A Recipe For Cultural Change

Yaron Brook
Ayn Rand and the Tea Party: A Recipe for Cultural Change



I particularly enjoyed Dr. Brook's answer to the question of public schools. This question is asked at the 26M:25S mark.

John Allison: Debt Ceiling Crisis Is Primarily the Responsibility of President Obama

College: Destroying Education on all Levels

Colleges and universities today are over-priced, over-valued, and are destroying education on all levels.

College Conspiracy

I value education. I think education, learning, and ideas are (and should be) the most important things to each and every individual in a society. And because of this, the current government public education system from pre-K to graduate school, must be ended.

R.I.P. Dr. Kevorkian

Free Dr. Kevorkian

Dr. Jack Kevorkian and The Right to Assisted Suicide

"The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth--which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--means, in practical terms, that you need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise--to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself--is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way." -- Thomas Bowden

Phantom Federal Budget ‘Cuts’

More Dollars

It's called 'inflation' when more dollars are needed to print more dollars

Nuclear Energy: Is Safe

An excellent article in the Wall Street Journal: Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl

My favorite points from the piece:

1) The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven. If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction. You can't have a "runaway reactor," nor can a reactor explode like a nuclear bomb. A commercial reactor is to a bomb what Vaseline is to napalm. Although both are made from petroleum jelly, only one of them has potentially explosive material.

2) If the pumps are knocked out in a Generation II reactor—as they were at Fukushima Daiichi by the tsunami—the water in the cooling system can overheat and evaporate. The resulting steam increases internal pressure that must be vented. There was a small release of radioactive steam at Three Mile Island in 1979, and there have also been a few releases at Fukushima Daiichi. These produce radiation at about the level of one dental X-ray in the immediate vicinity and quickly dissipate.

3) Early speculation was that in a case like this the fuel might continue melting right through the steel and perhaps even through the concrete containment structure—the so-called China syndrome, where the fuel would melt all the way to China. But Three Mile Island proved this doesn't happen. The melted fuel rods simply aren't hot enough to melt steel or concrete.

4) Early speculation was that in a case like this the fuel might continue melting right through the steel and perhaps even through the concrete containment structure—the so-called China syndrome, where the fuel would melt all the way to China. But Three Mile Island proved this doesn't happen. The melted fuel rods simply aren't hot enough to melt steel or concrete.

5) The Chernobyl reactor had two crucial design flaws. First, it used graphite (carbon) instead of water to "moderate" the neutrons, which makes possible the nuclear reaction. The graphite caught fire in April 1986 and burned for four days. Water does not catch fire. Second, Chernobyl had no containment structure. When the graphite caught fire, it spouted a plume of radioactive smoke that spread across the globe. A containment structure would have both smothered the fire and contained the radioactivity.

Nuclear power, in the hands of private companies and without restraints from no-nothing government bureaucrats, is safe. Nuclear power is safer than gas and coal. Nuclear power is more efficient than solar and wind. Life has risk, progress comes with risk...remove risk and we are all dead. There is no way to be "completely" or "perfectly" safe. Let smart, knowledgeable, experienced people profit, and we all will be better off! Let the government make us "safe", and our biggest fear becomes ever sniveling-snoot-nose-pencil-pusher-with-a-lick-of-government-power.

ObamaCare and Pre-Existing Conditions

"We don’t buy food, diapers, or car insurance through our employers, so why in the world do we buy health insurance this way? It’s not because it’s more efficient for every car dealership and paper towel manufacturer to learn the ins and outs of administering a health insurance plan. It’s because we can buy health insurance through our employer with pre-tax dollars. No such luck if you want to buy your own health insurance package. And it’s not really even insurance anymore, since we use it to pay for almost everything, from a routine blood test to a routine physical—which makes about as much sense as using car insurance to pay for an oil change.

[T]here is a category best described as “insurance blindfolds,” a category that includes the preexisting condition rule. Insurance blindfolds tell health insurance companies that they dare not take into account certain risk factors when setting insurance rates. The effect of such laws is not to erase the existence of these verboten risks, but to force low-risk patients to shoulder substantially higher premiums."

The Road To Socialized Medicine Is Paved With Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1

The Road To Socialized Medicine Is Paved With Pre-existing Conditions, Part II

Don't Let It Slip Away

Yaron Brook at Tea Party Patriots Summit

Bad Words: Freedom of Speech at Home and in Public

Amy Mossoff over at The Little Things has a great post on curse words and children.

My wife and I have been talking about this issue as well. We both can get down right raunchy with our language at home. From the time we were in high school, if not before, we each cussed with our friends, usually far from earshot of our parents. We like our colorful word choices...used as Amy says for "shock value", as much as it is to pinpoint our meaning as for color and laughs.

Neither of wants to give this up, and have been looking for precise explanations of the value of colorful language and why it can been harmful for children, and for parental relationships with children, to be demanding with a child's choice of language...at any age.

Amy nails several issues we hadn't even considered, and provides many, many avenues of exploration of this topic. I cannot recommend her blog post enough:

Don’t Call Me Stupid