Ayn Rand and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

[BaalChatzaf]

Here is a quote that I owe to Michael. It is from -Atlas Shrugged- from the bottom of p 164 to the top of p 165.

Context: Hank and Dagny are at the construction site for the Taggart Transcontinental RR where Reardon Metal is being used to lay down track and build a new bridge on their Colorado Division (this is before Dagny had to separate this division from the rest of TTRR -- pre John Galt Line). They are noting how the economy of the country is running down, production falling and revenues falling. I will add in a little before to establish context.

Dagny:I think of the contrast all over rest of the Taggart System. There is less to carry, less tonnage produced each year. It's as if ... Hank, what's wrong with the country?

Hank: I don't know.

Dagny: I keep thinking about what they told us in school about the sun losing energy, growing colder each year. I remember wondering then what it would be like in the last days of the world. It would be ... like this. Growing colder and things stopping.

Hank: I never believed that story (sic!). By the time the sun was exhausted men would find a substitute.

Dagny: You did? I thought that too.

........

What is wrong here?

0. "That story" is a well established scientific theory. Evidence supporting it has accumulated over several centuries. Laboratory evidence made with expensive instruments.

1. A denial of the first law of thermodynamics, to wit, energy cannot be created out of nothing.

2. A denial of the second law of thermodynamics, to wit, in any closed system (like the universe) entropy increased until thermal equilibrium throughout is reached.

The only substitute sun is another star. The closest such is proximi centauri about four light years away and there is no evidence that it has any planets that humans can live on. One does not manufacture new suns without material and energy sources. From where? Blank out (to use a Phrase).

Michael, do you see what I am talking about. This shows a clear indication that the Founding Mother was kinda light on her grasp of physics. There are two things that everyone should know whether or not they are going to specialize in science.

1. Things are made of atoms

2. The basic laws of thermodynamics stated non-technically for the non-specialist. Mathematics is not required to grasp them.

I believe Einstein's General Theory of Relativity will be falsified empirically long before the basic conservation laws (including those of thermodynamics) are undone. If we lose the conservation laws, I am at my wits end to see how would can advance physics. Thermodynamics is about as close to True as one gets in physics.

She makes a similar error when she refers to life as a self generating process. Life is NOT self generating. Any living organism requires an external energy source, either radiant energy or the chemical energy from ingested material. We humans must keep sufficiently warm or we freeze to death and we must ingest carbohydrates to fuel our metabolic process, else we starve and die. What living system ARE, are self regulating. Living system are characterized by two things: they can replicate parts of themselves or copies of themselves; and they are regulated by negative feedback control loops which function as long as they have energy to operate. Think of a steam engine with a centrifugal speed governor. As long as the boiler is hot and making steam the engine with run at a speed which varies gently between a lower limit and an upper limit. Google <steam governor> for details.

It is things like this that cause me to gnash my teeth, pull out my hair and rend (or rand) my garments. It is not like Ayn Rand was some dull wit. She was a sharp lady and the founder of a philosophical/political movement. If she was going to make remarks about science and math I would expect her to avoid howling screaming blunders like this.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

I can't believe that you completely blanked out Rand's message. She was simply saying that man would find a way to survive (through reason) and if one source did not provide the energy he needed, he would find another source.

She did not say "relight a star" or the sun, or even create a new star. She did not discuss the nature of atoms with that excerpt or any other such nonsense you have attributed to her. For a real easy example of what could be feasible by the time the sun extinguished (a few billion years down the road), man could travel and relocate to other galaxies, but Rand wasn't even on this wavelength. She simply was not presenting any scientific speculation whatsoever. She was talking about confidence in man's ability to adapt and survive.

This was misreading Rand on purpose to find a defect where there was none. I put this in the same league with Bob Wallace once criticizing Atlas Shrugged for including a blunderbuss, see here. He even insisted on it, as you are now doing.

It just didn't happen. Rand neither postulated bad physics nor did she ever mention blunderbusses.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

I can't believe that you completely blanked out Rand's message. She was simply saying that man would find a way to survive (through reason) and if one source did not provide the energy he needed, he would find another source.

Michael

I take Rand's advice seriously. I read her somewhere, advising us to take the statements of those we oppose literally. I have done so.

And after the Sun goes out, which it will after turning into a Red Giant (about five billion with a "B" years from now) and vaporizing our planet, the only substitute will be another sun. We will have to go to another star if our descendants are still around which is highly doubtful. The only substitute for our Sun is another sun. We can reason all day long and we will not find a way around basic conservation laws. Why? Because these laws describe accurately how the world works.

Her other comment pertaining to life as a self-generating or self-sustaining process shows a profound ignorance of thermodynamics. There ain't no such thing a perpetual motion of either the first or second kind. P.M. of the first kind is making energy from nothing. P.M. of the second kind requires a spontaneous decrease of entropy. We are living off the capital of nature. We live precisely because energy at a high temperature degrades to energy at a low temperature producing waste heat and mechanical work as it does so. There is no "free" way of reversing this tendency.

I jump on the bones of public persons, especially those who make intellectual claims when they commit scientific howlers. I have done it to people other than Rand for the same reason. Science is the greatest creation of the human race and I defend it against error and subversion. That is why I kick the asses of Creationists and Intelligent Design Mavens whenever and where ever I can.

I also excoriated that four-flusher author Jeremy Rifkin in public, after he published a wretched piece of trash entitled -Entropy- in which he argued at Earth is on the threshold of running out of energy. Bullshit, said I, in front of a lot of people and to his face. As long as the sun shines we are not going to run out of energy. But when the sun stops shining our game is up and our day is done. On the Boston talk show circuit I was the bane of political candidates who promulgated scientific errors. So I am not just picking on Rand. If Rand were a dumb dumb (which she most certainly is not!) I probably would not bother with what she says. But Rand has and still does influence a lot of people. And for this reason I do not suffer her errors gladly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Her other comment pertaining to life as a self-generating or self-sustaining process shows a profound ignorance of thermodynamics.

Bob,

I am not even going to talk about the sun or star or perpetual motion nonsense. It is clear to me that your method is to attribute Rand with something in your own head, then bash her for it. When her own words are checked, the vast majority of the time you simply got it wrong on a primary level. (Like, for instance, her not saying anything at all about the perpetual motion you bashed her for. That's kindergarten level.)

A more subtle case is with the above quote. Rand never stated what you claimed, that life is a "self-generating or self-sustaining process." She stated that life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. In other words, life is what sustains and generates the action it carries out qua life. Here is the exact quote (The Virtue of Selfishness, "The Objectivist Ethics," p. 16):

It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence.

It is obvious that the chemical elements will continue an action of decomposition, but that is no longer generated or sustained from the living entity that died. By "life," Rand of course meant individual living entities.

If you are in further doubt, here is a quote from The Objectivist, July 1968, "Basic Principles Of Literature":

Life is a process of action.

So now do you want to deny that life needs action, or that living entities exist and if they do not act they die?

The more I examine your interpretations of Rand, the more I see you don't really understand what she wrote and the more I see an attempt to force her words into meanings that simply do not exist so you can bash her.

As for your religious crusade to defend science, I don't see any practical result other than making tons of mistakes and pissing people off. Science seems to have done quite well on its own for centuries without that kind of defense.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Her other comment pertaining to life as a self-generating or self-sustaining process shows a profound ignorance of thermodynamics.

Bob,

I am not even going to talk about the sun or star or perpetual motion nonsense. It is clear to me that your method is to attribute Rand with something in your own head, then bash her for it. When her own words are checked, the vast majority of the time you simply got it wrong on a primary level. (Like, for instance, her not saying anything at all about the perpetual motion you bashed her for. That's kindergarten level.)

A more subtle case is with the above quote. Rand never stated what you claimed, that life is a "self-generating or self-sustaining process." She stated that life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. In other words, life is what sustains and generates the action it carries out qua life. Here is the exact quote (The Virtue of Selfishness, "The Objectivist Ethics," p. 16):

It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence.

It is obvious that the chemical elements will continue an action of decomposition, but that is no longer generated or sustained from the living entity that died. By "life," Rand of course meant individual living entities.

If you are in further doubt, here is a quote from The Objectivist, July 1968, "Basic Principles Of Literature":

Life is a process of action.

So now do you want to deny that life needs action, or that living entities exist and if they do not act they die?

The more I examine your interpretations of Rand, the more I see you don't really understand what she wrote and the more I see an attempt to force her words into meanings that simply do not exist so you can bash her.

As for your religious crusade to defend science, I don't see any practical result other than making tons of mistakes and pissing people off. Science seems to have done quite well on its own for centuries without that kind of defense.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence.

Godamit! Life is NOT self-sustaining and self-generating. Living systems require EXTERNAL energy sources to remain in operation. Life is a chemical process. The only "alternatives" are those occurring at the molecular and subatomic level. Organisms die when

1. They run out of energy. If you don't or can't eat you die.

2. The environmental conditions push the organism's internal regulating processes beyond their limits.

For example when you get hot you sweat. The evaporation of the sweat keeps you cool. When it gets too hot or when you run out of water to sweat out, you cook and die. There are no alternatives here, just physical laws in operation. Likewise when a steam engine regulated by a centrifugal governor runs out of water or is no longer kept hot it stops.

In either case the limits of the internal homeostatic (regulatory processes) are exceeded.

Life is an instance of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. For example, our bodies generally run hotter than the ambient temperature (which is why we are called warm-blooded). That is a far from equilibrium thermodynamic condition. And that is why we need to feed ourselves almost constantly.

Now do you understand why Rand's pronouncements cause me great upset? She does not know what she is talking about. In addition to being physics challenged, she is biology challenged as well. Novelists should stick to telling entertaining or enlightening stories. They should not make authoritative statements in fields wherein they are not qualified.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I vaguely remember a reference to a blunderbuss in AS. It might be just before the first run of The John Galt Line.

I'm sure AR would have appreciated having Bob as her editor--Not.

Different people can and do find different things in AS to complain about. Not so hard to do in a thousand plus page novel.

She makes a reference to rays killing magnetic (small) airplane motors. They have magnetic ignitions not motors. And the idea that any kind of ray might interfere with their operation is far fetched.

One could easily write a two-hundred page book filled with such criticism about AS. What is important is not that AR wasn't a scientist but a hell of a writer.

This is my silly contribution to this silly discussion.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

You still insist on attributing Rand with what she did not say.

She did not say that life is ONLY a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action to the exclusion of all other subatomic particles, actions or even energy sources. She was the first to admit, for example, that without nourishment (an external source of energy) a living entity dies.

Her point was that once an organism (living entity, i.e., "life") stops acting in its own benefit, it dies as an organism. Parts of it continues, like the carcass, but it—the living entity—dies. It—the source of its self-benefiting actions—dies.

Once again, that does not wipe all the other actions of all the other elements out of existence. You obviously and desperately want Rand to mean this so you can call her a fool. But that was not her meaning, which instead was that a certain category of action disappears when the living entity dies. That particular type of action is a property or attribute of the living entity's nature. It is indivisible from the living entity. Thus, such action is caused by the living entity's very existence. The living entity generates such action and sustains it, and when this process of action stops, the living entity dies.

This is not rocket science.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I vaguely remember a reference to a blunderbuss in AS. It might be just before the first run of The John Galt Line.

Brant,

Here was my response to Bob Wallace in that discussion:

I have the Objectivism Research CDROM, which contains the full text of Atlas Shrugged and a search option. I could not find the word "blunderbuss" in it. I even tried "blunderbus" and "blunderbusses." It's just not there. Incidentally, this word does not appear in any of Rand's writing on that CDROM, which includes all published fiction, nonfiction articles, edited writing courses, edited journals and edited letters. However, it doesn't include the marginalia or the journal entries on Nathaniel Branden, so those are still an option.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

The infallible CR-ROM.

--Brant

[Steve Gagne]

Hmmmmm.

From over here I see a reification of the concept of "LIFE" as a spiritual "entity" rather than as a material process.

Not sure by whom, but I smell a bad sequence.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I just looked up "musket" and "muskets" on the CDROM. Here is what I found in Atlas Shrugged (p. 227). Dagny is riding on the first run of the John Galt Line.

She looked out at the country. She had been aware for some time of the human figures that flashed with an odd regularity at the side of the track. But they went by so fast that she could not grasp their meaning until, like the squares of a movie film, brief flashes blended into a whole and she understood it. She had had the track guarded since its completion, but she had not hired the human chain she saw strong out along the right-of-way. A solitary figure stood at every mile post. Some were young schoolboys, others were so old that the silhouettes of their bodies looked bent against the sky. All of them were armed, with anything they had found, from costly rifles to ancient muskets. All of them wore railroad caps. They were the sons of Taggart employees, and old railroad men who had retired after a full lifetime of Taggart service. They had come, unsummoned, to guard this train. As the engine went past him, every man in his turn stood erect, at attention, and raised his gun in a military salute.

When she grasped it, she burst out laughing, suddenly, with the abruptness of a cry. She laughed, shaking, like a child; it sounded like sobs of deliverance. Pat Logan nodded to her with a faint smile; he had noted the guard of honor long ago. She leaned to the open window, and her arm swept in wide curves of triumph, waving to the men by the track.

I find it completely plausible that an old railroad employee living in the country would have an ancient musket lying around from his grandparents. At any rate, I certainly do not see this as being a blunderbuss. According to the Wikipedia article on Musket, "rifled muskets were the most common weapon used up until the late 1870s."

This was just one more case of attributing Rand with made-up crap so a person can bash her. Frankly, I have read about this habit, but seeing it up close is shocking. Rand made enough mistakes to criticize. So why make up stuff? Rand must really threaten some people. I swear, this kind of behavior makes me WANT to become a Randroid just to answer the gratuitous spite.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Rand never stated what you claimed, that life is a "self-generating or self-sustaining process." She stated that life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. In other words, life is what sustains and generates the action it carries out qua life.

I agree with Steve, Michael. You are reifying life. Life is not an entity, and it does not engage in actions. Only entities engage in actions.

My take on Rand's statement is that life is a process of action which is generated by the entity carrying it out, and which sustains the entity that carries it out. The "self" in "self-sustaining" does not refer to the process of living. It refers to the living entity, the self, that sustains itself by means of that process.

You need to cool off a bit. Robert is not that far out of line.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You are reifying life. Life is not an entity, and it does not engage in actions.

By "life," Rand of course meant individual living entities.

Roger,

This is from the same post you are criticizing. When the level of error gets to this point, especially while defending the errors of another person, I am at a loss as to what to say.

I am going to take some time off from this discussion. Nobody's making any sense.

Rand was a blathering idiot. Science is actually a god and not knowledge. Philosophy was the plague of humanity. We'll leave it at that.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

I just looked up "musket" and "muskets" on the CDROM. Here is what I found in Atlas Shrugged (p. 227). Dagny is riding on the first run of the John Galt Line.

She looked out at the country. She had been aware for some time of the human figures that flashed with an odd regularity at the side of the track. But they went by so fast that she could not grasp their meaning until, like the squares of a movie film, brief flashes blended into a whole and she understood it. She had had the track guarded since its completion, but she had not hired the human chain she saw strong out along the right-of-way. A solitary figure stood at every mile post. Some were young schoolboys, others were so old that the silhouettes of their bodies looked bent against the sky. All of them were armed, with anything they had found, from costly rifles to ancient muskets. All of them wore railroad caps. They were the sons of Taggart employees, and old railroad men who had retired after a full lifetime of Taggart service. They had come, unsummoned, to guard this train. As the engine went past him, every man in his turn stood erect, at attention, and raised his gun in a military salute.

When she grasped it, she burst out laughing, suddenly, with the abruptness of a cry. She laughed, shaking, like a child; it sounded like sobs of deliverance. Pat Logan nodded to her with a faint smile; he had noted the guard of honor long ago. She leaned to the open window, and her arm swept in wide curves of triumph, waving to the men by the track.

I find it completely plausible that an old railroad employee living in the country would have an ancient musket lying around from his grandparents. At any rate, I certainly do not see this as being a blunderbuss. According to the Wikipedia article on Musket, "rifled muskets were the most common weapon used up until the late 1870s."

This was just one more case of attributing Rand with made-up crap so a person can bash her. Frankly, I have read about this habit, but seeing it up close is shocking. Rand made enough mistakes to criticize. So why make up stuff? Rand must really threaten some people. I swear, this kind of behavior makes me WANT to become a Randroid just to answer the gratuitous spite.

Michael

I think you got it, Michael! So much for the blunderbuss!

The absolutely best writing in AS is the first run of the JGL.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Now do you understand why Rand's pronouncements cause me great upset? She does not know what she is talking about. In addition to being physics challenged, she is biology challenged as well. Novelists should stick to telling entertaining or enlightening stories. They should not make authoritative statements in fields wherein they are not qualified.

In partial defense of AR on the issue of "life"...

Unfortunately, I only have this via hearsay, but the person from whom I heard it -- J. Roger Lee -- is someone who in my experience has exhibited exceptionally accurate recall for details of conversations. J. Roger told me that at one point -- this was years ago, in the early '60s -- he got into an argument with Leonard Peikoff over whether Rand had meant "Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action" as a definition of life or only as a characterization. J. Roger argued that she must have meant it only as a characterization, since it would be a lousy definition; Leonard defended it as a definition. At some later time (within the same general time frame, whether days, weeks, a few months later I don't remember), J. Roger was present when Leonard referred in AR's hearing to her "definition" of "life" (as quoted), and she raked Leonard over the coals for thinking she'd meant this as a definition and not merely as a characterization. She said it was the business of biologists to give a precise definition of "life." Granted, her meaning remains nebulous and suspect from a physics standpoint even if she was only characterizing. (And a further problem is what she meant by "action," since she didn't limit the statement to the animal kingdom.) But she might not have been overstepping the bounds of her knowledge from a biology standpoint to quite the extent she sounds as if she was.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

This makes sense, especially as, according to Rand's model of definition, there is no clear genus in her description of life. Is "process" the genus? I don't see how it can be. That is as almost as broad as "existent." (I consider her description as a differentia without a specified genus.)

Also, reproduction, birth, death, etc. should be included in there somewhere.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Unfortunately, I only have this via hearsay, but the person from whom I heard it -- J. Roger Lee -- is someone who in my experience has exhibited exceptionally accurate recall for details of conversations. J. Roger told me that at one point -- this was years ago, in the early '60s -- he got into an argument with Leonard Peikoff over whether Rand had meant "Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action" as a definition of life or only as a characterization. J. Roger argued that she must have meant it only as a characterization, since it would be a lousy definition; Leonard defended it as a definition. At some later time (within the same general time frame, whether days, weeks, a few months later I don't remember), J. Roger was present when Leonard referred in AR's hearing to her "definition" of "life" (as quoted), and she raked Leonard over the coals for thinking she'd meant this as a definition and not merely as a characterization. She said it was the business of biologists to give a precise definition of "life." Granted, her meaning remains nebulous and suspect from a physics standpoint even if she was only characterizing. (And a further problem is what she meant by "action," since she didn't limit the statement to the animal kingdom.) But she might not have been overstepping the bounds of her knowledge from a biology standpoint to quite the extent she sounds as if she was.

Ellen

___

"Self generating and self-sustaining" is wrong both ontologically and descriptively. The most you could say about a living system is that it is self regulating within certain energy parameters. Living systems have the following properties:

1. The replicate portions of themselves (as in self repair) and make copies of their organism (as in cell division or sexual reproduction).

2. They have internal homeostatic regulation subsystems which enable proper energy exchanges to and from outside themselves. They need a certain amount of heat to operate and they need to dump excess heat from internal metabolic processes. The homeostatic processes enable the organism the maintain a far from equilibrium thermodynamic state with regard to the surrounding environment. This is particularly true of organisms that generate heat endogenously (as in warm blooded animals).

Rand's description implies a perpetual motion machine of the second kind. This is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. The processes that organisms use to maintain an operative internal state use heat external (or the heat generated by chemical reactions with nutrients they ingest) and degrade free energy in the external environment when they extract energy from the external environment. So the local decrease of entropy -within the organism- causes a larger increase of entropy outside the organism. In short, living things use up their environment or make use of the degrading free energy from their environment. Life exists on earth because the Sun produces abundant energy to maintain living things here on this planet. When the sun stops shining and when we use up the internal heat of the earth, we die. But our species will never last that long for such a thing to happen to it. We will be long gone and extinct by the time the Sun dies or the interior of the Earth cools down.

Rand allowed her rhetoric to mislead her. She should not have made such Grand Pronouncements in a field of which she had little expertise. I find it galling when non-technical philosophers forget their limitations particularly when there words weigh heavily with their followers. If Rand were just another academic philosopher her peers would have chastised her errors. But Rand chose to operate in the popular arena where there is no peer or professional review.

There was another author, Jeremy Riffkin who misled a lot of people with regard to energy issues. His book -Entropy- is a canard, but a lot of people not educated in physics swallowed his crap. Al Gore has produced a corpus of canards and at best partially true assertions about climate variation. Because he held high office there are many gullible folks who will be misled by his half-truths and canards.

Ba'al Chatzaf (he who does not suffer fools and charlatans gladly).

Edited September 7, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Ellen Stuttle]

Life exists on earth because the Sun produces abundant energy to maintain living things here on this planet. When the sun stops shining and when we use up the internal heat of the earth, we die. But our species will never last that long for such a thing to happen to it. We will be long gone and extinct by the time the Sun dies or the interior of the Earth cools down.

Well...I admit to hoping that we won't be, though I also admit to having been struck in a way I never noticed before by Hank's description "that story" in the passage you quoted in your opening post. 'Tis an odd wording for a supposed conversation between an engineering major and a metalurgy expert. Nevertheless, I hope your anticipated extinction of humanity long before viable exit from Earth occurs doesn't happen. (Also, isn't the standard prediction that the Sun would expand engulfing the Earth before it "dies or the interior of the Earth cools down"?)

Rand allowed her rhetoric to mislead her. She should not have made such Grand Pronouncements in a field of which she had little expertise. I find it galling when non-technical philosophers forget their limitations particularly when there words weigh heavily with their followers. If Rand were just another academic philosopher her peers would have chastised her errors. But Rand chose to operate in the popular arena where there is no peer or professional review.

I agree with that, except for the "should not." I think there's a paradoxical situation with Rand: had she not been so bold in her Grand Pronouncements way, she wouldn't have had the power of effect she had. More generally, I think of her as a great myth-maker. I can't say that I have any wish she'd been otherwise, since I don't believe Atlas Shrugged would have been written if she had been otherwise.

Also, I find your passion on these issues, considering your claims only to care about yourself and your family, interestingly nonconsistent.

Ellen

___

[BaalChatzaf]

Also, I find your passion on these issues, considering your claims only to care about yourself and your family, interestingly nonconsistent.

Ellen

___

Why? My love for science and mathematics is part of what I am. Also there is My Mission: To tell the Emperor that he is bare-ass naked.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Ellen Stuttle]

Also, I find your passion on these issues, considering your claims only to care about yourself and your family, interestingly nonconsistent.

Ellen

___

Why? My love for science and mathematics is part of what I am. Also there is My Mission: To tell the Emperor that he is bare-ass naked.

Ba'al Chatzaf

But why would you, with your professed concern for only yourself and your family, have such A Mission? Of what relevance is the Emperor's bare-assed nakedness to you and yours? Isn't the Emperor's nakedness the Emperor's problem? Also, speaking of Grand Pronouncements, I think you're at least as fond of making those as AR was -- though I think her style of pronouncing was rather more effective. In short, a certain amount of what you say, I don't take seriously.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In short, a certain amount of what you say, I don't take seriously.

Ellen,

I have already found this guy out. Bob's a quite reasonable sweet old man and who hides behind a gruff mask because he gets lonely and that brings him attention.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

In short, a certain amount of what you say, I don't take seriously.

Ellen,

I have already found this guy out. Bob's a quite reasonable sweet old man and who hides behind a gruff mask because he gets lonely and that brings him attention.

71 is not the age of an old man. That's mature middle age!

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

In short, a certain amount of what you say, I don't take seriously.

Ellen,

I have already found this guy out. Bob's a quite reasonable sweet old man and who hides behind a gruff mask because he gets lonely and that brings him attention.

71 is not the age of an old man. That's mature middle age!

--Brant

You tell'em Brant!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm 55. Whaddah I know?

Michael