Wednesday
January 13, 2010 |
 Will Google Leave China?
by Jack Zhang
Google's threat of pulling out in China due to its refusal to comply with Chinese censorship laws and the numerous severe web attack against it's google.cn chinese server that might be caused by Chinese officials or anonymous hackers. What do you guys thing?
also look: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Google-threat-a-rare-show-of-apf-1244144999.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=2&asset=&ccode=
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10433745-265.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1 (Read more...)
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Fear of Nuclear Power and Global Warming
by Michael F Dickey
Environmental alarmism hi-jacked the natural technological progression into nuclear power and, if anthropogenic global warming is real, subsequently caused the very global warming that environmentalists are raising alarming fears about now. (Read more...)
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On Uniting the Country
by Tibor R. Machan
On January 3rd, just after Meet the Press, NBC-TV broadcast a radio address by President Obama and while I have become nearly completely pessimistic, even cynical, about expecting anything uplifting from politicians these days--I think there could be some and have been a very few--I listened to the whole message. I never quite foreclose the possibility that people will change course, improve, gain new insights, and otherwise depart from their bad habits. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 30, 2009 |
 Avatar and the Prog-Rock Revival
by Joseph C. Maurone
Avatar is not only a hash of new-age ideas in a technicolor dreamcoat, it's a rehash of new-age ideas in said dreamcoat. The progressive rock bands of the seventies beat Cameron to the punch, and it shows; not only are the visual designs digital animations of a Yes album, the philosophical themes are co-opted as well...including the contradictions. (Read more...)
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Saturday
December 26, 2009 |
 The Myth of Surplus Wealth
by Tibor R. Machan
The right to private property is a right of action, an extension of the more general right to liberty: everyone must be left free to pursue wealth, to take those peaceful actions that could result in prosperity (although there is no guarantee that they will). (Read more...)
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Avatar
by Michel Hulmann
I watched Avatar yesterday. I was impressed with James Cameron's ability to boost the film industry, to revolutionize the technique and expand the possibilities of narrative. However, aesthetically, the movie is a garbage. If art is "re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments", ... (Read more...)
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Temporal Altruism
by Curtis Edward Clark
While our politicians are extending the national debt into the futures of our grandchildren, Thomas W. Clark wants to extend altruism into the future---over the issue of ecology. "For those with children and grandchildren," writes Clark, "imagining loved ones facing an ecologically impoverished world works well to motivate concern. But for those of us who don’t, why should we forgo present pleasures for the sake of a future we’ll never see?"
(Read more...)
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 Ayn Rand: The Wired Interview (1998)
by B B
FTA: "11 years ago I blind-pitched Wired magazine an ill-defined article on Rand. In response, they asked me to write an "interview" with her, where I would come up with all of the questions and then cobble together her answers from things that she had written and said (she died in 1982). Fun!" (Read more...)
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A Bit of Good News
by Tibor R. Machan
Private property rights are the bedrock of a bona fide free country. Just for starters, the rights to freedom of religion and the press directly depend on it--if private property can lawfully be taken by state agencies, based on spurious, subjective grounds like blight, any religious or journalistic practice not approved of by state agents becomes vulnerable to censorship or worse. (Read more...)
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Can We Cause Our Actions?
by Tibor R. Machan
In a recent Op Ed column for Free Inquiry magazine--December 09/January10--Mr. Thomas Clark claims that the defense of human agency that some folks, including me, have been advancing for many years involves what he terms “contra-causal” free will. It does not. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 11, 2009 |
On Corporation Phobia
by Tibor R. Machan
What would be cool, actually, is if both Michael Moore and Ralph Nader, as well as their admirers, recognized that the bad guys are mainly those in power, the politicians and bureaucrats, not the citizens who, various grouped, are trying to get in on the game of wealth redistribution. (Read more...)
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Another Ayn Rand thread at Reason.com
by Jim Henshaw
On yet another Ayn Rand thread over at Reason.com's Hit and Run (presumably to cross-promote the upcoming Ayn Rand series at Reason.TV), one of the Reason staffers (Tim Cavanaugh) who is reading the Fountainhead for the first time (!) posed two question about the book that I (posting as "prolefeed") and two other peopl... (Read more...)
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Soros is Confused Again
by Tibor R. Machan
Whatever it is that Soros is aiming for, one thing is clear: he despises
freedom in the market place. And so long as there is any trace of
respectful discussion of free markets in universities, Soros is going to
spare no money in thwarting it. (Read more...)
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Sex in The Fountainhead - The Rape of Ayn Rand
by B B
Rape, also referred to as sexual assault, is an assault by a person involving sexual intercourse with or without sexual penetration of another person without that person’s consent. I’ve had many conversations over the years about this scene, especially with those who I would consider "surface-readers" - those who read without the curiosity to explore the implications. Was it rape or wasn’t it? The answer boils down to whether or not Dominique Francon gave her consent to Howard Roark.
I think Dominique did consent to the sex, wanted it, and even encouraged it through her actions. (Read more...)
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An exchange with a non-Objectivist
by Jim Henshaw
Reason.com has had several recent Ayn Rand blog posts recently. I (commenting under the name "prolefeed") had an interesting exchange with "Hazel Meade" on the thread commenting on the Ayn Rand book interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 10-15-09. (the interview can be found here): http://video.google.c... (Read more...)
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 Vital Ideas in Conflict-Sen versus Bauer
by Tibor R. Machan
A most influential book by Harvard Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen
is Development as Freedom (Knopf, 1999). At first glance the title
suggests that Sen shares the late Peter Bauer’s ideas who argued that
global free market policies would best help the poor everywhere. But that
isn't Sen's message at all. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 14, 2009 |
Nebulous Terms: Defining Religion
by Jonathan Pararajasingham
While the debates and philosophising on religion continues as fervently as ever, there still seems no real consensus on what the actual definition of a "religion" should be. God is certainly not an essential part of the equation as evidenced by the existence of atheistic religions such as Hindu Carvaka or Buddhism. Here I try and explore what should perhaps objectively be the common threads that define true religion, and thus simultaneously exclude pseudo-religious beliefs. (Read more...)
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The Desperate Defense of Obamacare
by Tibor R. Machan
The political arena has abandoned all civility, it seems. It was coming our way once folks like Ralph Nader and Michael Moore got to be big wigs, speaking up in support of populism and a massive federal government. (Read more...)
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 Many Medical Devices Still Taxed Under Baucus Health Bill
by Unknown
A link to an article at another web site. (Read more...)
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Keynes and his Ideology of Planning
by Tibor R. Machan
What Keynes was eager to promote is the idea of the government's
unbridled authority to tinker with economic affairs. That is the point of
insisting so vehemently that nothing exists that stands opposed to that
authority, no notion of Adam Smith's natural liberty, John Locke's natural
rights, and other classical liberal ideas that were at one time beginning
to be used so as to pull the rug from under those who saw fit to interfere
with other people's economic decisions and circumstances. (Read more...)
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BANK FAILURES: Market Failure or Government Failure
by William Scott Dwyer
Many banks have failed under government control of the financial system, but wasn't it worse under free banking in which there was no lender of last resort and no federal insurance of depositors' funds in the event of bank failures? The following article examines this question in light of the historical evidence. (Read more...)
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Tuesday
September 22, 2009 |
Objectivism and charity
by Jim Henshaw
Discussion of Objectivist principles regarding "compassionate" release of convicted criminals with terminal illnesses, and regarding when charity is justified and non-sacrificial. (Read more...)
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Saturday
September 19, 2009 |
The Expanding Public Realm
by Tibor R. Machan
Virtually every time someone promotes increasing the scope of government's
involvement in our lives, the excuse is that the problem being tackled is
a social or public type, not one of individuals. (Read more...)
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Tuesday
September 15, 2009 |
If I Owned A Chain of A Thousand Hospitals
by Tyson Russell
I've written two bullet points on things I would do if I owned a chain of a thousand hospitals. The point is to add your own in the comments and in so doing illustrate what Randians/Objectivists/Libertarians/Minarchists envision for a health care system absent of government interference. (Read more...)
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Saturday
September 12, 2009 |
On Respecting the Presidency
by Tibor R. Machan
After one congressman shouted out "liar" during President Obama's speech to
Congress the other evening, one of Mr. Obama's cheerleaders at The New
York Times intoned gravely that even if one disapproves of a given office
holder, one ought to show respect for the office. Well, not really, not
any more. (Read more...)
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