Angelina Jolie Confirms Role in Ayn Rand Movie

According to Variety.com, it’s official; Angelina Jolie will play Dagny Taggart in the film adaption of Ayn Rand’s iconic masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged. This movie has been planned for decades with everyone from Clint Eastwood to (even) Robert Redford wanting lead roles in the movie. More details on the story can be found here. (Thanks to Betsy Speicher for the URL.)

Same Sex Marriage

I noticed this week’s HK Magazine is doing a cover story on the lesbian scene in Hong Kong. I will have a look at this article over the next few days. But it does raise another issue – that of same sex marriage, or same sex civil unions.

I want to state, that I think same sex relations are abnormal. If other people wish to shun such couples, they should be free to do so. The natural union is of man and woman. However this does not make same sex relations immoral, if the people involved have thought about the issue and implications carefully. If such people truly believe they will be happy together, then it is their choice to make. After all, their own individual life is the proper standard of value, not some make believe mystical creature.

Which leads me to the next point. Marriage is not a mystical union dreamed up in another dimension. Marriage is essentially a contract between two people. It is a truly special contract, based on respect for each other’s values and mutual love. A married couple centre their family, money, and lives around each other.

So if two people of the same sex wish to contract to live the rest of their lives with each other, this too should be backed up by law. That is, they should have the same rights as people of the opposite sex who marry. Whether this is called marriage or a civil union, is not so important, either way it has the same characteristics of marriage.

I wonder how much support there is for the idea of same sex civil unions.

Best Ignored

It appears that my letters to the editor about Lights Out For Hong Kong, have been getting some free publicity from two of (what I think are) Hong Kong’s less reputable bloggers. (They know they are.) It is a pity these anonymous authors have to live their lives in the gutter, with what appears to be a stream of hatred, sarcasm and moral relativity. One in particular really has nothing important to say at all – just a cut and paste, followed by a few inane comments.

People like that always seem to attract a small following of the very worst too. I could say more, but they just dig their own graves. (Also, I just don’t have the time to spend right now – even if they end up driving more traffic to this site.) They are usually best ignored.

Update: Most comments are welcome here. However it seems that one of the above bloggers and his lackies are now trying to comment here — and they are getting very upset because I bounced their posts. I don’t usually bounce posts, but I reserve the right to do so.

MERRY Xmas

This is to wish an officially secular and MERRY MERRY Xmas to all readers of this blog. May you have a wonderful time and a prosperous new year.

Debating Republicans On True Meaning Of Xmas

I had a 5 minute debate with Mark Simon of Republicans Abroad today on RTHK Backchat. Unfortunately many Republicans in the US that are now strongly influenced by religion. The three points that I picked up on in the debate were:

1. Contrary to what Mark Simon might say, America is not one nation under god. God does not exist, so it is impossible to a nation under something that does not exist

2. Christmas was originally celebrated by ancient Roman pagans including those who worshipped Saturn. Tomorrow (December 23 is celebrated as the Winter Solstice by the Chinese) In the third and fourth centuries AD, the pagans worshipped the sun god and this is when the Xtians stepped in to steal Xmas. Some even put the date of Jesus’ birthday in September.

3. Christmas is a time to remember friends and family, i.e. those people that bring meaning and joy to one’s own life. Presents (large or small) and cards help re-enforce relationships with such people. A rational person doesn’t wish Merry Xmas to someone they don’t value. At the same time, Xmas is also about justice. Santa Claus makes a list of good and bad children. He checks it twice – it is about justice – rewarding the good and punishing the bad. Every kid knows that.

I won’t go into all of Mark Simon’s replies, but from what I could make out, he was saying that America is a nation under god because the majority believes that to be true. Of course one could say that the Earth is flat because the majority say so. This is a blatant appeal to the authority of the mob, when reason clearly shows the opposite.

The lesson is that Republicans are not good defenders of capitalism. Capitalism is a system that rests on the morality of rational self-interest. Christianity is a system that rests on a system of irrational self-sacrifice. They put faith before reason and hold up Christ as a person who gave up his life for complete strangers.

Capitalism helps one uphold the ethical principle that a person’s individual life is the proper standard of moral value. It is completely different to Christianity. Thus Christian Republicans are caught in a basic contradiction of moral values.

Christmas Should Be More Commerical

With a move to a new blogging service and the advent of Xmas, I thought this would be an appropriate first posting. It is a simple link to an article by Dr. Leonard Peikoff entitled "Christmas Should Be More Commercial. An excerpt is below and the full link is here.

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.

In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.

Amen! Article continues here