Tag: books

April 23, 2012. World Book and Copyright Day

Today I am joining the celebration of the World Book and Copyright Day (also known as International Day of the Book or World Book Days) a yearly event on 23 April, organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright. The Day was first celebrated in 1995 and in 2012 the UK World Book day was celebrated on March 1, 2012.[1]

As part of my celebration I am sharing with you some quotes from one of my favorite books.  This year I have chosen the book “The Law” written by Frederic Bastiat.  The book was first published as a pamphlet in June, 1850  and later became widely read in Europe and the world.

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

In The Law, Bastiat states that “each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property”. The State is a “substitution of a common force for individual forces” to defend this right. The law becomes perverted when it punishes one’s right to self-defense in favor of another’s acquired right to plunder.

Bastiat defines two forms of plunder: “stupid greed and false philanthropy”. Stupid greed is “protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits” and false philanthropy is “guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works”. Monopolies and Socialism are legalized plunder which Bastiat emphasizes is legal but not legitimate.

If you are interested in reading more about this ideas here are the links to the book,

The Law (English Edition) via Amazon.com

La Ley (Spanish Edition) via Amazon.com

La Loi (annoté) (French Edition) via Amazon

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Free Objectivist Books for Students

Jason Crawford, of The Rational Egoist opened a website: http://freeobjectivistbooks.org/ aimed at providing to young creative minds with the opportunity of receiving Free Philosophy books.  The books are non-fiction and fiction and all are related to Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

I invite you to apply for a book and take advantage of such a wonderful opportunity!  Sign up today to get a free book, or to donate books to eager readers! And feel free to pass this on to a friend, forward it to a mailing list, or post it on a relevant board or group.


The burning of a Library in Egypt and the Philosophy behind it

The damnation of this earth as a realm where nothing is possible to man but pain, disaster and defeat, a realm inferior to another, “higher,” reality; the damnation of all values, enjoyment, achievement and success on earth as a proof of depravity; the damnation of man’s mind as a source of pride, and the damnation of reason as a “limited,” deceptive, unreliable, impotent faculty, incapable of perceiving the “real” reality and the “true” truth; the split of man in two, setting his consciousness (his soul) against his body, and his moral values against his own interest; the damnation of man’s nature, body and self as evil; the commandment of self-sacrifice, renunciation, suffering, obedience, humility and faith, as the good; the damnation of life and the worship of death, with the promise of rewards beyond the grave—these are the necessary tenets of the [mystic’s] view of existence, as they have been in every variant of [mystical] philosophy throughout the course of mankind’s history. Ayn Rand

Yesterday December 17, 2011 during conflicts between some Egyptian protests, the Egyptian Scientific Institute which established in 1798 by Napolean Bonaparte was burned. The Egyptian Scientific Institute was the oldest scientific institute in Egypt and Middle East at all. It has the most rich and rare library in Egypt.

Eyewitnesses were reported to have seen protestors throwing a Molotov cocktail at stone-throwing soldiers at the Shura Council building, but the projectile missed the intended target and instead landed in the Egyptian Scientific Institute.

The library contains about 40.000 items of rare books and manuscripts, however it has unvaluable items, like:

  •  The original copy of the french book “Description de l’Egypte”
  • Atlas of Old Indian arts.
  • German atlas about Egypt and Ethiopia, 1842.
  • “Egypt: the mother of the world”, 1753.

Professor Mahmoud al-Shernoby, the general secretary of the institute, told state TV in a phone interview that the damage is a “great loss” to Egypt and that those “who caused this disaster showed be punished.”

Photos about burning the Egyptian Scientific Institute:

Book Recommendation: The Art of Nonfiction Writing

The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers

Writing a 15-page essay is difficult; writing a 15-page publishable paper is even more difficult. But writing a 15-page essay that is publishable and consistent in all its content is a masterpiece.

As difficult as to writing so many pages is to write a single paragraph that is structured in a readable, rational and valuable way.  By readable I mean that is grammatically correct. By rational I mean that its sentences are all logical, valid and non-contradictory. By  valuable I mean that achieves the goal of informing and adding value for the specific target of people for whom you are writing.

To learn how to do this and continue perfecting the “art” of writing I went through a course a year ago that used the book “The Art of Nonfiction Writing. A Guide for Writers and Readers” written by Ayn Rand as the main literature. The book is a magnificent tool that analysis different steps of the Writing Process by dealing it as an “ability to create quality nonfiction; a skill that can be learned like any other.”