ReeferMadness

Frightening, isn't it. Presumably, her philosophy is intended to be applied to the real world and the story is there to support the philosophy. If you're going to use the story to argue that the philosophy works in a real world, the story should make sense in a real world. This one doesn't. The world is complex and confusing. Many people resort to fundamentalist beliefs as a defense mechanism. Her philosophy is economic fundamentalism. Like its cousin, religious fundamentalism, it makes a poor basis for a philosophy but it is attractive to a lot of people. If she can't illustrate her views in a more realistic context, that should be a warning sign to thinking readers that maybe her views don't apply in the real world BTW, if your label of 'leftwinger' was intended for me, I'll thank you from refraining in the future. I am an individual and don't belong to any political team. That's a pretty weak argument. It sounds like it bothers you that your hero can't write for shit.

I've heard that Rand's followers have been called a cult, and that there is some truth to that description. Rand was an atheist and it's ironic how much Atlas Shrugged reads like a bible story. There are good people and bad people. The good people have a creed handed down to them by a prophet. The prophet says everyone has free will but the only right way to use it is to follow the creed. The prophet runs around and builds his base of disciples. There is a struggle between good and evil. Unless the bad people repent and change their ways, the world will be destroyed. Then the prophet leads the people into the promised land. Technology plays the role of God, smiting the evil and rewarding the righteous. Scary.

Nonsense. I rarely buy books anymore - it's a resource and environmental waste to have the paper lying around. In fact, I think she had some interesting things to say about personal responsibility and honesty. Too bad it was hard to pick out amongst the 1000 pages of dross. If she had cut about 900 pages and knew how to write, it might have been a decent book. Clearly, she had no respect for her readers. Well, it could be but the book is written on the undefended premise that the right amount of collectivism is zero. If she was only preaching to the choir, maybe she could have cut 80% of the book. It read like a children's book or a hokey cowboy book. White hats against black hats. How can anyone take that shit seriously?

After Paul Ryan was named Republican VP candidate, I picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged (from the public library, just to make Ayn roll in her grave ). All I can say is Oh. My. Gawd. How could anyone publish such a poorly written, repetitive, implausible piece of crap? Didn't they have editors back then?? I don't understand how people can get through it, much less have it alter their world views. The characters are cardboard-cutout caricatures. The heroes are all tall, thin and have 'taut mouths' where as the villains are variously described as jellied, beefy, loose-mouthed and a whole lot of derogatory terms. None of of the protagonists seem to have children (and the book was released at the height of the baby boom), which is kind of odd, considering they are about to rebuild society. The book seems to consist mostly of heroes giving each other endless, repetitive lectures on morality and personal responsibility and how society is victimizing the poor, wealthy industrialists. After a while, you just want to say "OK, Ayn, we get it!!" The John Galt monologue goes on for a mind-numbing 56 pages!! I dare them to put that in one of the movies. How many people would line up and pay 12 bucks to watch a 3 hour lecture?? What plot exists is highly implausible and the pointless plot twists seemed to be nothing more than a framework to allow the characters to spout Rand's simpleton views - in exasperating detail.

That's it, Bill! When you're incompetent, don't try to change. Be proud of who you are and revel in it! Tell Canadians you're wasting their money and if they don't like it they can damn well go out and kill third world civilians themselves!! Hey, at least you're honest. Maybe you could give Harper and his crew a few lessons on that score.

Well, Bill, I've never claimed to be a military expert. But I have done procurement once or twice. And what we do is document our requirements before we choose what we want to buy. I know that might be a strange notion to all the military geniuses out there who will say things like "Napoleon never wrote a military specification in his life and see how well he did!!" Oh, and maybe since it's Canadians money being spent, it would be nice if our government was honest with us about how they're shoveling the money into the American arms industry.

Jerry, now we all know what you do in your spare time. We just don't know why. I've generated a few theories - maybe you can tell me which one is correct. * You come from Bountiful, BC. You have 25 wives and 600 children. So, obviously your family needs room to play. * Your hobby is bocce but not the normal way. You prefer to shoot the balls from catapults to give the game that authentic ancient Roman empire feel. * You own a herd of 400 goats of the genus delicutaneous, known for their dainty feet. Clearly, you can't make them run around on untrimmed grass. All right, I give up. I don't know what the hell you do on all that lawn. I do know that if you drive through the Creston, BC area, you'll see acreages occupied by transplanted retired farmers. I suppose they miss home because they've sawed down all of the forest and planted acre after acre of lawn. The lawn is beautiful because nobody ever uses it for anything. Looking after it does keep them something to do, though.

I agree.

Wow, I'm impressed. Do any of these 30 "showroom models" have software? Oh, wait, still another 6 million lines of code to be written. I'm sure it will all work perfectly.

Don't count your orders until they're delivered. They're ridiculous white elephants and any governments that commit billions to them are out of their gourds. Not to mention, they're a completely asinine choice for defending the vast spaces of Canada. Too few of them, single engines (meaning we will lose more of them), limited range. Hey, want a spare Prime Minister? Cheap. Low mileage too - less than 50,000 lies told (so far). He'd fit right in with all of the right-wing, hairball looney-tunes you have down there.

I rue the day when my grandkids ask me just what the hell were we thinking in the latter half of the 20th century and the first half of the 21st. It took the earth 500 million years to produce the fossil fuels and we burn them in ride-on mowers and hummers. Ridiculous lifestyles where we live 2 hours from work. Childless couples living in 3000 square foot homes. If stupidity could be criminal, this is what it would look like.

I agree there is plenty of wasted land in lawns. I just don't think that the the land lost to ethanol production that would be required to replace fossil fuels would be made up by planting gardens instead of lawn. Let me put it this way. Could you grow enough biomass in an average backyard to run your car? I don't think so. Prove me wrong. Show me the math.

Change is here. Peak oil has been in North America for a long time. Conventional crude production peaked in the 70's. About half of Canadian oil production comes from the tar sands. Biofuels might be the future but not they way you're presenting them. Using cropland to grow fuel or tires just pushes up the price of food and causes starvation. Add that to the collapsing fish stocks around the world and global famine looms large. The future of biofuels is algae. Instead of using valuable cropland, you can use brackish water. No matter how you slice it, though, things are going to change. Biofuels are not going to provide the type of energy density we need to sustain North American-type lifestyles. Not when the third world countries are growing wealthier and are going to demand lifestyle improvements of their own. Move close to work. Dump the speedboat and the quad. Stop driving a fuel-guzzling pickup truck when all you really need is a smart car. It really isn't that hard to figure out.

It's $5.60 per US gallon Or $6.36 per Imperial gallon

I'm sure Harper will continue to do just that. Too bad we can't scrap him.

Hilarious. It seems like all the people who were apoplectic over any perceived issue when the Liberals were in government have found forgiveness. Now, suddenly, incompetence and corruption are entirely understandable. How could anyone not know the numbers that were coming out of DND were entirely laughable??? There was plenty of information coming out of the US that indicated the F35's were having performance issues, were going way over budget and were seriously delayed.

Wow, that's a really compelling argument. Let's buy more aircraft and support the American war toy industry so we can.. scrap them. Where do I send my money?

character assassination ads ... in and out scandal .... Cotler affair ..... and now blatant voter manipulation. We're now a banana republic democracy. Wow, I am so proud to be a Canadian. Maybe the Conservatives should just start buying votes for cash. At least that would be more honest.

I agree that Dieppe was not a total waste and a screw-up. WWII was a total waste and a screw-up. 50+ million dead (depends on your choice of estimates). Europe and much of Asia in ruins. Economies destroyed. And arguably, none of it would have happened had the major powers not been so determined to stick it to the Germans after WW1. Next to the main event, Dieppe was an irrelevant sideshow. In fact, arguably the entire western front was a sideshow. The west looked on while Germany and the USSR ground each other away in a grueling war of attrition. For a long time it was fashionable for Americans to say things like if it wasnt for us, you would be speaking German. But if the truce between Hitler and Stalin had held, Hitlers grandkids might be running Europe today. On the subject of WWII, it has become fashionable to blame Chamberlain for kowtowing to Hitler. But it is also convenient to forget how much support Hitler had around the world even as it became clear that he was persecuting the Jews. In particular, he had a lot of friends in the US. Luminaries like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. GM helped build his motorized divisions. Without the help of the German subsidiary of IBM (Dehomag), the Germans could not have conducted mass murder on the scale that they did. IBM CEO Thomas Watson accepted a medal from Hitler in 1937.

I watch very little TV so I won't comment directly about CBC TV content. I do listen to a fair bit of radio and the station I listen to most is CBC. They have great informational shows - stuff that can't be found on commercial radio. Because they aren't beholden to advertisers, they can cover stuff commercial stations wouldn't touch. Most major industrialized countries have public broadcasters. And most of them are funded (on a per capita basis) much better than the CBC. Maybe those other countries know something that the right-wingers on Mapleleafweb don't. Take a gander at this document. Canada funds its public broadcaster worse than other western democracies save for the USA and New Zealand. If the CBC has been reduced to carrying crap like "Dragon's Den", maybe there's a reason for it.

And your statistics make me wrong how? My point was that Harper, the sleaziest Federal leader since Mulroney (remember your last great hero secretly taking bags of cash from a German crook?), is changing the rules so that they work best for him. I remember all the howls of outrage that came from the right-wingers after the sponsorship scandal. Remember how Harper was going to restore accountability and integrity? Nobody is talking about that anymore. I wonder why. Thanks for your statistics though.

It really isn't too difficult, Bob. The Liberals were getting most of the corporate donations. The NDP were getting the bulk of the union donations. This was Harper's way of containing the donations to wealthy ideologically motivated individuals, which of course are Harper's strength. Refer to my earlier post.

The fact is that they did the right thing although it was against their interests. That shows integrity. Of course, Harper will do the same, right? I know it hurts because you guys really, really want to believe that somehow the Conservatives aren't really just a bunch of self-serving sleaze bags. Just like they used to portray the Liberals.

Another Harper act that tilts the playing field in the Conservative's favour. What a surprise.

So, how effective is prohibition? Not very. Link Under regulation, people who sell beer and cigarettes have a disincentive to sell to kids. Not so with drugs that are illegal anyway.