Great quote. I'd like to send all the climate alarmists back a thousand years so they can crouch around a campfire and starve. According to what they say, that would be utopia.

Several years ago I was invited to present to a large engineering/tech class at a middle school. It really was fun. The topic was engineering...explaining what being an engineer is like, what we do. I decided to come up with my own definition of engineering before the lecture - one the kids could latch on to. I came up with one that I still use today. "Engineering is using science and mathematics to make the world a better place for people." I like to emphasize "for people", as it flies in the face of much environmentalism.

Love Heinlein! Great quote! Everyone periodically should read/listen to the audio book of "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress."

One of the cool things about living in the middle of nowhere (Wyoming) is that when the sh** hits the fan, all we'll do is go camping.

Rand once remarked that "man's only absolute must be reason." I agree with her, and the logical result becomes, that all other "absolutes" are contextual. If this is true, then all rational questions become relevant, all answers tentative. If you give this a little thought, what this epistemological axiom leads to is the scientific method. Just as mathematics is the "visible" demonstration of reason as an absolute, so is the scientific method the demonstration of its efficacy as that absolute.

This fundamental tenet of epistemology leads to the moral tenet. The human mind must logically therefore recognize that there is indeed good and evil. For me, there seems to be a universal and succinct desire that lies at the "root of all evil." Contrary to popular religious leanings, it is not money nor the love of it (read Francisco's incredible speech in Atlas Shrugged). As my friend Don Beezley has stated, it is the desire for the unearned. When dealing with those portions of existence that do not include man, a human being quickly learns that it is impossible to get something for nothing. He just as quickly then formulates a higher abstraction that "for nature to be commanded she must first be obeyed." Heinlein's TANSTAAFL sums it nicely.

Unfortunately, what another friend, Anders Ingemarson calls the "ABC's of accepted morality" (Altruism, Brothers keeper, Common good), together with their inevitable politics, has led to the all too common awareness of seeming to be able to obtain something for nothing. It has literally become an industry. To the extent it and the morality that "justifies" it exists, it simply serves to reinforce the idea that not only can it be done, but that it is morally "proper" to expect, seek, and demand it!

or ship them back to the 7th century.................. -- j

p.s. I got my first degree -- mechanical engr -- with
a slide rule. . Pickett 12 inch. . 4 digits, full-scale.
.

I first read Rand and Heinlein back in the early 70s when I was a college student -- great influences on my life.

Always a +1 for Heinlein.

Couldn't agree with that statement more. The human mind, in spite of and maybe because of, all the lies, disempowerments, confoundations and assaults upon our health and education continues to expand and create in a majority of the population.
You may disagree but I find 'Conscious Human life' to be amazing and worth saving.
The basis of the everyday assaults upon us is to eradicate our conscious minds because it is a threat to those that do not have one.

Hear Hear!
Engineering degree in 77, faster with my slide rule than peers with their new calculators!

Heinlein's tech is dated, but his understanding of hoomanity is timeless!