Solving a Puzzle-- Understanding Some People's Reactions


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PDS makes his usual solid on point statements.

It would be an interesting experiment to create a Coventry Corner, kind of like a "time-out" area where the our of control Phil type posts could de channeled. Then whoever wanted to see then would go to that corner and read them, but they would not be on the main forum board.

By the way, PDS, why would the female attorney in the Georgia case on O'bama's eligibility have herself sworn in and take the stand?

I thought attorneys, being "Officers of the Court" avoid being sworn in for a number of reasons.

Adam

Depends on the jurisdiction, and the subject matter of the issue. Routine representations are made as "officers of the court."

What you describe doesn't sound routine...

Exactly. Apparently she elected to take the stand. Orly Taitz is the attorney for the plaintiff.

Taitz shows records for Barry Sotoro aka Barack Obama, showing he resides in Hawaii and in Indonesia at the same time.
Taitz takes the stand herself.
Testifies that records indicate Obama records have been altered and he is hiding his identity and citizenship.
Taitz leave the stand to make her closing arguments.
This is the link that Las Vegas started the thread with and it gives a "blow by blow" of the hearing in the Georgia State Court.
http://radiopatriot....n-ga-for-obama/

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Janet,

Two simple questions: Why did you join OL? What did you hope to find here?

Ghs

I thought I said why. Again then.

My purpose is to place Rand in the pantheon of post modern philosophers. She is one who happens to be a writer of fiction.

What are your arguments for placing Rand, of all philosophers/writers, among the postmodernists???

Rand will never have Objectivism taken seriously by serious philosophers. Her fiction is a different story IMO.

So you think "serious philosophers" (would you name some please), will never take Objectivism seriously, but at the same will take her fiction seriously, a fiction that is in large parts an illustration of Objectivism? (Just think of Galt's speech!).

How so?

Rand's fiction is respected. Her philosophical mutterings are not. Not where it counts.

Same as above.

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Phil cut short. Don't ask the question if you don't know the answer.

I don’t think that she and Phil are all that similar. If I may refer back to the typology set out here, Phil is primarily a fool, with maybe a redeeming strain of moronism. Janet’s a textbook lunatic, and also a fully qualified cretin. It's bad enough online, imagine if you had to deal with one of those in real life!

I'm referring to the lack of real give and take content. I'm still trying to recall Phil making any single statement about the content of Objectivism, even only the ethics or politics. Same for Janet. And she keeps saying she won't talk about Objectivism but she won't leave it alone. See her statement on SLOP about Rand's birthday. Maybe she said something substantial about the content of postmodernism--somewhere. I liked to engage her on some small ticket items, but we seemed to have run out of those. So, bottom line, Phil is supposed to be an expert on Objectivism without giving any indication of that and Janet on postmodernism same, same. These ignoramuses are trying to show us the way to the promised land.

--Brant

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Janet,

Two simple questions: Why did you join OL? What did you hope to find here?

Ghs

I thought I said why. Again then.

My purpose is to place Rand in the pantheon of post modern philosophers. She is one who happens to be a writer of fiction.

What are your arguments for placing Rand, of all philosophers/writers, among the postmodernists???

Rand will never have Objectivism taken seriously by serious philosophers. Her fiction is a different story IMO.

So you think "serious philosophers" (would you name some please), will never take Objectivism seriously, but at the same will take her fiction seriously, a fiction that is in large parts an illustration of Objectivism? (Just think of Galt's speech!).

How so?

Angela:

I believe Ms. Abbey has left OL.

Adam

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Janet,

Two simple questions: Why did you join OL? What did you hope to find here?

Ghs

I thought I said why. Again then.

My purpose is to place Rand in the pantheon of post modern philosophers. She is one who happens to be a writer of fiction.

What are your arguments for placing Rand, of all philosophers/writers, among the postmodernists???

Rand will never have Objectivism taken seriously by serious philosophers. Her fiction is a different story IMO.

So you think "serious philosophers" (would you name some please), will never take Objectivism seriously, but at the same will take her fiction seriously, a fiction that is in large parts an illustration of Objectivism? (Just think of Galt's speech!).

How so?

Angela:

I believe Ms. Abbey has left OL.

Adam

Adam,

I know that the bird seems to have flown but maybe Janet is like Phil and 'returns'. :wink:

I would still like to post some comments on issues she raised, but as long as she's 'gone', I'll refer to her in the third person in my next posts.

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All opening up Rand's Objectivism has done is produce a folly of different opinions and thoughts and more arguments.

[quoting Xray]: You are a closed-system advocate then?

Now you are asking me a question that forces me to enter the dialectic of pro and con in order to answer you. Bacon has said that a question well-asked is 1/2 the answer. Actually I do not have a dog in this fight. I do not advocate open or closed. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. That's all I am saying. There are two POV and I am just observing them.

I think what Janet has posted allows the inference that she prefers Objectivism as a closed system:

Peikoff has done something very impressive with Objectivism. He has kept it a closed system as much as he was humanly able to do so. Had he allowed it to open up, it would have been a disaster.

<....>

But Peikoff intends to keep Objectivism a closed system and although I have criticized him in the past for this when I thought psychologically, I can only now admire him for standing firm on this. Absolutely no one else in the movement could have done this. No one. And I applaud him for it.

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Phil is supposed to be an expert on Objectivism without giving any indication of that and Janet on postmodernism same, same. These ignoramuses are trying to show us the way to the promised land.

Brant,

That's usually an occupational hazard with preacher-types.

I believe Ms. Abbey has left OL.

Just for the record, she's not banned or moderated.

People might even notice that her posts didn't get thrown into the Garbage Pile. She was enjoying a grace period to learn the place, which is fair.

OL is just not going to be a very nice place for her to preach her pretentious patchwork claptrap. So I don't think she is going to be around much.

Anyone who shows up and makes a career out of gratuitously belittling OL members will find that same energy turned on them.

Is that tribal?

Hell, yeah.

Michael

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Michael:

It was just my presumption. I in no way thought she was banned.

Adam

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Michael:

It was just my presumption. I in no way thought she was banned.

Adam

Selene is just sad that there will likely be less discussion of Dominant Intercourse, or whatever she was preaching...

Yes, I was planning on taking her to a place where she could develop a Dominant Intercourse that would evolve to screeching, screaming writhing...

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Selene is just sad that there will likely be less discussion of Domimant Intercourse, or whatever she was preaching...

Epistemologically speaking, this statement can of course only be labeled as a mere assumption. :o

[edited to add] : I just read Selene's reply -

The "mere assumption" has now morphed into 'certainty'. :wink:

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Ah, See More Buggers, we hardly knew ya. “Where have all the flowers gone?”

Slab City: Living Off the Grid in California's Badlands

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2105597,00.html

"Chicago" Joe Angio and his wife Anna did everything by the book to secure their slice of the American Dream. They earned college degrees, started a small business, bought a house and pair of cars, paid their taxes and credit-card bills on time. But when the economy tanked, so did the dream. Between two jobs they could barely pay their mortgage, reaching a point where they had to choose which creditor to shortchange at the end of the month in order to keep the lights on. With foreclosure no longer a matter of if, but of when, the couple looked on the Internet for the ideal place to lay low, spend less and experiment with solar power to "get more for our buck out of our environment." They bought a used RV and went off the grid. Way off.

Slab City, their home for the past three months, is a squatters' camp deep in the badlands of California's poorest county, where the road ends and the sun reigns, about 190 miles southeast of Los Angeles and hour's drive from the Mexican border. The vast state-owned property gets its name from the concrete slabs spread out across the desert floor, the last remnants of a World War II–era military base. In the decades since it was decommissioned, dropouts and fugitives of all stripes have swelled its winter population to close to a thousand, though no one's really counting. These days, their numbers are growing thanks to a modest influx of recession refugees like the Angios, attracted by do-it-yourself, rent-free living beyond the reach of electricity, running water and the law. And while the complexion of the Slabs, as the place is locally known, may be changing in some ways, the same old rule applies: respect your neighbor, or stay the hell away.

"It's pretty much as close to the Old West as you're gonna get. Most of us don't own guns or none of that garbage, but if we have problems, we take care of [them]," says Ray, 56, a former drug addict turned born-again Christian who has traversed the country six times with a giant wooden cross on his back. Katie Ray, 30, a perennial visitor from Oakland, Calif., calls the place a "postapocalyptic vacation zone." (PHOTOS: After Foreclosure: A Photographer's Requiem for the American Home)

Although Slabbers tend to defy easy characterization, de facto neighborhoods ("Poverty Flats," "Lows") and tribes have emerged. There are Year-Rounders who brave the 120°F summer inferno, and Snowbirds who land from as far as Canada with their souped-up RVs and pensions, soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That's to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. If the Burning Man festival were a permanent settlement instead of a weeklong escape -- remixed with a hard dose of reality -- this might be it.

"The Last Free Place in America" lives up to its nickname. Want to hang out nude in thermal mud baths or skateboard stoned in the bowl of an Olympic-size pool? Go for it. In the mood to construct outlandish pieces of art with scrap metal, dig an SUV-size trench for no particular reason or play 18 holes of golf on a grassless course to the sound of bombs in the distance? This is the place. Yet despite the anything-goes reputation, those who stick around the Slabs long enough insist they are made to feel welcome, provided they have the right attitude. Free meals and entertainment are on offer, capped by Saturday-night concerts at the Range, a clapboard venue that showcases live acts of varying quality. This bohemian aspect was featured in the 2007 film Into the Wild, rare mainstream attention that drew a surge of newcomers to Slab City.

One of them is Sandra "Sandi" Andrews, 61, a nomadic mother of eight without a retirement plan. Her daughter saw the film and figured it was her mom's kind of place. She was right. "When I first got here, I thought this is a whole new planet, there's no place like it," she exclaims. Initial concerns about her safety as a woman alone did not last long. Three years on, she's surrounded by friends and lives on less than $100 a month, supplementing her Social Security check with paintings she sells to tourists that stop by her studio, a converted school bus. Among her neighbors are two widows in their 90s and an 89-year-old who jokes that she'd die as soon as she set foot in a retirement home. "We've all chosen and like Slab City," Andrews says, "so the caring and sharing is always there." (MORE: The Tale of a Lost Mortgage)

Well, it depends on whom you ask too. "Builder Bill" Ammon, 63, a year-round resident who manages the Range, says that when he moved from San Diego to the Slabs back in 1999, the community was more tight-knit. "In those days, you could be poor and be separate from the engine of the world and still be all right," he says, fondly recalling how most everyone talked to one another on their CB radios and exchanged services and goods at regular swap meets to support themselves. "People had skills to offer." These days, he grumbles, a new generation of youngsters is turning up ill equipped for the sobering demands of life off the grid, looking for handouts. No one is left to go hungry, he notes. But if they don't adapt, they are given the cold shoulder, which may help explain the rise in petty theft at the camp. "A kind of segregation has developed here" between young and old, he says.

No one would disagree that the Wild West element has its darker side. Hang around the evening campfires a while and strange stories pour out: disappearances, mysterious drownings in the mud baths, the man who showed up in camp with his finger apparently bitten off, claiming he'd been attacked by a cannibal. The border patrol keeps a visible presence, searching for illegal immigrants that ply the region. When there's serious trouble, though, firemen must drive over from Niland, a derelict town five miles to the west that boasts the closest grocery store and post office. In 40-plus years on the job, Michael Aleksick, 63, the recently retired fire marshal, says he's been repeatedly shot at, stabbed and gotten in too many fistfights to remember, often with people he knows. Crime has worsened. "The crystal-meth influence," he says, "has been huge."

"There's the good, bad and the ugly," says "Shotgun" Vince Neill, 38, a newcomer who got his nickname partly for stopping a man from stealing a friend's solar panels with a blast of rock salt. He first visited the Slabs as a boy and returned this winter with his wife and six children in tow after he lost his audiovisual business and their home in Northern California. Sometimes he worries about his family's safety, but Neill reckons that Slab City's problems are proportionate to any normal city in the country. And he has no regrets about bringing his kids (ages 2 to 18). In this case, math and English lessons are rounded out with training on catching scorpions and rattlesnakes. "They're much happier learning in the great outdoors; it's the best school," he says. Still, Slab City is more of a parking spot than a long-term solution: come summer, the family will head to Los Angeles so he can look for full-time work. (VIDEO: The New Poor of Fresno)

Others, like "Radio" Mike Depraida, 60, keep choosing to return. The native New Yorker was living the fast life as a consultant and photographer but grew weary of the hectic pace and an apartment building where he didn't know his neighbors. A chance visit with friends three years ago got him hooked on the Slabs, and he's since become the perpetually tan guy in a polo shirt who operates a radio station and greets travelers with a gin and tonic at his makeshift tiki bar. The freedom and mix of people keep him coming back, a dearth of single women notwithstanding. "Why are these some of the most intelligent people I've met in my life?" he asks aloud. "I came to the conclusion that if you're smart enough to get out of the rat race, well, then, you're pretty damn bright."

Chicago Joe and Anna are proof positive. They ended up parking their trailer in East Jesus, a renegade open-air art space with Mad Max accents. The view outside their window features a half-buried coach bus and, beyond that, a giant mammoth made of tires; their neighbors include an ex-chef, a documentary filmmaker and a wandering magician cum tattoo artist. What started as an adventure has settled into a routine filled with solar projects and other odd jobs that will keep them busy and fit. Joe's already lost 80 lb. "People back home still think we're crazy for doing what we've done," he says. "It's not for everyone, but this lifestyle has grown on us, tremendously." The couple swear their relationship has also improved because they no longer fight about money. It's not hard to understand why: their living expenses have dropped from about $4,000 to $200 a month. Less than their electricity bill when they owned a house.

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Xray wrote:

Epistemologically speaking, this statement, “Selene is just sad that there will likely be less discussion of Dominant Intercourse, or whatever she was preaching . . .,” can of course only be labeled as a mere assumption. ;)

THE END

I have mentioned my brief penny wars on OO, (pronounced Ooh, Ooh, Mistah Kottah) and I wish I had saved my private letters from SoftWare Nerd, one of their moderators. His last message to me ended, “And don’t ever come back.” I prefer duking it out rather than officialdom deciding what is fit to print.

Seymour is not my cup of tea, yet I don’t like to see people run out of town, but that is Michael’s call, or not. I did not see banishment from Michael, or the dog house, just go away, as George has told me. I went, sort of. I also just went back to see if OO had finally deleted my name from their list of subscribers and they had. As I scrolled through the “p’s” I saw PDS but he had never posted there. What is with that? The plug for NB on their masthead was gone.

Sic semper tyrannis, thus always to Seymour, who sought to dominate a conversation with blather. Back to Slab City with ya.

Peter Taylor

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Peter,

I added a link under the title of the Slab City story in your post.

When you do a whole story like that. if you don't include a link, it makes it look like you wrote it.

Most authors will not yell plagiarism when they gain a backlink. If they think you are passing off their words as your own, some can get downright nasty.

(I know it was an oversight, but it's important.)

Michael

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Michael wrote, “I added a link under your title.”

Thank you. I forget why, but the link did not come through. I remember deleting some art, playing around with the text and then deleting hyperlinks by hand and I must have deleted the linkage. I played around with a Wikipedia article today in the same fashion, on Iran’s armed forces. I don’t think I screwed that one up.

I will be more careful.

Peter Taylor

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Michael wrote, “I added a link under your title.”

Thank you. I forget why, but the link did not come through. I remember deleting some art, playing around with the text and then deleting hyperlinks by hand and I must have deleted the linkage. I played around with a Wikipedia article today in the same fashion, on Iran’s armed forces. I don’t think I screwed that one up.

I will be more careful.

Peter Taylor

Peter:

You can right click on the URL at the top of your screen, e.g., www.objecticistliving....................................hit copy and then insert it in the link icon above this small screen - looks like the infinity symbol taking a nap.

Adam

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Adam wrote:

You can right click on the URL at the top of your screen, e.g.,

end quote

Thanks. I will look for that. I have been meaning to ask how you get those links to show up on a thread. I had noticed that when I cut and past an article a link sometimes comes along and works. A side ways infinity sign. Who would have thunk? Ah, I found it on the answer a thread page.

Peter

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If you like my being chastised for my caustic one-liners, then why do you keep baiting me? Does that mean you want more? Or is your thank you to Michael act as a "floating sign" saying you are glad he told me to stop but denying what you said and meaning the opposite, that you want more? Jes sayin'.

There is nothing "caustic" about your one-liners. They are on a par with So's your old man and Takes one to know one. If they showed a spark of intelligence or wit no one would object to them. You use juvenile one-liners for no purpose other than to avoid responding to criticisms.

Ghs

Caustic was not my adjective. Or if it was it was daunce who used it. Or dance, or whatever.

That is an outright lie. You used it yourself, in post #207 above. I was quoting your own self-praise of your inane flailings as "caustic zaps", hence the quotation marks I used. It was a few days ago, perhaps you have forgotten.

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I full well know that saying this here will not settle anything. It will just feed the fire and there will be different interpretation, counter interpretations, counter interpretations of the counter interpretations. This is what is wrong with my above Discourse. It will never resolve a goddamn thing. But Michael and all you aggressive ones wanted a serious ansewer instead of my caustic zaps. Well, you just got one.

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It's so nice to watch this thing wind down.

I'm going to be doing a looooong Napoleon Hill thing on a blog in a few days as part of a marketing project.

I'm looking forward to it, too. That's a wonderful happy world to inhabit. And I'm thinking about how to blend Hill's kind of mentality with the Objectivist one. Going by the sheer volume of sales of Think And Grow Rich over the years (according to Forbes, over 70 million so far) and all those testimonials from one successful capitalist after another, I'm surprised this hasn't been attempted. At least I haven't been aware of anything like that.

One of Hill's success laws is to develop a pleasing personality.

Hmmmmm...

Gonna be a bitch...

:smile:

At least, hopefully, with these two taking a hike (Phil and Janet), I won't have to deal with bicker qua bicker for a while.

Michael

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No wonder he raves against Foucault.

For 3.52 it can be yours. Plus postage of course.

You can get a used hardcover of Cosmopolis for $2.00. Exactly what does that prove? There are 262 Amazon reviews of ATCAG, average 4 stars, and only 87 of Cosmopolis, average 3 stars, what does that prove?

Check it out, a GHS name-drop today from the head of American Athiests:

When it comes to identifying the main cause of atheism’s recent growth, most people agree. “It’s all about the internet,” says Silverman. “The reason that atheism is on the rise is because there is no way that a person who is an atheist can think they’re alone any more. When I was growing up, I was the only atheist I knew. I had to get on my bike, ride to the public library and take out the one atheist book that they had in the whole library: The Case Against God by George Smith. Now any atheist can go on Facebook or Myspace and find literally millions of friends.”

http://www.slate.com...ts_.single.html

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  • 2 weeks later...

she [Joan Baez] was being interrogated on her pacifism. If she were driving down the road and a car was coming at her and there was someone in the way that she would hit if she swerved. So she responded that she would try to avoid the oncoming car and avoid hitting the person when she swerved. So then the question ante was upped. Well suppose you were on a two way road and there was a cliff on the side where you would go off if you swerved to avoid the car and the woman.

(quote corrected by Janet in # 239)

She said she would probably crash into the oncoming car, kill the driver, then swerve to miss the person but kill them too, then go over the cliff, land on the roof of the farmhouse and kill the entire family inside.

I am paraphrasing but she upped the ante on the response to shut the questioner up. And this was exactly what was going to happen in the above example and I was going to have to spend all the rest of the day answering reasonably and logically, while the ante was upped. And then I would start my caustic one-liners and daunce would have another nail to pound in my coffin and the rest of them would jump in and and and.......

Nope. Joanie had it covered.

Is all that supposed to mean that you too (like Joan Baez) want to "shut up" the questioner if the questions asked don't suit you?

If that is the case and you refuse to answer questions about philosophical quotes you have presented here, this of course translates as evasion.

It's a sufi technique.

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