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Its been a few years since I've lived in a place where it snows. Puttsing around the net I found this neat site with info on snowflakes, snowflake photography, and some very beautiful pictures of snowflakes. (Read the entire blog entry)

While Rand was quite vocal in her praise of Aristotle, much of her philosophy and many of her doctrines are strikingly similar to that of two other schools which during the Hellenistic age held much greater influence than did the Peripatos. One school, the Stoics, is mostly familiar to us in the parody of Spock, the "emotionless" pointy-eared Vulcan. The Epicureans were so hated by the early Christians and Jews that epicure and apikoros became bywords for godlessness and licentiousness. This characterization was, of course, a slander, but even Spinoza in the 17th Century was branded apikoros as he was placed under the almost unprecedented lifetime kherem or excommunication of the Jewry of Amsterdam. Below I have posted the forty Principle Doctrines. My source is epicurus.net

Ted Keer (Read the entire blog entry)

Today I went swimming in a swimming pool.  I'm nice and clean.  I wish I could do that everyday! ... (Read the entire blog entry)

I picked the following quotes because of the unique response that they could have on the socialist mindset. It's not just what you say, but how you say it.

I remind my blog readers here that I'm a former zealot-Christian-socialist, and that when I first heard about Rand -- that she promoted selfishness -- I experienced moral revulsion and a deep fear of her (bordering on hate). Even after purchasing the Ayn Rand Lexicon, I avoided the "A" section like the plague (because it contained "abortion" and "atheism").

Using the point that how you say it is about as important as what it is that you have to say, I looked at quotes with a narrow aim. These quotes are meant to appeal to the mind without stirring up the emotional revulsion so common -- perhaps universal -- to the socialist mindset of which I was once a willing victim.

If I had first been approached with these quotes -- instead of being just told to read some Rand -- then my "persuasion" wouldn't have taken the precious months that it did. (Read the entire blog entry)

An answer to 'moral equivalence.' (Read the entire blog entry)

Timeless Reagan. (Read the entire blog entry)

Real lifeboat situations are very much a part of our world.  You can find more than enough examples just by putting “cruise ship accident” into your Internet search engine.  Another set of even more desperate circumstances can be found with an online search for “nightclub fire.”  (Read the entire blog entry)

Reflections on our complex science and technology. (Read the entire blog entry)

NYT readers come unglued when the paper hires a single conservative commentator. (Read the entire blog entry)

Karma is a modern, and severely flawed, social bias, substituting for morality from rational thought. (Read the entire blog entry)