So I realize that this is a bit late, but the thread about my status update got a bit out of hand, partially due to attributing positions to me based on the fact that other Objectivists made certain (unclear) comments. (Thank you, Sara, for helping to clarify some of that.) My purpose here is to [...]
Alex Epstein recently sent me this email, and I wanted to share it with whoever reads my blag: Dear friend or appreciator of petroleum, Today, August 27, 2009 is the 150th birthday of the oil industry. A century and a half ago, Edwin Drake successfully drilled the first commercial oil well. 150 years later, oil [...]
In Fall 2007, I took a graduate philosophy class at UCLA (Philosophy 232), which was basically a class on cosmology, dressed up as philosophy of science. Like the other five people in the seminar, I took an “incomplete” in the course, opting to submit my final paper (the only basis for grading in the class) [...]
In this week’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (Season 10, Episode 19: “Selfish”–now there’s a bad name for this episode), A.D.A. Alex Cabot put a mother on trial for failing to vaccinate her son against measles, resulting in its spread to a little girl, killing her. Although ultimately, the anti-vaccination mother was acquitted (and [...]
He’s deaf. It’s not an identity, it’s a disability… Anything I can simulate with a three-dollar pair of earplugs is not a culture.
Today in my Law & Economics class, we discussed campaign contribution limits–i.e., legal bars on how much one can contribute to a politician’s campaign.
For my patent law seminar this semester, I got to write a paper about a topic that I’ve always had a particular interest in–especially since my view on it diverged from Ayn Rand’s. The issue is independent invention in patent–when one person patents an invention, and then another person independently invents the same thing. Under [...]
Yesterday, in my Law & Economics class, we discussed John Rawls, and his “A Theory of Justice”. It’s a fortuitous coincidence that we discussed Rawls in the Week 10 LOGIC General Meeting just last week. I hasten to preface this post with the warning that as of 2009-03-18, this is my first draft, and the [...]
Last Thursday, in my Law & Economics class, my professor was comparing the “goals” of various political systems, soliciting suggestions from the class. When she got to “What is the goal of communism?”, I piped up without missing a beat (and without being called on): “Murder.” There were a few “oooh”s from the back of [...]
Yes, yes she is. At least that’s what Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute argues in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today.