dgordon

11 ms·

61.
by dgordon 17y ago
I thought that was John Gatto halfway through the first sentence -- admittedly a long sentence. It is a truth generally overlooked that gentle admonition can destroy ambition, enthusiasm, and dreams of a world better than this one more effi
62.
by dgordon 17y ago
Yes, yes you did do any such thing. Here's what you wrote: "Objectivism is -- literally -- orthodox Marxism with different words filled into key blanks." Then your link leads to: "There are two classes of people in society. One class, whic
63.
by dgordon 17y ago
"Millions of other critics" was no strawman, for the simple reason that it wasn't an argument. Just my impression of the weakness of your argument. Let me address it. You claim Objectivism claims all rich people are productive and all poo
64.
by dgordon 17y ago
Pain and damage are different.
65.
by dgordon 17y ago
Not even close. You sound like one of the millions of other critics whose reading of Ayn Rand consists of one Bob The Angry Flower comic. (This one: http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif )
66.
by dgordon 17y ago
You'll see the same kind of ratio for almost any forum or website that people sign up for. I've been on a number of forums on which the median number of posts is one, and they're pretty lively, so this statistic doesn't mean much to me.
67.
by dgordon 17y ago
Proven? Really? Who proved this? What were their methods?
68.
by dgordon 17y ago
Yeah, if I had been saying it out loud I would have been grabbing for words halfway through and would have realized it was a bit overwrought.
69.
by dgordon 17y ago
Yes there is. It's like the difference between going to Volgograd as a tourist today and going to Stalingrad as a member of the German army in the winter of 1942-43.
70.
by dgordon 17y ago
"Think about this: you IQ is defined and practically unchangeable by the time you are a young teenager, but your personality continues to develop for many more years after that. So there is no way your personality can affect whether you are
71.
by dgordon 17y ago
I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago now -- I'm around 530 pages in, so I just read the part about the common criminals beating up and robbing the political prisoners. It undoubtedly helped the thieves a lot that the political prisoners would
72.
by dgordon 17y ago
Actually, police have no duty to protect individuals. The Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled this repeatedly.
73.
by dgordon 17y ago
This reminds me of the book "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal" by Joel Salatin.
74.
by dgordon 17y ago
If Evans was really thrown out of AP classes over this, that's essentially an extrajudicial fine of thousands of dollars for some angry words, assuming she had a good chance to do well on the exams and thereby get college credit.
75.
by dgordon 17y ago
This is a rather common logical fallacy. It should have a name, but the "zeroes and ones fallacy" doesn't sound too good. A stream of bytes has a meaning which has to do with not only the bytes themselves but their context, and I can thin
76.
by dgordon 17y ago
Because it's unusual, and don't pretend you don't know this. It's already reasonably uncommon for any American to read books, and it's even rarer among Americans in their 20s and 30s, also known as the ages of NBA players. Classic novels
77.
by dgordon 17y ago
It seemed to me he actually told people "Bill Gates may be a freaking genius, but he also worked harder than you've ever considered working, and took advantage of incredible, nearly unique, opportunities. That's what being a true outlier t
78.
by dgordon 17y ago
I tried this once -- it was very salty, which I don't mind, but it was nothing special as far as tenderness.
79.
by dgordon 17y ago
I can. Can anyone name all the others that weren't?
80.
by dgordon 17y ago
No, "lots of people" don't kill themselves with marathons. A few people who try to go from couch potato to marathon in 12 weeks or who chug ridiculous amounts of water over the course of a 5-hour walk-jog kill themselves with marathons. (
81.
by dgordon 17y ago
No they don't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_v._Kuhlmeier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick I consider these decisions disgusting, wrong, and anathema to the Constitution, but there you are.
82.
by dgordon 17y ago
More people taking injustices personally, no matter how small, is a very good thing. It may be the only way to make a serious dent in them.
83.
by dgordon 17y ago
Did you actually say something, or just toss out a bunch of epithets that have nearly lost all meaning? I'll address one: 120k/year is a long, long way from "ultra-rich."
84.
by dgordon 17y ago
So if people didn't buy stuff from these miserable countries the people there would be better off? Absolutely wrong. Typically their other choices are subsistence farming, prostitution, or selling children into same. Also, I'm amazed that
85.
by dgordon 17y ago
Somehow go always makes its way into online conversations about chess. The Wikipedia article on computer go suggests that humans are better at calculating long sequences in go than in chess because the pieces in go stay where they are unles
86.
by dgordon 17y ago
Topalov hasn't become world champion. He'll have his shot this spring, I believe.
87.
by dgordon 17y ago
After poking around the site posted by wrs, I found: http://www.element-collection.com/html/coffee_table.html Forget books, here's an element coffee table!
88.
by dgordon 17y ago
Has this been going on long enough to have an effect? Also, is the kind of crazy made harder by the nascent fear of online exposure actually the kind of crazy referred to as "psychoticism" in the article? (Possibly. It does include "thri
89.
by dgordon 17y ago
Of course, I meant "There is nothing so permanent..."
90.
by dgordon 17y ago
History indicates that running at a deficit did indeed become the new normal. "There is nothing so normal as a temporary government program."

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