Even while the nuclear industry is able to externalize its costs for insurance (which are federally limited), loan guarantees (which are federally backstopped), decommissioning (which is pushed onto ratepayers) and waste handling (which is pushed onto taxpayers), it still lost. If it had to stand on its own and pay its full insurance costs like every other energy source, we could never build another nuclear plant in America, because no private investors would be willing to take that kind of risk. It's hard to imagine how the economics could be more tilted in nuclear's favor (although I'm sure its proponents have ideas on that).

Meanwhile, outside the fantasy world inhabited by the [Breakthrough Institute] the real energy market has moved on. The US installed 13,200 megawatts of wind capacity in 2012, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Part of being a professional lies in knowing what not to do.

 
When you understand romance, you notice all sorts of things that guys do which indicate that they have not attained a high degree of mastery in this area. They make mistakes — some huge, many sloppy and small.
 
I was in a restaurant the other day, and saw a guy come in with a young woman. Over the course of ten minutes, I witnessed:
 

1. She opened the door when they entered.
 
2. As they stood inside waiting for the hostess to come over to them, he put his hand on the back of her neck and began rubbing it.
 
3. When the hostess said, "You can sit wherever you like," the guy turned to his girl and asked, "Where do you want to sit?"
 
4. Once at the table, he talked excessively. He complained. He swore.
 
5. When their food arrived, he mostly looked down at his plate and concentrated on feeding his face, barely making eye contact with the woman.

 
One might argue that these are minor issues. They are. But romance is very much about "little things" — details that demonstrate that a man is aware, that he is sophisticated and mature, and that he knows what he's doing.
 
Romance isn't friendship. It's not enough for a woman to think you're a cool guy with an interesting personality. It's not enough for her merely to like you; she has to admire you, and experience you emotionally as her protector.
 
A high-quality woman wants to sense that you are a cut above the masses of men. She needs to feel that you're special and different.
 
At best, every error that a guy makes in romance represents a missed opportunity — a moment when he could have made a positive impression, but didn't.
 
There's no better way to come across as "different" in a woman's eyes than to study romance, internalize its principles, and put yourself across at all times in a professional manner!
 
P.S.:

1. A professional man opens the door for a woman.

2. A professional man does not put his hands on a woman in public.

3. A professional man selects the table in a restaurant.

4. A professional man doesn't talk too much; he keeps his conversation polite and positive.

5. A professional man makes relaxed, easygoing eye contact with a woman, casting her in the spotlight of his awareness. He makes her feel seen, heard, acknowledged and important.
 
© 2013 Kevin Delaney

The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man’s mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence.

-Rand

So if I go outside and build a mud hut somewhere I own it.  It is my hut because I built it; that is, without myself, my idea and my actions it would not exist at all.

What the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect the mind’s contribution in its purest form: the origination of an idea. The subject of patents and copyrights is intellectual property.

An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form. An invention has to be embodied in a physical model before it can be patented; a story has to be written or printed. But what the patent or copyright protects is not the physical object as such, but the idea which it embodies.

-Rand

So if I go and invent the idea of a hut I own it; without myself and my idea, no huts (as such) would ever be invented. . . ?

AND if someone goes out and builds a hut without my permission, they are initiating coercive force against me:

By forbidding an unauthorized reproduction of the object, the law declares, in effect, that the physical labor of copying is not the source of the object’s value, that that value is created by the originator of the idea and may not be used without his consent; thus the law establishes the property right of a mind to that which it has brought into existence.

-Rand

So, if someone uses my idea at all they are acting as a human photocopier.

Thusly, if someone copies my idea without my permission, they are in effect stealing it from my mind; it is theft in the same way and for the same reasons as physical theft.

Note the distinction between physical theft and intellectual theft; see what happens if it's removed.

Note the implication of MINDLESS AUTOMIZATION inherent in treating potential property (ideas) as if they were actual property.

But are human beings capable of being truly mindless, and are ideas (which are POTENTIAL values) synonymous with actual values?

1.  An item's creator is its owner

2.  The first person to think of an idea is its de facto creator

C:  Intellectual property

I find the minor premise dubious but, even if we accept that, can you own someone's MIND (entailed by owning their ideas)?

Note I say 'their' ideas and, even if someone else thought of it first, it would be unintelligible to say that one person owns the ideas in someone else's mind.

Finally, I defy you to conceive of an implementation of IP which does not violate individual rights.

The prohibition of murder doesn't violate anyone's rights; nor does its implementation.  Same for rape and (physical!) theft.

So, if one man does have the right to his intellectual property after someone else has VOLITIONALLY learned of it (I'm not disputing the alternative) then his right doesn't have to violate anyone else's rights; does it?

My argument, as a syllogism:

1.  An item's creator is its owner

2.  Ideas of items are potentials; not actuals

3.  Whoever takes an idea (from any source) and acts on it owns the consequences

• Question 1: The Good in American Culture: How is American culture better today better than people think? I've heard lots of depressing claims about the abysmal state of American culture lately, particularly since Obama won the election. You've disputed that, arguing that America is better in its fundamentals that many people think. What are some of those overlooked but positive American values? How can they be leveraged for cultural and political change?
• Question 2: Romance Between an Atheist and a Believer: Can a romance between an atheist and a religious believer work? What are the major obstacles? Should the atheist attend church or church socials with his spouse? Should they have a religious wedding ceremony? Should they send their children to religious schools? Do the particular beliefs – or strength of beliefs – of the religious person matter?
• Question 3: The Limits of Humor: When does humor work against my values? Sometimes I wonder whether my jokes work against what I value. (For example, what's the most selfish sea creature? An Objectifish!) How do I draw the line?

Google’s Effort to Skirt Regulation May Invite More Scrutiny

Google’s motto is “don’t be evil.” But its recent acquisition of Waze, reportedly for $1 billion in cash, shows that just because you’re not evil, it doesn’t mean you can’t be aggressive in pushing the boundaries of the law.

The question now is whether the United States government pushes back and forces Google to give back its new toy.

Waze is yet another one of those blockbuster deals for a technology company with little or no revenue that makes you jealous. Five-year-old Waze has just 110 employees, so Google appears to be paying almost $10 million per employee. As for profits, Waze’s chief executive, Noam Bardin, has said, “This is Silicon Valley. We don’t talk about those things here.” Right.

Google is paying top dollar for Waze because it is at the intersection of two hot fields: map search and social media. Users download Waze’s app to their phone and then supply information about locations, routes and traffic, making the maps more intelligent. And Waze has the usual phenomenal growth in users, with 50 million worldwide. This is a field where there is believed to be oodles of money to be made in related advertising.

From this vantage point, the deal has a number of “must” business justifications for Google. Google is the top dog, dominating the “turn-by-turn” market for mobile maps on smartphones, and Waze makes Google a bigger dog.

Perhaps more important, buying Waze keeps the technology out of the hands of Facebook, which had reportedly bid about $1 billion for the company, and Microsoft and Apple, which also reportedly bid $400 million for the company earlier this year.

A billion dollars not only cements Google’s lead in map search, it does so in a big way. Google has paid large sums to have cars drive around the world to give its maps information content. But Waze is doing the same thing on the cheap by having its own users do the work.

Both types of systems are difficult and hard to build, meaning new entrants are unlikely to come. Just witness the difficulties Apple faced with the controversy over the accuracy of its own map app. If Apple can’t do this easily with its built-in user base of some 400 million iPhone users, not many others can.

So one might think that there would be significant antitrust issues with the acquisition. Google, already the dominant player, is buying what looks like a rising competitor, and it is doing so in a way that deprives other big players an easier way to compete.

It’s here where Google is pushing as hard as it can on the law.

Normally, to acquire a company in the United States, a buyer is required to supply the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission with what is known as a Hart-Scott-Rodino filing. This notifies the agencies of the transaction so either can review it for compliance with the antitrust laws.

The filing also prompts a waiting period during which the government can delay the acquisition to begin an in-depth investigation to determine if there is an antitrust problem. This is one reason that public takeovers are completed months after they are announced: the companies involved are waiting to clear antitrust review in the United States or another country.

This is the normal process. Yet Google’s only announcement of the deal appears to say that the companies signed and closed the deal that day, leaving Google the proud owner of Waze.

According to a person close to Google, the company skipped the Hart-Scott-Rodino filing by relying on an exemption. This filing is not required if the acquisition is of a foreign company that has sales and assets in the United States of less than $60.9 million. Waze is an Israeli company with headquarters in Silicon Valley, so it comes under this test.

Waze probably doesn’t have $50 million in revenue worldwide, yet the test also looks at assets. Given that Waze is worth $1 billion, it is hard to see that the value of its intellectual property in the United States business doesn’t meet the test. And the F.T.C. has previously indicated that companies should include this type of intellectual property in informal guidance.

Nonetheless, Google appears to have taken this aggressive position and is forgoing any antitrust review, instead plunging ahead with the acquisition.

So why did Google do this?

A representative from Google declined to comment.

Google may be playing hardball with the government here. Psychologically, it may be harder for the government to undo something that is done. And once Google acquires this company, it will become harder to force it to undo any integration it may have done with its own services. (For now, Google has said it will keep Waze separate.)

Not only that, but the Waze owners may have wanted to sell precisely on this basis, avoiding this huge possibility that the United States government would reject the deal, a risk that Google may have been willing to take with Facebook and Apple hovering.

But given the publicity over the acquisition, the government will almost certainly step in to review. Consumer groups are circling, and the Consumer Watchdog Group has written the government to ask for an in-depth review. That group has noted that Google’s purchase of Doubleclick and AdMob led it to a 93 percent market share in mobile advertising.

As with previous deals, the government can force Google to sell Waze, or put other restrictions in place, if there is a problem.

The standard was set forth in a piece of legislation passed a century ago: Will the acquisition “substantially lessen competition”? In part, this will come from how the market is defined — if it is just maps, well, you have to include companies like Rand McNally.

If it is turn-by-turn maps on smartphones, then according to Berg Insight, Telenav has a 33 percent market share while Google and Waze’s combined North American market share would be 28 percent. But Telenav’s business is stagnant and Google’s grew 30 percent last year, while Waze’s business grew 100 percent, according to Berg.

It may all come down to how easy it would be for another company to replicate what Waze is doing — it built an enormous user base that made it worth a billion dollars.

Even if Google can show that this deal does not decrease competition, the acquisition can be unwound if Waze is found to meet Justice Department guidelines as a “firm that plays a disruptive role in the market to the benefit of customers.” André Malm, a senior analyst at Berg, told me, “There is nothing like Waze.” He noted that the company was shaking up the market, so the authorities will pursue this line of investigation.

Either way, the comments of Mr. Bardin are not going to help, but they do serve as a reminder to other start-up chiefs looking to sell to their competitor not to say they that are the only game in town.

At the least, this all means that the Waze acquisition is likely to get a thorough review by the government. The battle will now begin. That Google will keep Waze without restrictions is no certainty. But the government faces a challenge. If it does decide to try to unwind this acquisition, Google is going to push the bounds of the law as hard as it can. The future of map search is at stake, and Google may not be evil, but this is business.

This gem was taken from the complaint by the Consumer WatchDog Group referenced in the above article:

I am writing on behalf of Consumer Watchdog to urge you to block Google’s just announced $1 billion

acquisition of Waze, developers of a mobile mapping application, on antitrust grounds if Department of

Justice is the agency that ultimately reviews the deal. I understand that the value of the acquisition is

substantially above the threshold requiring regulatory approval and could be reviewed by either the DOJ

or the Federal Trade Commission. It is not clear to me which agency will scrutinize the deal, so I wanted

to express Consumer Watchdog’s concerns to both agencies as soon as possible.

 

Google already dominates the online mapping business with Google Maps. The Internet giant was able to

muscle its way to dominance by unfairly favoring its own service ahead of such competitors as Mapquest

in its online search results. Now with the proposed Waze acquisition the Internet giant would remove the

most viable competitor to Google Maps in the mobile space. Moreover, it will allow Google access to

even more data about online activity in a way that will increase its dominant position on the Internet.

....

You should take Bardin at his word. Approval of the Waze deal can only allow Google to remove any

meaningful competition from the market. It will hurt consumers and hinder technological innovation. If

the acquisition comes before the you, I urge you to reject it in the strongest possible terms.

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/cltrdojwaze061213.pdf

How did this captain know -- from 50 feet away -- what the father couldn't recognize from just 10? Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that's all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew know what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, "Daddy" she hadn't made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn't surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.

In April 2012, the Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Dine invaded the city of Timbuktu and began a reign of terror, destroying historical sites and imposing sharia law. The terrorist leaders took as their headquarters the multi-million dollar Ahmed Baba Institute, a library built for the preservation of ancient scholarship, thereby threatening the trove of priceless manuscripts housed therein. The institute’s collection contained many writings from 12th–16th century Arabic scholars whom these Muslims deemed heretical and whose works Ansar al-Dine likely would destroy.

Knowing this, Dr. Abdul Kader Haidara, a collector and curator for the institute, swiftly organized an effort involving library staff and other townsmen to hide these manuscripts in metal trunks and secretly transport them to a safe location. The mission involved dozens of secret trips by donkey caravan and resulted in the evacuation of nearly 2,500 trunks of manuscripts. The efforts of these men paid off: Once the Islamic rebels were expelled from the region, they burned everything they could, including the new Ahmed Baba Institute and whatever ancient manuscripts remained inside. The Islamic invaders destroyed some 16,000 pages of irreplaceable manuscripts; but, because of Haidara’s efforts, the vast majority of manuscripts were saved.

Congratulations to Haidara for helping to save his culture’s precious historical manuscripts from these Islamic barbarians.

Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.

Related:

• Great Islamic Thinkers Versus Islam
• Religion vs. Free Speech

Creative Commons Image: Emilio Labrador

I agree with the The Wall Street Journal: there is nothing inherently wrong with the government having collected "meta data" about phone calls and such. The collection of this information has, reportedly, enabled the government to quash planned terrorist attacks, e.g., an attack on the NYC subways that was in the works in 2009. (Some are objecting that the PRISM data-collection program was not a necessary input in the foiling of that attack; but even if it wasn't, it's better to have all the the sources of information we can.)

In general, I'm not scared by government invasions of privacy. I have no secrets. Those who raise the specter of Big Brother are not on a wrong basic premise, but they are being unrealistic: when and if we fall into the grip of totalitarianism, there will be nothing to stop the dictatorship from spying on us by any means it wishes. Such a regime does not require that the tools have been set up in advance.

This is not to say that the present government should be given carte blanche. And some reining in may well be called for. But alarmism here is unwarranted and counter-productive.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken the first steps in closing the OLists. I created OBloggers in May 2007, and the network grew to 13 lists over the years. They were a big part of my life for a while. I’m proud that they helped create a friendly online community of Objectivists, based on shared values. But they’ve been in a coma for some time, and I’ve moved on. So it’s long past time to let them die.

Here’s the email that I sent to all the OLists this morning:

I’m writing to tell you that I’ve decided shut down the OLists. I’ve been planning to do this for many months now, but I’ve been slow to get it done. (Originally, I’d planned to turn some lists over to their managers, but the lists have been so quiet that I don’t see any point in that now.)

The primary reason for the shut-down is that lists have been mostly dormant, largely thanks to the rise of social media. I could have worked to revive them, but due to events over the past few years in the Objectivist movement, I’ve lost interest in my specifically Objectivist projects. These days, I’m focused on Philosophy in Action, and I’m really happy doing that… and I’m pleased to be promoting rational ideas (including Objectivist ideas) to a wide audience.

I’ll leave the lists open for another week or two… and please feel free to post any final announcements or whatnot in that time.

If you want to keep up with what I’m doing with Philosophy in Action, you can subscribe to my one-per-week newsletter that announces upcoming topics for radio shows, posted podcasts, blog posts, and other news.

Finally… many thanks to the OList managers for making the lists possible. We did good work together, and it was a pleasure to work with you!

However, because I want to keep in contact with other paleo Objectivists, so I’ve created a “Paleo Objectivists” group on Facebook. To join, you just have to be a paleo-eating Objectivist.

Novelist Wendy Corsi Staub says that making her children and their activities a priority also helps her to balance motherhood with a demanding writing career. She has sacrificed many of her leisure activities, at least temporarily, while her children are young. That way, she can write and also be there for her kids. "I have two young children, so juggling motherhood with my writing career has made it necessary to give up just about every leisure activity and hobby I used to enjoy, at least during these years while my children need their mom around," she says. "Both my boys play sports, and I make their games and school activities my first priority."

Again, sacrifices like this don't have to be permanent. Children grow up, and over time, writers can reinvolve themselves in activities that once fell by the wayside for writing and family time. It may be that all you have time for is your children and your writing. but as your kids get older they need you less and less, and you can incorporate more of your previous hobbies while also keeping your writing schedule. It's all a matter of balance, time management, and establishing what's important now. (103-104)

Here are my main points : A. A child can be acting rationally while their parents are not.

B.A child can be rationally acting while a statesman is not.

Let's get to some examples. A. A youth wants to work on a science project of theirs which their religious parents deem witchcraft and thus prohibit.  A youth wishes to be with their peers which is intellectually stimulating while the parents prohibit it. 
The outcome of A will be the use of force or violence that parents can use.

B.  A statesman can determine that a child be given to parents who can in turn use violence or if the parents are rational and disagree with the state's laws, the children can be ripped from their parents and put in a foster home or institution where there is total control (hypothetically)

If A, the child would hypothetically leave the situation but because of B they cannot.  Thus, the slavery of a child.

The United States desperately needs to fight and defeat the Muslim nation and Islam. But we're only maybe halfway fighting back against the Muslim people, and perhaps not at all against the ideology of Islam.

We're now mostly relying upon the gov't to protect us. And they, in turn, are mostly involved in spying upon Americans. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and several other terrifying "black" organizations we don't even know about yet are very busy violating our right to privacy and brazenly running roughshod over our 4th Amendment protection against "search and seizure."

Evidently the federal gov't is monitoring every bank and financial transaction whatsoever, and tapping every phone call, and reading every email. And all without probable cause or judicial warrant.

On the one hand, organizations such as Al Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. are true enemies of the US. But on the other hand, so too are the freedom-hating, freedom-destroying FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.

The difference is the Muslims are very weak; they're a disorganized, temporary threat, mostly from the outside. The federal gov't, however, is immensely strong; they're a well-organized, permanent threat, from deep within.

Only one group is a true menace to our liberties, way of life, and happiness. One one group poses an existential threat.   

I am writing a paper on philosophy and I remember something from Atlas Shrugged to the affect of:

Study two things, philosophy to know how the world should be and physics to know how it is.

or

We study philosophy so that we may know how to think, and we study physics so we may know what to think.

Can anybody help me find where the quote comes from?  I can't find it anywhere.

I ask about the melding of social and work that he seems to have mastered with his friends (Much Ado grew out of Shakespeare readings at his house). “For me that’s almost always necessary. I mean, obviously I’ve hung out with the Much Ado crew and they’ve become closer to me than I could have imagined, but the way I see people is by saying, ‘Come over and we’ll read Shakespeare. Come over and we’ll film Shakespeare.’ I need some kind of end. I like there to be a point. I was never a games night guy, but at some point social interaction starts to freak me out. So when there’s a point, it’s easier for me to see the people I love and hang out and try to have fun.

It is a competently directed story of a powerful alien who grows up on Earth with human parents; who comes to love his adopted planet and the people living on it; and who, as an adult, must defend his planet from other aliens of his race who want to destroy humanity and rebuild their homeworld in the ashes. The actors do a fine job: Standouts are Ayelet Zurer as Superman’s mournful yet steadfast birth mother, Kevin Costner as Superman’s Earth father, Diane Lane as his Earth mother, and Henry Cavill as the quiet but steady Man of Steel.

The main problem with the movie is that it feels rushed throughout. It begins with a lengthy sequence of the final days of the alien homeworld of Krypton, but the story it sketches is far too complex to convey sufficiently in a prelude to a film. The film follows the young Superman—Clark Kent to his human companions—as he struggles to control his powers and find his place in an alien world; and, although some of the related scenes are very nicely done, this aspect of the film is substantially underdeveloped. Then the alien invasion becomes a flurry of barely-comprehensible plot turns, explosions, and high-speed aerial battles. Especially disappointing on this score is that the film shows vast destruction yet never pauses to recognize the horror of the resulting carnage.

The film’s greatest strength is that it compellingly dramatizes its theme, the moral virtue of pride, or what Ayn Rand calls “moral ambitiousness.” Superman is a Man of Steel not only because he is nearly indestructible, but because he is a man of great strength of character. He wants to do the right thing, and he does—in contrast to the alien invaders, who explicitly say they’ve “evolved” beyond morality. The theme comes through when Jor-El, Superman’s birth father, explains that every person can choose to be a force for good; when Jonathan Kent tells his adopted alien son that what matters for his future is his strength of moral character; when the young Clark Kent refrains from punching a bully, knowing the devastation that would cause; when as an adult Superman stands to fight his enemies; and when various minor characters courageously fight to defend their values.

On the whole, the film’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses. The fact that a blockbuster motion picture can be made today about the virtue of moral pride—and that Americans are flying to the theaters to see it—says something very hopeful about the state of the culture. And it shows why Superman is the quintessentially American superhero.

Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard.

Related:

• Review: Lincoln
• Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism