Rand is a philosopher in the same sense that Paris Hilton is a musician. And anyone who thinks any of Rand's ponderous and stilted prose is "written extremely well" needs to read more.
Not unlike when a guy stole my wife's cell phone at a pub gathering. We SMSed her phone informing him that we had him in frame in several different pictures from several different cameras and phones and would be going to the police - he called me back saying I could pick up the phone at a downtown department store, where he'd left it with a cashier.
"Nobody can really prove or disprove that this means anything"
The burden of proof - such as it is - is entirely on those claiming that it does. The rest of us will be pointing and laughing until they come up with something.
No roving gangs of hooligans in the US? Well, duh. Everyone's in cars instead. Violence is more prevalent in the US than in any other Western nation, and the incarceration rate is through the roof, higher than any other nation in the history of the world, including the worst dictatorships. Land of the free, huh?
Nothing beats Swedish pizza. Laugh if you will, but every single American I've ever introduced to a real Swedish-style Capricciosa has come away deeply impressed. The ranking goes; Swedish (Scandinavian if you're generous), Italian, Chicago, NYC.
The big problem is US over-reliance on tomato sauce and generally inferior cheeses.
Stock, Aitken and Waterman claimed that Never Gonna Give You Up is written in less time than it takes to play. I believe that's only slight hyperbole; the bass line a is a stock one, the melody follows the SAW template of slightly changing that teasing "nana nana naaa-na" and the song doesn't even have a proper middle eight, just a cut up version of the chorus.
What I find amazing is the number of combined man hours they've spent endlessly recycling and regurgitating the same old tropes and figures over and over, nary once finding a spark of innovation or daring to transcend any boundaries.
Easily one of the most overrated entities in modern culture.
Chaotic Neutral? More like Lawful Evil. Just because his incompetence causes chaos doesn't make his moral alignment chaotic. That guy obviously hasn't understood D&D alignment rules at all.
Auto-play music = bye bye, no sale. Doesn't matter if the music is any good, but since I listen to music most of the time that I'm surfing it's an unwelcome intrusion that I find rude.
Hungary and Finland are the two largest countries with a Finno-Ugric language. If Estonia is up there in suicide statistics, it's entirely possible that their native tongue makes them more prone to kill themselves.
Family Guy is a dire, humorless show and the song is pretty dire too. Yes, it IS catchy (that's the easiest thing in the world to write if you know the principles involved) and SAW, by their own admission, wrote this one in less time than it takes to play. It doesn't even have a proper middle eight. What is this doing on a blog supposedly dedicated to interesting things?
The burden of proof - such as it is - is entirely on those claiming that it does. The rest of us will be pointing and laughing until they come up with something.
The big problem is US over-reliance on tomato sauce and generally inferior cheeses.
So there.
"Fear Destroys" as Jon Anderson once so wisely penned.
Easily one of the most overrated entities in modern culture.