Sep 25, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
US Open Finalist Andy Roddick on why he has no self-interest in playing for his country:
Andy Roddick's attempt to stretch the Davis Cup semifinals to a fifth and deciding match came up short Sunday as the American came back from two sets down, but still fell to Dmitry Tursunov 6-3, 6-4, 5-7, 3-6, 17-15 as Russia advances to the final against Argentina.
"Being honest, I'm not feeling a whole lot of positive things right now," Roddick said. "Davis Cup losses are the toughest to take because you're not playing for selfish reasons. You feel like you let your teammates down, your country down. It's tough It's not an easy thing, especially to fight back all that way and to lose. It's tough." [emphasis added]
Isn't Roddick playing for his teammates and his country? That is selfish -- if you value your teammates and you love your country -- because one does have a self-interest in the outcome.Sep 22, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
After Sept. 11 the Bush administration declared that we must go on a mission to bring freedom to the Middle Eastern nations that threaten us; thus, the Forward Strategy of Freedom. According to this strategy, establishing democracies in key Muslim countries, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq, would spur a revolution in the rest of the Muslim world--a revolution that would bring free, pro-Western, anti-terrorist governments to power. But the strategy has failed. With the rise of the religious Shiites in Iraq, of Hamas and of Hezbollah, and with the electoral victories of Islamic radicals elsewhere in the Middle East, the Muslim world has grown more militant. Why has the Forward Strategy of Freedom failed, and why was failure inevitable? What are the flaws inherent in the strategy? How does it necessarily undermine victory? What motivates it and what strategy should replace it? These are the questions Dr. Brook will address in this talk.
Who: Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute
What: A talk and Q & A explaining why President Bush's strategy to bring democracy to hostile Middle Eastern nations is harmful to America
Where: 1 Faneuil Hall Market Pl, Boston, MA 02109
When: Sunday, October 22, 2006, at 6:30 PM
The public and media are invited. Admission is FREE.Sep 20, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
From Dr. Keith Lockitch's op-ed "Reject Environmentalism, Not DDT":
[...] Carson filled her book with misinformation--alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT-use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.
But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began--with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT--yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature "has not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome." Indeed, in a 1956 study human volunteers ate DDT every day for over two years with no ill effects then or since.
Sep 20, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
The Objectivist Club at NYU Presents Why We Are Losing the War: Five Years After 9/11 with Dr. John D. Lewis
Five years after Manhattan was viciously attacked by Islamic holy warriors, the world is still held hostage to their rants and their bombs. Iraq is in turmoil, Syria is emboldened, and Iran, in pursuit of nuclear weapons, intends to wipe Israel off the map and destroy the Great Satan—America. What went wrong? This lecture will show how our failure to identify the ideology of our enemies—Islamic Totalitarianism—has made it impossible to confront them. Drawing on the lessons of America's victory over Japan, this lecture will challenge us to reject our assumptions about the nature of a "just war," and to demand the removal, by force, of Islamic Totalitarianism—State Islam—from the face of the earth.
Dr. John Lewis is in the Department of History and Political Science at Ashland University in Ohio. He holds a PhD in classics from the University of Cambridge, a BA in history from the University of Rhode Island, and an Anthem Fellowship for Objectivist Scholarship. He is the author of Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens, and is now completing a new book, Nothing Less Than Victory: Military Offense and the Lessons of History.
Date: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Time: 7:30 PM
Location: Kimmel Center – Room 914 60 Washington Square South
All non-NYU attendees must register by email to nyu@objectivistclubs.orgSep 15, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--"Dr Steven Rosenberg and his team of scientists at the National Cancer Institute should be congratulated for developing a gene therapy that eradicated cancer from two dying men," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
The successful treatment using the patients' genetically modified version of their own white blood cells is reported today in the journal Science.
"Such a magnificent achievement shows the power of reason and science to unveil nature's secrets, create new life-enhancing technologies, and improve human life.
"At a time when reason and science are under attack in American universities, schools and churches, this new medical treatment reminds us that these are crucial values worth defending--and that our very lives depend on successfully doing so."Sep 15, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses
Irvine, CA--The World Health Organization, conceding that alternative methods to fight malaria have failed, will start encouraging the use of DDT around the world.
"For anyone who cares about human life, this is excellent news," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "The widespread use of DDT against malaria-carrying mosquitoes can prevent the infection of hundreds of millions of people every year and save millions of lives."
Before environmentalists managed to ban or severely restrict its use, DDT led to a dramatic reduction in malaria cases wherever it was used.
"The decades-long environmentalist opposition to DDT never had any basis in science: for half a century DDT use has been proven safe to humans and deadly to mosquitoes.
"The environmentalists responsible for banning or tightly restricting the use of DDT are responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people and for the untold suffering of hundreds of millions more, most of them children.
"The environmentalists' persistent opposition to the use of DDT shows that they are indifferent to human suffering. This is because environmentalism places the ‘preservation' of nature above the requirements of human survival and prosperity. Given the choice of eradicating malarial mosquitoes with a man-made pesticide or condemning millions of people to suffering and death, committed environmentalists have consistently opted for the latter.
"Environmentalism is an anti-human ideology that must be eradicated intellectually in order to ensure that deadly diseases such as malaria can be eradicated physically."