Here’s yet another Open Thread for your thoughts:
For anyone in the fiery grip of a random question, comment, joke, or link they’d like to share with NoodleFood readers, I hereby open up the comments on this post to any respectable topic. (Please refrain from posting personal attacks, pornographic material, and commercial solicitations.)
The slew of changes required to divide my blogging and podcasting output into distinct streams has gone remarkably well so far. (I planned out the process pretty meticulously, thankfully!) It’s now 1 am, so I’m headed to bed. Just know that — for the moment — my various web sites are something of a mess. I’ll be able to get everything into working order tomorrow — Saturday, that is.
I’d planned to record and post my next podcast on design arguments for the existence of God today, but I’ve decided to delay that until Monday. (I won’t have an Explore Atlas Shrugged podcast for Monday. We canceled the Front Range Objectivism Atlas Shrugged Reading Group meetings yesterday due to the snowstorm.)
In the meantime, I’m using the break to massively re-organize my blogging and podcasting output into distinctive streams, based on the nature of the content, with NoodleFood as the river that incorporates everything else. I need to separate out my future career — that’s the practical advice, which I aim to do on radio — from my other projects and interests. More generally, the division into streams will allow me to market my output more effectively to various groups of people. People will be able to subscribe to all and only what interests them — whether one or two things or the whole enchilada.
For now, I am creating three distinct streams:
As I mentioned, NoodleFood will be the river into which all of these streams feed. It will also include other side-interests of mine, like paleo-ish eating, political activism, and funny cat videos. So everything that appears in any of the above streams will be reproduced on NoodleFood. All of my podcasts — on any and all topics — will be gathered into a single “NoodleCast” feed.
So if you want everything, you just need to stick with NoodleFood. Also, I should be able to transfer everyone now subscribed to current “Rationally Selfish Radio” podcast feed to the new NoodleCast feed, so you’ll continue to get everything. Basically, I want the transition to be totally seamless for all of my existing followers. If not — if something seems amiss on Monday, when everything should be settled — please just drop me an e-mail.
Also, I should mention that this update will fix the problem of the wrong dates on podcasts in iTunes that resulted in them being listed out-of-order. (The otherwise excellent Feedburner was the cause of the problem, but I can side-step it by using a nice little program called Feeder to create my podcast feeds, rather than using Blogger.)
Fame and fortune are just around the corner for me, I’m sure! My picture of the poorly-worded sign at Littleton Hospital was posted to the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks! (They must have quite a backlog of submissions, as I sent that to them in late August.) I’m so pleased!
The latest Objectivist Roundup has been posted to Three Ring Binder. Go check it out!
Also, I’m hosting next week, so my OBloggers are hereby required to write something extra-spiffy!
We’re in a bit of a snowstorm right now in Denver. It began snowing on Tuesday night, and it’s expected to snow until this evening. The result? About a foot so far. Yikes! Paul and I have lived in Colorado since 2001, and we’ve never experienced a snowy fall like this one. It’s our fifth snow so far! (I blame global warming.)
Here’s the view from our front door as of yesterday afternoon around 2:30 pm. That’s a fence, a gate, and a clematis vine loaded with snow.
Here’s the same view as of this morning. We’ve got a bit more snow, eh?
Then we have Conrad, who had tons of fun running around in the snow this morning. After being cooped up all day yesterday, he had lots of energy to burn off!
And here’s the front of our house. Yes, that is a glacier forming on our roof.
Thankfully, Paul is off work today. We’ll have to dig out in time for him to go to work tomorrow though.
The Objectivism Seminar is working through Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s all-too-topical book, The Ominous Parallels. In it, he explores what gave rise to to the fascist, totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany — and analyzes whether and how a fascist, totalitarian regime could emerge here in America.
The chapter closes:
Wherever the German turned — to the left, to the right, to the center; to the decorous voices in parliament or to the gutters running with blood — he heard the same fundamental ideas. They were the same in politics, the same in ethics, the same in epistemology.This is how philosophy shapes the destiny of nations. If there is no dissent in regard to basic principles among a country’s leading philosophic minds, theirs are the principles that come in time to govern every social and political group in the land. Owing to other factors, the groups may proliferate and may contend fiercely over variants, applications, strategy; but they do not contend over essentials. In such a case, the country is offered an abundance of choices — among equivalents competing to push it to the same final outcome.
It is common for observers to criticize the “disunity” of Weimar Germany, which, it is said, prevented the anti-Nazi groups from dealing effectively with the threat posed by Hitler. In fact, the Germans were united, and this precisely was their curse: their kind of unity, their unity on all the things that count in history, i.e., on all the ideas.
For Wednesday’s episode of Philosophy in Action Radio, I posted a podcast on “Noticing Change in a Spouse or Lover.” That podcast is now available for streaming or downloading.
Remember, you can automatically download podcasts of Philosophy in Action Radio by subscribing to Philosophy in Action’s Podcast RSS Feed:
I discuss the error of expecting a spouse or lover to notice some change about you – and the proper approach.
Listen or Download:
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The mission of Philosophy in Action is to spread rational principles for real life… far and wide. That’s why the vast majority of my work is available to anyone, free of charge. I love doing the radio show, but each episode requires an investment of time, effort, and money to produce. So if you enjoy and value that work of mine, please contribute to the tip jar. I suggest $5 per episode or $20 per month, but any amount is appreciated. In return, contributors can request that I answer questions from the queue pronto, and regular contributors enjoy free access to premium content and other goodies.
Philosophy in Action Radio focuses on the application of rational principles to the challenges of real life. It broadcasts live on most Sunday mornings and many Thursday evenings over the internet. For information on upcoming shows, visit the Episodes on Tap. For podcasts of past shows, visit the Show Archives.
