC so-called "official breed" today began as a mutt at some point in human history--it was bred by someone from previous dogs for some purpose--and it was only later that the AKC deemed the now long-standing mutt to be a "breed." Feh! Who needs the AKC when all it takes is one man with a new insight as to how a dog might add new value to our lives.
BTW, I'm a HUGE dog lover--I grew up with an Irish Setter and a Springer Spaniel, and I now own a Chocolate Lab. As my wife and I always remark to each other about our adorable Toby (our shortened version of his full name, Toblerone): A home just feels "full" in all the right ways with a dog.
Lastly, for anyone who is a dog lover, I can't recommend enough the book, "Marley and Me."
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 11:51:32 mst
Name: John Dailey
E-mail: phyrm_1(at)hotmail.com
~ I LOVE the name!
~ However, I'm having a hard time picturing calling him when he's outside; what would the neighbors think after your getting through yelling that tongue-twister? --- Maybe you should 'nick' him as Ken or Rubi.
~ We used to have a dog named Pitcher (my kid's were baseball fans; there was also Shorty (as in -Stop). My kid loved calling him at night: "Pitch! Hey Pitch, get in here! Here Pitch; come and get it."
LLAP
J:D
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 10:01:00 mst
Name: Mike Hardy
E-mail: hardy(at)math.umn.edu
Is it really a "principle" that animals have no rights? That animals lack rights is an essentially negative proposition; it asserts the non-existence of something. Are such propositions "principles"?
Oh, and did Ayn Rand ever assert that animals lack rights? In the present era it seems to get repeated so frequently among those who consider themselves in agreement with her philosophy that one should wonder about that.
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