jriggenbach

I know someone else has made this point already on this thread, Wolf -- I haven't read the whole thread at this point, but I distinctly remember seeing such a post, maybe on p. 2 of the thread, by, I think, Ellen Stuttle (who can always be counted upon for thoughtful and informed comments, which is not to say that I agree with her about everything, including Rand's ideas on art) -- and I think she pointed out that to call a fiction writer a "naturalist" is to say of him or her, not just that s/he is a realist, but also that the fictional world s/he creates is one in which humans have no real f

I just dropped in after a couple of years to see what was going on around here. Same old, same old, I guess. BTW, the idea that Raymond Chandler was a "naturalist" is funnier than anything I've read in some weeks. JR

"If a President of the United States had been portrayed this way in a work of fiction, I'd have thought it was badly written." Badly written? Or unpersuasively imagined? JR

Steve was no more than 55. He told me his birth year the last time we saw each other, almost exactly a year ago in Long Beach, California. I think he said it was 1959, but I have a poor memory for facts of this kind, and I'm uncertain. I met him thirty years ago in Des Moines, when he was just recently out of college (either the University of Chicago or Northwestern - again my wretched memory for details). This is truly terrible news. JR

> New format is too wide for the screen on my computer -- no one wants to scroll left to right all the time. The old format worked after a learning curve. [Phil] Yeah, as long as you didn't try to learn how to use the quote function. JR

It is, of course, somewhat depressing to have to explain what I think was already clear to everyone else, but the entire post was an effort at humor. Perhaps I should take lessons on humor from "Selene." JR

Thermodynamics is interesting and important, but it is surely not funny. Am I missing something? Ba'al Chatzaf Ask "Selene." I was just trying to get into the spirit of his sense of "humor." JR

I realized that as well and had already corrected that part at 02:42 when you wrote this at 03:09. Sorry about letting the # 107 post from 02:41 still stand there (I thought I had deleted it but now see I forgot to do this). You had written: From which one can infer that in your opinion, Objectivism requires considerable mental effort for an intelligent person to understand well. ND replied. "I don't see what's so difficult about it." Now if you think "understanding Objectivism even as well as I do ... would take an intelligent person at least a few years", (JR), then there must be so

"Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation. It interrelates macroscopic variables, such as temperature, volume and pressure, which describe physical properties of material bodies and radiation, which in this science are called thermodynamic systems." And it just keeps getting funnier! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics JR

Yes, but not with you. JR

Just so you'll know, I do not listen to audios and I do not view videos online. It is pointless and useless to refer me to them. In short, you decide to close your eyes to audio-visual evidence even if you have it right in front of your nose. No use trying to open an irrelevant sideshow. It looks like you can't bring yourself to admit that you have been wrong. So again: the issue was not about "superiority of native speakers". I simply pointed out the fact that "Kant" is pronounced in German with a short "a". But I think you will know that by now. For it seems you did not believe it

Yet it's quite obvious that you've never understood it. JR What's so difficult to understand about Objectivism, JR? It was you who claimed you had difficulties with it, so I'm all ears. So you can't read either. Why am I not surprised? For the record, I never said I had difficulties with Objectivism. JR

If I remember correctly, it was about ten years ago, in San Francisco, that I invited Phil to come over one evening for a meeting of a discussion group that had been founded around ten years before that by the economic historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel. We had one or two other Ph.D.s in the group - the psychologist Michael Edelstein pops to mind - and even the non-Ph.D.s were highly intelligent people. The group met once a month to discuss a book or journal article we'd all read. I had thought Phil might like to join us. But, alas, it didn't work out. I think the problem was, fundamentally,

I know, Dennis. It is extremely embarrassing for all those of us who have to share this board with you - your strutting around expressing your moral indignation about how few Muslim civilians the U.S. government is murdering, that is. Your doctrine about how the murderer can just announce that someone else - the people who provoked him - is responsible for the murders - well, it's comical in a macabre sort of way, I suppose. But surely this can't be what you describe as "serious ideas"? Best, JR

Yet it's quite obvious that you've never understood it. JR