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Previous Page The Daily Walk of Shame: Ayn Rand http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/11/04/the-daily-walk-of-shame-ayn-rand.aspx Alyce LomaxNovember 4, 2009This Motley Fool series examines things that just aren't right in the world of finance and investing. Here's what's got us riled today. If something's bugging you, too -- and we suspect it is -- go ahead and unload in the comments section below.Today's subject: Economic philosopher Ayn Rand died in 1982, but her legacy remains very much alive. Unfortunately, some people in positions of power have used parts of her Objectivist teachings to rationalize their own dysfunctional, damaging behavior. I definitely agree with the benefits...

Is there good without God? John Mark ReynoldsTheology 10.30.2009 Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion?Children often repeat ideas gained elsewhere as if they were their own profound insights. I remember in school “inventing” what I thought was a stunning new idea for propulsion only to be told that jet engines were, in fact, fairly common....

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

Oct 30, 2009 — “Plant fossils give first real picture of earliest Neotropical rainforests,” announced a press release from University of Florida.  The fossils from Colombia show that “many of the dominant plant families existing in today’s Neotropical rainforests – including legumes, palms, avocado and banana – have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America’s climate and geological structure.” The team found 2,000 megafossil specimens from the Paleocene, said to be 58 million years old.  This is only 5 to 8 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs according to conventional dating.  “The new study provides...

Alongside all the public interest in sporting prowess, recent research has added significantly to our knowledge of how the human body actually works. Many characteristics we take for granted now appear to be critical success factors. Take, for example, our toes. We do not need long toes, like monkeys and apes, because our toes are not used for grasping branches. But are they vestigial - withered remnants of once-grand appendages? The answer is: most definitely not! Whilst it is possible to walk comfortably with longer toes, running is different. Increase toe length by just 20% and there is a doubling...

Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it is our admiration of ourselves… — Charles Darwin, age 29, in his notebook This is an incredible comment. It is difficult to understand how anyone with a brain could not observe that thought produces such things as symphonies, literature and mathematics, while gravity just makes things fall down and holds planets in their orbits. Furthermore, thought does not secrete like insulin from a pancreas, it is willed (at least that’s what I do, and I assume others do...

Larry David’s ‘Piss Christ’Posted By Big Hollywood On October 27, 2009 @ 2:22 pm In Religion, Television | 78 Comments An email received today:“First let me state that I’ve been a fan of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” for many years and, even though Larry David is a liberal, I generally enjoy the writing and Larry’s antics. However, this time what I saw made me feel a little sick, extremely disappointed and a bit angry as well. I will never watch the show again as I have lost all respect and feelings of good will for Mr. David.“Did you happen to see...

AMERICAN.COM A Magazine of Ideas Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism By Jay W. RichardsThursday, October 15, 2009 Filed under: Big Ideas, Culture, Economic Policy, Public Square Capitalism doesn’t need greed. What capitalism does need is human creativity and initiative. After months of hearing the media and pundits pronounce the untimely death of capitalism, it did my heart good to see a recent Newsweek cover story challenge the familiar trope. The author, Fareed Zakaria, noted that this pessimistic pronouncement gets air time in the wake of every financial downturn. But in reality, capitalism, over the long haul, has...

I was just teaching Plato's "The Republic" in school and a terrifying thought occurred to me

For all of history, the fundamental issue in the creation-evolution conflict has been philosophical presuppositions, not empirical evidence or ‘brute facts’. Creationists have been pointing this out for many years, with varying degrees of effectiveness. To their credit, the modern Intelligent Design movement has recognized this same point, and for almost twenty years now, has explicitly made philosophical argumentation central in the debate over Darwinism. Phillip Johnson played an important role in bringing the philosophy of naturalism out into the open and onto the dissecting table with his best-selling Darwin on Trial, the book usually credited with launching the modern...

Sol SternE. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids. Autumn 2009 At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.” Since becoming education secretary, Duncan has launched a $4.3 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative that encourages states to experiment with various accountability reforms. Yet he has ignored one state reform that has proven to work, as well as the education thinker whose ideas inspired it. The state is...

"Of course I dislike the Nazis. But who is to say they're morally wrong?" The shocking statement was made by a college student in New York, as documented by author Kerby Anderson in a much-needed book, "Christian Ethics in Plain Language". The professor of the class, Anderson reports, "....said that he has never met a student who denied the Holocaust happened. But he also reported that 10 to 20 percent of his students cannot bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong." This is certainly an indictment of how modern society has made a false religion out...

Saturday, October 17, 2009 Presented by The teenage-ification of manhood Robert Fulford,  National Post  Parents often complain that kids grow up too fast these days. But many adults, it seems, aren't growing up at all. In an ongoing series, the National Post comment pages have been probing this annoying phenomenon. In today's final instalment, Robert Fulford explains the social construct we now call "the teenager."---The word "teenagers" appeared in the late 1940s, signalling the arrival of a new tribe of young people, the replacements for what were once called adolescents. These self-important newcomers were not just adults-in-training, as young people...

Jews and Guns Posted By Robert J. Avrech On October 19, 2009 @ 6:43 am In Military, Politics | An Ethiopian Jewish [1] woman soldier takes aim. Both men and women serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Thus, there is a weapon in almost every Israeli home. Before our son Ariel Chaim [2] ZT”L passed away, age twenty-two, in 2003, we spent a good deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Ariel was amazed that so many American Jews—overwhelmingly liberal and secular—aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement...

Reason Foundation http://reason.org http://reason.org/news/show/three-guiding-principles-for-r Three Guiding Principles for Reforming Wall Street Cure the problems, don't create new ones Anthony Randazzo October 12, 2009 In the wake of the massive bank bailouts, nearly everyone is calling for some kind of financial regulatory system overhaul. The Obama administration has outlined what it would like to see and Congress is currently holding hearings on how to best reform the regulatory structure. But the lobbying began long ago. Big banks are squaring off against smaller banks in the debate over consolidating national banking regulatory powers. All banks are lining up against financial institutions like...

"How could he think otherwise?" Alhamid asked. "To him, or to Tarnhorst, the notion of deliberately tailoring a program so that it would kill off the fools and the incompetents, setting up a program that will deliberately destroy the men who are dangerous to society, would be horrifying. They would accuse us of being soulless butchers who had no respect for the dignity of the human soul." "We're not butchering anybody," St. Simon objected. "Nobody is forced to go through two years of anchor setting. Nobody is forced to die. We're not running people into gas chambers or anything like...

Self-Evident Truths Held by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 13, 2009 Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation was the speaker at a recent Hillsdale College event. Spalding is the author of the upcoming book, We Still Hold These Truths, which will be released later this month. Spalding’s presentation focused heavily on America and the conservative movement in a historical context. He began by pointing out that the issues we face now have their roots in the far past—most certainly not recent history. The first compulsory national health care, he noted, was promoted by the Germans in the early 1900’s. “[The Kaiser]...

10 Reasons Why Pastors Avoid the Culture War Posted By Doug Giles On October 13, 2009 @ 5:05 am In Culture, Entertainment, Featured Story, Religion | 45 Comments As far as I’m concerned, a silent or waffling pastor in today’s paranormal climate is unnecessary. I don’t care how much the minister likes kitty cats, candy canes, and if he cries at Celine Dion concerts. Look, Voiceless Vicar, if you’re not currently in the middle of this crucial cultural squabble, pointing out what’s putrid and cheering on what’s proper, then you’re Dr. Evil in my book. Given that the culture-dividing issues,...

Augustine: young earth creationist--theistic evolutionists take Church Father out of context --snip-- Augustine was not vague about the age of the earth, the historicity of Adam and Eve as our first ancestors, or the events in the Garden of Eden and the worldwide flood later in Genesis. However, his doctrine of creation was complex...

Compass? We Don’t Need No Stinking Compass! by Big X Before Big X achieved fame, glory and untold wealth as a writer-producer, he spent a decade or so  as an executive in the financial industry. So when I read Mr. Weinstein’s comment that “Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion,” I couldn’t help but choke and spray a fine mist of Starbucks all over my laptop screen. In comparison to “real” businesses, I think I can say from personal experience inside and outside the bubble that Hollywood is the most systemically ruthless, amoral, deceitful, cruel and thuggish...

<p>I once had a patient who had had the words ‘F*** off’ tattooed on his forehead in mirror writing. When I asked him for the reason for this, he said that it was to wake him up in the morning when he looked at himself in the glass. It never failed, he said.</p>

Catholic Online As I watch the appointment of radical social activists such as Chai Feldblum to significant positions I grow increasingly concerned. WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) – The White House Press Secretary issued this release: Chai R. Feldblum, Nominee for Commissioner, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “Chai Feldblum is a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center where she has taught since 1991. She also founded the Law Center’s Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, a program designed to train students to become legislative lawyers. Feldblum previously served as Legislative Counsel to the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties...

In a Commentary essay, Carl Woese and Nigel Goldenfeld provide an analysis of biological thought that differs profoundly from that presented by those celebrating the Bicentenary of Darwin's birth and, incidentally, the recently published AP Biology Standards. "This is the story of how biology of the 20th century neglected and otherwise mishandled the study of what is arguably the most important problem in all of science: the nature of the evolutionary process. This problem [ . . ] became the private domain of a quasi-scientific movement, who secreted it away in a morass of petty scholasticism, effectively disguising the fact...

Computers are becoming faster and more powerful all the time and those improvements have been mainly due to better hardware. Future improvements, however, may well rely increasingly on better architecture and software. One reason why this seems likely is that the human brain, with its very different architecture, dramatically out performs computers in performing various tasks (such as perceiving an object in a complex visual scene). If computers are to match the brain's performance, they likely will need to exploit features of the brain's design. In some regards the brain's hardware is far beyond that of a computer. Its "wires,"...

A grand ceremony was held in Qufu, east China's Shandong Province, on Monday to commemorate the 2,560th birthday of Confucius, the great ancient Chinese thinker and philosopher revered around the world. More than 10,000 people, including his descendants, scholars and representatives from foreign embassies in China and international organizations, attended the ceremony at the Confucius Temple in Qufu, his birthplace. Confucius and his disciples advocated positive self-discipline, healthy living, maintaining harmony in family life, peace and order in the country, peace in the world. His thoughts are still studied worldwide.

Inside the mind of a killer The Finnish high school tragedy once again shows that ideas have consequences --snip-- * 'I am a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial social darwinist, realistic idealist and godlike atheist.’ * ‘Life is just a coincidence … result of long process of evolution and many several factors, causes and effects.’ * ‘There are no other universal laws than the laws of nature and the laws of physics.’ * ‘Evolution is both a theory and a fact, creationism is neither one.’ * ‘Religious people, your gods are nothing and exists only in your heads. Your slave...

Von Hildebrand remarks further that it's vitally important for human beings to be aware of their ontological value -- their dignity as persons made in God's image and likeness. The pantheistic view that we're but drops in an immense universe is fake humility, a subtle lack of gratitude for the fact that God -- in His infinite bounty and generosity -- has metaphysically "knighted" us. Apart from ontological values that are more or less beautiful according to their ontological rank, von Hildebrand speaks about qualitative values, moral values, intellectual values, and aesthetical values, to mention the most important ones. These...

Known as the “City of Brotherly love”, this earthquake prone city was the home of this faithful church. Founded by the Pergamon King Attalos II, for his brother Eumenes, this city often changed its name during various times of its history, depending upon what ruler the inhabitants wanted to honor. The name Philadelphia was a reflection of the love and commitment that Attalus II showed to his elder brother Eumenes who ruled throughout Lydia before him. Thus, the “City of Brotherly Love”. Attalos wanted his new city to be a center for the Greco- Roman civilization, this way he could...

Jerry Coyne and Aquinas’ First Way Jerry Coyne and Jim Manzi have been mixing it up lately over the religious implications of evolution. Coyne asserts, quite rudely at times, that evolution disproves the existence of God. Manzi disagrees, and asserts that theism is compatible with evolutionary science. I’ve had a blog discussion or two with Manzi, and he’s a thoughtful courteous interlocutor. He doesn’t believe that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific inference (so he’s not perfect), but he is logically rigorous and very well informed on scientific matters as well as on the broader philosophical issues. He believes that...

The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty http://www.thefreemanonline.org In Defense of IdeologyPosted By Mario Rizzo • September 2009 • Vol. 59/Issue 7 There have been many statements recently to the effect that we should not let “ideology” or “philosophy” stand in the way of solving our economic problems. Indeed, the Obama administration (like the previous Bush administration) is keen to persuade us to drop all this prejudice and to go after each problem–banking, stimulus, and so forth–on its own terms. We should examine each solution on its own merits. President Obama’s inaugural address includes an apparent attack on ideology: What the...

Daniel H from northern England wrote CMI-UK a really encouraging, spontaneous letter, a testimony that we think will also encourage many readers. To: All my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. … I would like to thank the team at Creation Ministries International (CMI) for their resources, time, love, dedication and zeal for our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ; the Almighty Father and the Holy Spirit, who empowers the church to give glory to the Son and live holy lives and become more fruitful in our walk in the LORD, Amen. Formerly, I was an unbeliever who mocked the...

Mock the NationNICK COHEN September 2009 The free availability of hard-core pornography on the internet is changing relationships between men and women in ways we have barely begun to talk about, but it is also changing television. What should executives do with the knowledge that sections of their ever-fragmenting audience are watching images they could not have found in the greasiest Soho basements 20 years ago? Once they would have ignored them, but now that television's power is waning, it must run after every viewer it can find. It cannot give them porn — not yet, anyway — but with Mock...

COLUMNGame Over, Man?The Big Guy’s Guide to Guydomby Les Sillars Dear Big Guy, Dude!!!! We are so totally BUSTED!! It started last night. I was chillin’ with the guys, you know, watching some porn, playing a little poker, drinking some brews. And then Ms. Wet Blanket comes in and says we should turn it down a little. Well, like any Guy, I told her where to go, and Mom totally freaked out on us. We were in her freakin’ house, in her freakin’ living room, she shouldn’t have to put up with this at 3 a.m., what was that on her...

Had an argument with a friend, and he said that "we have socialized institutions for national defense, police, fire, and mail delivery.....if government is good enough for that, why can't they provide healthcare?" Obviously I knew it was a dumb statement, but I struggled to come up with a solid, reasoned, and strong rebuttal right away. Anyone got any good ideas?

I found this letter to the editor from last week’s issue of The Economist thoughtful. (And note that “liberal” here is used in the European sense where it basically means “libertarian” in the American sense — as it should): SIR – The belief that working economies could be precisely represented by very abstract and simple models should have worried any liberal economist. Only a kind of religious faith in the ability of the human mind to represent the fabric of society mathematically could have led to such confidence in these models. Any economist who has read Hayek, and other conservative...

As I watched the events of the week unfold before my eyes, I was struck by the way we as a nation have been transformed from a fairly stable capitalist Republic into a very shaky Socialist state almost overnight. Then as I prepared my outline on the seven churches of Revelation for my Sunday sermon, I found myself reading the term paper I wrote in seminary class a few years back on the book of Revelation. Considering the speed at which things have evolved in the past year, it is my opinion that what I wrote back then is relevant...

As I watched the events of the week unfold before my eyes, I was struck by the way we as a nation have been transformed from a fairly stable capitalist Republic into a very shaky Socialist state almost overnight. Then as I prepared my outline on the seven churches of Revelations for my Sunday sermon, I found myself reading the term paper I wrote in seminary class a few years back on the book of Revelations. Considering the speed at which things have evolved in the past year, it is my opinion that what I wrote back then is...

Bogus Theories, Bad for Business The follies of ‘management science’ and the consulting that promotes it. By PHILIP DELVES BROUGHTON Three years ago, Matthew Stewart published a ­provocative article in The Atlantic magazine blasting modern management theory and ­education. His advice to anyone considering an MBA was “don’t go to business school, study philosophy.”The ­secrets of business, he said, were to be found in ­history, literature and the classic ruminations on life and existence, not in the half-baked ramblings of ­business academics, consultants and “gurus.” In “The ­Management Myth,” he expands the Atlantic article into a devastating bombardment of managerial...

The Evolutionist is "Shocked, Shocked to Find Religion in Here" --snip-- Evolutionary thought is, and always has been profoundly religious. Of course that is nothing new--religious mandates have always been influential. What is remarkable is the denial of evolutionists about their own arguments and convictions...

(CNSNews.com) - A Zogby poll commissioned by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute says more than three-quarters of Americans would like teachers to have the freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution, with an even higher number reported among Democrats...

Last week, my wife and I concluded a trip to California with a visit to the Reagan Library, a place I had always wanted to visit.It wasn't exactly easy or convenient. We were staying in the Palm Springs area at the conclusion of a family wedding (her side, our nephew) and it was our first visit to California since the last family wedding five years ago. Our itinieary for the day consisted of dropping our daughter off at the John Wayne airport for a noon flight back to her college in Idaho, a quick lunch and an afternoon at the...

Moral Relativism; The Liberal LynchpinPosted By Michael McGruther On July 9, 2009 @ 2:51 pm In Entertainment, Politics, Religion | 2 Comments The vast majority of adults in this world know that moral perfection is absolutely impossible, so I get upset when self proclaimed Hollywood/MSM liberals ruthlessly attack any conservative that cannot do the impossible; avoid succumbing to temptation for their entire life. Hollywood/MSM liberals always use this angle to attack conservatives nationwide because by strongly believing in nothing specific they’ve set themselves up to perpetually come out on top of any moral argument, guilt, worry and public-scorn free.[1] In...

The other day I was driving behind a car with a “Friend of Tibet” Virginia license plate. That’s great and I’d like to be a “Friend” myself, but with the job and the family and cutting the lawn … Can I just become a “Facebook Friend of Tibet?” If so, am I entitled to the same preening as Tibet’s actual Friends? It got me wondering whether we’d see “Free Iran” paraphernalia anytime soon, and whether we’d see it on the same Volvos and Priuses as those “Free Tibet” bumper stickers. Somehow I doubt it, since Obama could barely fit any...

New Voices in Evolution Activism: From Madalyn Murray O'Hair to Eugenie Scott by Lawrence Ford* Recently, the prestigious publication Scientific American honored Eugenie Scott as one of its ten most influential science people in America, along with a manager at a computer chip company, an electric car industry executive, an infectious disease physician, and even Bill Gates from Microsoft. Who is Eugenie Scott and why is she being honored? Did she contribute to lifesaving cancer research? No. Did she invent a device that will help millions of people in need? No.Kate Wilcox of Scientific American writes of Scott: Thomas Henry...

  MSNBC.com On marriage: Let’s call the whole thing off Author Sandra Tsing Loh is ending her marriage. Is it time you did, too? By Sandra Tsing Loh The Atlantic updated 6:27 a.m. PT, Mon., June 22, 2009 Sadly, and to my horror, I am divorcing. This was a 20-year partnership. My husband is a good man, though he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47-year-old woman whose commitment to monogamy, at the very end, came unglued. This turn of events was a surprise. I don’t generally even enjoy men; I had an entirely manageable...

Summer 2009Vol. 4, No. 2This article is from TOS Vol. 4, No. 2. The full contents of the issue are listed here. Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution Thomas A. BowdenOn April 17, 1905, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. issued his dissenting opinion in the case of Lochner v. New York.1 At a mere 617 words, the dissent was dwarfed by the 9,000 words it took for the Supreme Court’s eight other Justices to present their own opinions. But none of this bothered Holmes, who prided himself on writing concisely. “The vulgar hardly will believe an opinion important unless...

Roger ScrutonBeauty and Desecration We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness. Spring 2009 At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form....

"Who will guard the guards themselves?" quis custodiet ipsos custodes? — Juvenal, a Roman Poet circa AD 55. Not a new question, but more relevant in 2009 than ever before. In my Latin class, we learned the language, origins, a bit of history and how to translate Roman stories which showed us the culture of Rome. One of my favorites was Patria Nostra (Our Country) and Formica et Cicada, (The Ant and the Grasshopper.) These stories were only a few paragraphs in length, and the main exercise was to translate everything into English, including the meaning of the main idea....

In Vino Veritas: I'll Drink to That Roger Scruton June 2009 Concerns over binge drinking — the habit of drinking large quantities of alcohol with the intention of getting drunk, usually in company but without the benefit of conversation of any kind — have brought into focus the great difference that exists between virtuous and vicious drinking. Our puritan legacy, which sees pleasure as the doorway to vice, makes it difficult for many people to understand this difference. If alcohol causes drunkenness, they think, then the sole moral question concerns whether you should drink it at all, and if so...

What Philosophy Does Obama Ascribe to? I see him as Machiavellian. By Laurie Pruser-Stockman The basic principles of Machiavellian theory are: 1. People are basically dishonest. 2. Most people think about their finances first and then in terms of right and wrong. 3. To get support and power, tell the people what they want to hear. 4. Being kind and honest are not the ways to earn respect.