Cappy

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Ideas

The two remaining investment banks in the United States have been, for all intents and purposes, nationalized. I could go into the reasons for why this happened, but others have already done so in a far better manner. But to sum up: the government caused several major problems through over-regulation that it then attempted to “solve” with far more government regulation. So now the Fed has more power over American private finance than ever before, and this will to America going completely bankrupt all the quicker. It happened the same way in Germany, Russia, etc. And once that line was crossed, those countries skipped ahead from a slow descent into implosion to a nose dive.

Others in the Objectivist community are saying that this is an event the country can survive, that the effects can be reversed, that the country just might not cave in on itself…

Really? History and reason begs to differ. Governments do not give up power. It just doesn’t happen. Even in the few cases where it seems like a government is giving up power (such as China’s recent institution of some freer policies), it is only doing so to keep itself afloat (men who starve to death can’t pay taxes).

Countries only have a chance to become freer when the current government is completely decimated (and even then it isn’t a sure thing, of course). Germany and Japan became freer after they were destroyed in WWII, Russia became freer after Communism ran out of flesh to feed on. And America will only have a chance to become free again when the current Socialist government dies.

Why then are the pursuers of a philosophy whose greatest artistic achievement - Atlas Shrugged - supports helping to speed along the death of a violent, immoral government interested at all in attempting to save ours? Must we wait until every hospital and airport has been socialized? Are we not yet convinced that enough lines have been crossed? Are we not yet convinced that there is no going back? Don’t just tell me that it is, show me that it is. Explain to me the realistic steps that could take place that would move our government back to a freedom-supporting entity.

I would much rather sit back, stock up on silver (it’s too late to buy gold…) and wait for the fall. And when that happens, we can be ready to help people understand why it happened, and what should be done now.

Even if the government reverses some of what it has done once things get too bad, what does that prove to anyone? Certainly not that our government should be replaced. Business will get blamed for what went wrong, and the government will get credit for setting it right, just like the Great Depression. No one, except for the few that already do so now, will question the validity of the state we live in until it fails. And it will fail very soon, and I look forward to it.

Current Events, Ideas

Petrichor: The pleasant loomy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a long dry spell.
Ambisinistrous: Having two left hands; clumsy. (The opposite of ambidextrous)
Residentarian: A person who is given to remaining at table.
Wine-knight: One who drinks valiantly.
Unbepissed: Not wet with piss, from some long forgotten world where so many things were covered in urine, a word was needed to distinguish the dry remainders.
Quomodocunquize: To make money in any way possible.
Psithurism: The whispering of leaves moved by the wind.
Preantepenult: Not the last, not the one before the last, and not the one before that. The next one.
Onomatomania: Vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word (classic!).
Kakistocracy: Government by the worst citizens.
Indesinence: Want of proper ending.
Gymnologize: To dispute naked, like an Indian philosopher.
Mawdlin-drunke: “When a fellow will weep for kinding in the midst of his Ale, and kisses you, saying; By God Captain I love thee, go thy ways thou does not think of me so often as I do of thee, I would (if it pleased God) I could not love thee so well as I do, and then he puts his finger in his eye, and cries.”
Felicificability: Capacity for happiness.
Chrestomathic: Devoted to the learning of useful matters. (As opposed to:)
Mataeotechny: An unprofitable or useless science or skill.

Taken from Reading the OED by Ammon Shea

Ideas

But when it comes to evolution, many people are still as cognitively trapped as this mandrill is by his cage, comfortable and natural though it might seem. Some people look at primates and think that shared ancestry is a slur on mankind. But no fact changes an ever-present identity, and wonderment is not diluted when extended to facts at all scales of time and space. As Darwin so famously concluded, ‘There is grandeur in this view of life, . . . ; from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.’”

Emphasis mine. From Katie’s post on the Darwin Day Photo Contest.

UPDATE: That reminds me. I just ordered this awesome t-shirt. It’s a trifecta: it pokes fun at Che Guevara, promotes evolution, and has a funny picture of a monkey in a Cuban hat! Who could ask for more? I got this one too.

Ideas

I recently had the idea to write a series of stories based around the beauty and joy possible in a life of atheism. All too often atheists are cast as misanthropes and nihilists (and they is the case, from time to time), and I’d much rather show the better side of a godless life.

If anyone happens upon this and has such a story, fictional or otherwise, I’d love to hear it. I’ve been trying to come up with ideas for such stories myself, with limited success (though, admittedly, I just started trying), but I think the idea is sound. Why should believing that there is nothing beyond this life be a black concept? Why should living your life for yourself rather than some invisible deity be anything but fulfilling and lovely? I think a couple good stories would go a long way to show that life can be just that. (OK, just had an idea, will follow up on it)

Ideas