It'd be nice to get a pro-choice conservative, wouldn't it? Perhaps a woman?
Paul Ryan is a triple-faced person who will side with whoever can get him elected, just like Romney. Ayn Rand wouldn't like him, and I don't like him. He says whatever is convenient at the moment. He is the worst kind of conservative, and his values change with the wind. His voting record is pro-government and he is a public service guy. Don't be fooled by all his talk of having been motivated by Rand. He is motivated by listening to the sound of what's popular. He is a religious man who is totally against women's right to govern her own body. The Republican Party has brought religion into its program and causes a great chasm for those of us who are Capitalists. It's really ironic that the liberals are pro-governement, yet believe in women's right to her authority over her own body. The Republican ticket is a huge disappointment, and I doubt very much if they will unseat Obama. It's a tragedy.
I don't floss, and I've never had a cavity in my 18 years of life. I don't even visit the dentist (My father has an issue with doctors in general). I simply brush regularly and intensively; maybe even obsessively :P
Back in 1965, a dentist told me never to floss. He said my enamel was soft and flossing would cause cavities. Instead, he said to use a waterpik twice a day after brushing. I also use a sonarcare toothbrush now. I have had only two cavities since 1965. Pretty good, eh?
You should hear the dentists and their help holler when I tell them I won't floss.
It's a very long interview...
Here's a version formatted for easy online reading.
Promising! I loved the novel.
It says it all in one piece of art.
More about India and how capitalism is having beneficial cultural effects:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/world/asia/indias-boom-creates-openings-for-untouchables.html
Interesting to imagine:
"We had seen (Bowler) on tape and liked him, but wanted to confirm the chemistry between the two," "Liz & Dick" producer Larry Thompson told E! News. "But this morning we had Lindsay and Grant come into a room at Lifetime and the chemistry exploded. It was just Fourth of July firecrackers going off in the room. We knew from the chemistry that Liz and Dick live again."
//correction to instructions.
//- Objectivist C does not have access to CPU functions, but must recruit RAM resources from other programs.
//- Hence, Objectivist C programs can only acquire resources to execute their code and/or replicate by fulfilling the ($value) of other programs, leveraging their existing momentum.
-Warning- Objectivist C may create networks of said leveraged RAM of other programs, each of which will replicate those pieces of the Objectivst C programming that match its (x$value) function, multiplying its RAM.
//Objectivist-C tends to build complex interdependencies in these cases that are difficult to eradicate.
//e: these programs will often reject each other over small differences in code.
-Warning- most programs have specific anti-Objectivist C antivirus, which will sometimes eat up valuable RAM towards (-y$value) functions, including recruiting the RAM of networked programs in similar fashion.
//programs with the anti-Objectivist programs far outnumber the Objectivist-C compatible programs.
//it is as of yet unclear if anti-Objectivist-C anti-firus is a bug or a feature.
When you “lose yourself” inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behavior and thoughts to match that of the character, a new study suggests.
Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own - a phenomenon the researchers call “experience-taking.”
They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking may lead to real changes, if only temporary, in the lives of readers.
In one experiment, for example, the researchers found that people who strongly identified with a fictional character who overcame obstacles to vote were significantly more likely to vote in a real election several days later.
...
Experience-taking doesn’t happen all the time. It only occurs when people are able, in a sense, to forget about themselves and their own self-concept and self-identity while reading, Kaufman said. In one experiment, for example, the researchers found that most college students were unable to undergo experience-taking if they were reading in a cubicle with a mirror.
“The more you’re reminded of your own personal identity, the less likely you’ll be able to take on a character’s identity,” Kaufman said.
“You have to be able to take yourself out of the picture, and really lose yourself in the book in order to have this authentic experience of taking on a character’s identity.”
Written by talented Atlasphere member
Joseph Tabenkin and featuring singer Barry Quinn.
WHAT FOR / MIRACLE METAL
By Joseph Tabenkin
Clean up my love, and you damn me for all that I'm dreamin' of.
So I watch you win, while you say all I love is my original sin.
And what for?...I don't know.
You call me depraved. Sure your mite makes you right for all that you crave.
You call me untamed. 'Cause I deal with what's real all the things you won't name
And what for?
I don't know if you think, or if you just feel.
Why your so called wishes would soon become real.
So you close your eyes tight, trying your best not to see, that you hate all that's good...All that is me.
You cleaned up my love. Now I damn you for all that you're terrified of.
I work while you pray, and you want what I've made but you don't want to pay.
So what for?
Now I know you don't think, you just want to feel.
And you hope all your wishes will soon become real.
Now you close your eyes tight, trying your best not to see, that you hate all that is good ... All that is me ... All I can be.
The word is out that Samantha Mathis has made it a point to read the book to give a better portrayal of Dagny.
I was in college and someone handed Atlas Shrugged to me and said, here, read this.
So I did. Missed three days of school, as I couldn't stop reading it. I was raised Catholic, and the book threw out all my embedded ideas. Then I read The Fountainhead. Then I signed up for The Objectivist Newsletter. Then I saw Ayn Rand and Nathanial Branden in Chicago. Then I signed up for the Objectivist Epistemology course. Time flew by. When I got my first computer back in 1995, I immediately looked up anything to do with Ayn Rand. Eventually I found The Atlasphere and have been on it ever since. I don't even know when I started signing into this web site. I think it was a long time ago.
I am currently living in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and when the movie part one came out, I saw it in the theater and practically jumped out of my seat when the announcer in the film said, "LIVE from Cheyenne, Wyoming!" And there I was. I tell you, it was a moment for me. I have since signed up for a philosophy course at the local college here, and have a great time fighting with my professor. He is determined to make me "see the light." What fun.
Chelsey, thanks for the question! Our news service is a relatively new feature and we've done nothing to promote it among our members or nudge them to come use it more actively, so you may not get many answers here. We expect to promote it much more heavily when we change business models in a couple months.
Also, I noticed we had a bug in our code that was preventing your question from showing up above. (Now it's displayed in the yellow background.)
As far as my own answer:
I loved the moral and esthetic vision in her novels -- her sense of style, as well as her portrait of the nobility of being motivated by one's creative and productive capacities.
Two elements of her moral vision that resonated with me most were the notion of treating each person as an end in himself and using one's mind to the fullest extent possible.
And you probably know my story with the site, as founder, so I won't go into that. :-)
I look forward to seeing what others have to say...
I love this article by Watkins.
The importance of words/thoughts and the objective or subjective use of them is hugely important.
As we live, we continue to face incomprehensible phenomena, followed by an endless variety of ideas. For this reason, good thinking becomes reliant upon a clear distinction between subjective / objective thinking. Objective thinkers tend to regard this knowledge as self evident - as obvious as Aristotle’s premise “A is A”. We fail to realize the influence of subjectivism, relativism and Sophism.
The reasons why most people don’t see the ethical / unethical similarity between “government run health care” and “government run mortgage bailouts” is the same reason most people have difficulty with the difference between the words ‘free’ and ‘fair‘. It seems unbelievably simple (to objective thinkers) only because we tend to underestimate the intellectually destructive influence of subjectivism, relativism and sophism. More on this is being developed at:http://libertyship.blogspot.com/p/sail-plan.html
Hi Nancy. Thanks for your comment. Just to clarify, though, the Atlasphere had nothing to do with creating the movie. We just talk about it a lot here. :-)
Just watched the movie after missing it in the theater due to lack of publicity. Gone by the time I knew it existed. What a great job you did on the film, love the script treatment, the actors, the cinematography, and, especially, the atmosphere. You did a great job! Please, please do the rest of the story. And what can I do to help publicize it? Ayn's book may be too difficult for some people, but the movie would wake them up. Right now!
Some of you might recognize Bidinotto as the founding editor of The New Individualist magazine.
“Only in Absolute solitude is that certainty of certainties possible in which observer and observed meet, simply to nod, - ‘of course!” - James Melbourne
http://libertyship.blogspot.com/
http://www.erasersjamesmelbourne.kbwebhosts.com/
I have worked with this entrepreneur, Magatte Wade, and she is a huge fan of Ayn Rand's novels and ideas, as well as the importance of free markets and individual liberty for improving the 'foreign aid' disaster that is modern Africa.
You can see his T-shirt at the 4:35 mark, among other places.
It's the sort of shirt commonly worn by fans of Ayn Rand's writings. You can buy a similar shirt, for example, from Proud Producers here:
http://www.proudproducers.com/proddetail.php?prod=DC03m&cat=48
My pleasure. :) Yes, I had been wondering, too, and found this very informative.
1. Firefly is an amazing show with a surprising fanbase considering the limited airtime Fox allowed it to have.
2. Well done defending free speech. I can't believe how ignorant the staff was, defending the officer who claimed it was a security issue. It's a damn poster, representing fairness in an unfair verse.
Here's a great TED talk from the very charismatic George Ayittey, exploring differences between the 'cheetah' and 'hippo' forces within African politics, the traditional free markets of Africa, and the problems with the wave of 'Swiss bank socialism' in recent decades among Africa's leaders:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnepHUYFqgg
Wow, great find, Alex. Thanks for submitting this. I've always wondered about Gaetano's personal relationship to Rand's novels and thinking.
He had a lot of negative things to say, but I really liked this quote:
"I love that kind of design—that heroic, idealized body and structure. I didn't want to do the books with a cover that was just the story in the books. I wanted them to be more symbolic. What I liked about The Fountainhead was the character Howard Roark, an architect who was inspired and had imagination—an idea, a vision. The people in my life that I have the most respect for are artists, musicians, film directors, writers—people with vision. To me, that's heroic. That's what I wanted the covers to convey. I started out with Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead; these guys are naked and statuesque, like Greek gods. I meant for them to be icons."
I don't think you are correct in reference to Dr. Paul's position. He is for sanctity of life but he is more interested in getting the federal government out of our lives. He wants to see states set the boundaries on such things as abortion, homosexual marriage, drug laws, etc. I think it would be good to remember that if your mother had aborted you then I wouldn't have to write this.
Good analysis of the problem.
Thanks, Jim. Good to see you around. I hope life is treating you well in Albuquerque! :-)
Philosophy is powerful and important. It has consequences. The current economic model in DC is socialism/fascism. Rand had a personal close-up look at a similar system when she lived in communist Russia and she wrote clearly about the inevitable outcome of following these ideas.
The Marxist philosophy is based upon the idea “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” (altruism at its worst). This is a recipe for destroying motivation and is guaranteed to always end in the ruin of any society that adopts such ideas. We see it everywhere in America today where the producers (ability) are punished and the losers are rewarded (need).
Under current leadership the failure of America is guaranteed. There is no hope in sight, only more of the same (bracketing the possible miraculous election of Ron Paul). Prepare for the worst. It is the only logical thing to do.
(Joshua, so glad to see you are still active. Namaste.)
John, where does Rand say "life" begins at birth? I think you will search in vain for a sentence by her that matches that statement. She says rights begin at birth and she says personhood begins at birth. To my knowledge, she does not say that life begins at birth.
Hmmm, OK, it looks like the story is a little too good to be true:
http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/A-Deconstruction-of-Icelands-Ongoing-Revolution
A country we could learn from. They refused to bail out private investors who drove the country into bankruptcy:
"In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country."
While I agree with what Rand says about abortion. why, in Rand's thinking, does life begin at birth and not at conception?
That moment, when two separate DNA chains merge and the egg, no longer purely the flesh of the mother, becomes an embryo, seems just as logical as the moment of live birth.
It was published at the time when liberalism began its rapid spread through the universities, the media, politics, etc. It provided a solid philosophical understanding of the liberal mind that one could use to follow the leftist trend and readily identify events and public utterances that confirmed the trend to the left in America.
Mackey is a fan of Atlas Shrugged, for anyone who doesn't know.
A few choice paragraphs:
We are driving to see Cai Shuxian, the manager and majority owner of a clothing factory in which Chen owns a 10 percent stake. Cai, a lightly built 32-year-old, is typical of the entrepreneurs who have made it big during Wenzhou’s three-decade boom, vaulting from shop-floor grunt to factory owner in a dizzyingly short period of time. “We earned very little in those days,” the high-school dropout recalls of his first job, “about 600 yuan [roughly $100] a month.” Within six years Cai was able to leverage his money and know-how into building a factory of his own, which now employs more than 100 people. ...
In southern China, things look rather different. The Chinese say that in this region “the mountains are high and the emperor is far away”—in other words, the government isn’t paying much attention. Companies are mainly small or medium-sized enterprises, government services are slight, and laws are routinely ignored. According to official statistics, the three southern coastal provinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Fujian have the first, second, and fourth wealthiest citizens, respectively, in the country. They are the center of China’s export sector and the primary destination for China’s millions of internal economic migrants. Here is where the real Chinese miracle is happening. ...
The city and region of Wenzhou play an important role in this story. The Wenzhounese have a reputation for both an uncanny sense of business and an almost pathological disregard for the government. The mountains here are no metaphor: Seventy-eight percent of the Wenzhou prefecture is covered by mountains, a fact that proved pivotal to the area’s early development and the central government’s response to it. ...
The government’s indifference didn’t last forever. But when the authorities got around to paying attention, they decided not to mess with a good thing. In 1985 Liberation Daily, a paper sponsored by the Shanghai Communist Party, referred to Wenzhou as a “model” for other parts of China to study. In the next year 15,000 government officials visited the city to learn, not crack down. Although bureaucrats still occasionally try to impose state controls on the city, the futility of the effort quickly becomes apparent. By now the local Chamber of Commerce has taken to negotiating trade deals both domestically and internationally because, as in most other things, the private sector is more effective here.
It did so by isolating the dominant philosophy guiding her actions (altruism) and by examining what the consequences of those actions would be (self-destruction).
Telling excerpt:
Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms.
Call it Generation Sell.
Bands are still bands, but now they’re little businesses, as well: self-produced, self-published, self-managed. When I hear from young people who want to get off the careerist treadmill and do something meaningful, they talk, most often, about opening a restaurant. Nonprofits are still hip, but students don’t dream about joining one, they dream about starting one. In any case, what’s really hip is social entrepreneurship — companies that try to make money responsibly, then give it all away.
It’s striking. Forty years ago, even 20 years ago, a young person’s first thought, or even second or third thought, was certainly not to start a business. That was selling out — an idea that has rather tellingly disappeared from our vocabulary. Where did it come from, this change? Less Reaganism, as a former student suggested to me, than Clintonism — the heroic age of dot-com entrepreneurship that emerged during the Millennials’ childhood and youth. Add a distrust of large organizations, including government, as well as the sense, a legacy of the last decade, that it’s every man for himself.
Because this isn’t only them. The small business is the idealized social form of our time. Our culture hero is not the artist or reformer, not the saint or scientist, but the entrepreneur. (Think of Steve Jobs, our new deity.) Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurship comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.
AND that, I think, is the real meaning of the Millennial affect — which is, like the entrepreneurial ideal, essentially everyone’s now. Today’s polite, pleasant personality is, above all, a commercial personality. It is the salesman’s smile and hearty handshake, because the customer is always right and you should always keep the customer happy. If you want to get ahead, said Benjamin Franklin, the original business guru, make yourself pleasing to others.
Great article summarizing the dangers of crony capitalism. Here's a free link for those who don't have a WSJ subscription:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wsj.com+corporate+welfare+state
Money quote:
"That culture of pessimism saps the very ambition most needed to innovate out of the very real problems the pessimists worry about. Ehrlich’s crisis-driven mentality also fosters top-down, technocratic policymaking—as if the future were an impending disaster that required emergency planning. The optimism of Smith and Simon is pragmatic in recognizing the challenges of population growth (among other things), but also that these problems can only be solved by more and better technologies generated by more minds working in larger, better markets. Neither minds nor markets can flourish without freedom to experiment with new ideas, technologies and business models."
Don't care for his democracy fetish, but many good points in the article, explaining why the next five years will be worse than the last five.
Money quote:
Jobs, who was known for his prickly, stubborn personality, almost missed meeting President Obama in the fall of 2010 because he insisted that the president personally ask him for a meeting. Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.
"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.
Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.
I agree with the researchers. Brain is like a muscle that needs to be trained constantly in order to function properly and be healthy. Depending on how well you are taking care of your brain, it will ultimately affect your IQ
Portuguese:
Eu fico
Com a pureza
Da resposta das crianças
É a vida, é bonita
E é bonita...
Viver!
E não ter a vergonha
De ser feliz
Cantar e cantar e cantar
A beleza de ser
Um eterno aprendiz...
English:
With pure intentions I say to the youth: life is beautiful. It's beautiful to live! And, do not be ashamed to be happy and to sing and sing and sing. The beauty of being a lifelong learner...
I wonder if O'Reilly has any idea how defensive and brittle he seems, when he goes on the offense like this.
Cain's stance on the issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Herman_Cain
A pretty conventional conservative. At least he seems like a plain-talking man of integrity, in contrast to Perry and Romney.
Related video here of company founder Jason Fried discussing their new office:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1755695/creating-a-productive-office-space-with-jason-fried-of-37signals
What's not mentioned in the HotAir blurb, but is worth knowing: It was all shot in one long 10-minute sweep of the camera. Just amazing! And it brings the classic song alive in a way that it never really had been, for me. Too bad more music videos don't have that effect.
Yeah but it'll come down to who runs against him! Put him next to Sarah Palin, and suddenly he doesn't look so bad...
Money quote:
"The latest Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll shows just 25 percent of Americans strongly approving of Obama?s performance, with 36 percent strongly disapproving, for a Presidential Approval Index rating of minus 11 points. In a projected match up between Obama and a Republican opponent, the president now trails by two points according to Rasmussen ? 43 to 45. The RealClear Politics poll of polls shows just over a third of Americans (34.5 percent) agreeing that the country is heading in the right direction, with nearly three fifths (56.8 percent) believing it is heading down the wrong track. That negative figure rises to a staggering 66 percent of likely voters in a new Rasmussen survey, including 41 percent of Democrats."
Yeah, it's crazy to see them doing this again while Fannie and Freddie are still on life support.
