Cat Air Cadet? Or, Is It A Pussy Pilot?

[Selene]

[Mikee]

Cute kitten! Had a great adventure, probably didn't use up even one of his nine lives. Relieved it ended well.

[Selene]

Cute kitten! Had a great adventure, probably didn't use up even one of his nine lives. Relieved it ended well.

I know, I had my doubts at one point when it appeared they had not noticed the kitten.

I thought the young man did a fine job of staying in control and calmly executing his turn and landing.

His lady was also quite even and did not attempt to try to grab the kitten.

Reminds me of a routine line from Atlas as Dagny has just walked out of the cab that she and Jim were in and she had been told that it was going to be a debate on Rearden Metal with one of the media slugs...

After "shouting??" at Jim, something along the lines of "did you think that I thought it was debatable!!!"

She is walking in a "seedy" area of Manhattan and she notices a Public Bus "...expertly steered around the corner..."

One of Ayn subtle statements about competency that I loved, and love, about her fiction writing.

A...

[Brant Gaede]

I think it was "expertly steered" and I'm not so sure it was in that part of the story, maybe a lot earlier.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Reminds me of a routine line from Atlas as Dagny has just walked out of the cab that she and Jim were in and she had been told that it was going to be a debate on Rearden Metal with one of the media slugs...

After "shouting??" at Jim, something along the lines of "did you think that I thought it was debatable!!!"

She is walking in a "seedy" area of Manhattan and she notices a Public Bus "...expertly steered around the corner..."

One of Ayn subtle statements about competency that I loved, and love, about her fiction writing.

You've combined two separate scenes. In the one, Dagny leaves the town car she was sharing with her brother, en route to a dinner. Jim Taggart had told her in the cab who was to be speaking, news to her. She was outraged ... and then walked and found a diner, and then had a conversation with an old tramp. In the other scene, it is Eddie Willers tromping the streets of New York. In the book, the Willers scene comes before the Dagny scene.

He seized her arm, screaming, "But why?"

"You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable?"

The car stopped, she leaped out and ran.

The first tiling she noticed after a while, was her slippers. She was walking slowly, normally, and it was strange to feel iced stone under the thin soles of black satin sandals. She pushed her hair back, off her forehead, and felt drops of sleet melting on her palm.

She was quiet now; the blinding anger was gone; she felt nothing but a gray weariness. Her head ached a little, she realized that she was hungry and remembered that she was to have had dinner at the Business Council. She walked on. She did not want to eat. She thought she would get a cup of coffee somewhere, then take a cab home.

She glanced around her. There were no cabs in sight. She did not know the neighborhood. It did not seem to be a good one. She saw an empty stretch of space across the street, an abandoned park encircled by a jagged line that began as distant skyscrapers and came down to factory chimneys; she saw a few lights in the windows of dilapidated houses, a few small, grimy shops closed for the night, and the fog of the East River two blocks away.

She started back toward the center of the city. The black shape of a ruin rose before her. It had been an office building, long ago; she saw the sky through the naked steel skeleton and the angular remnants of the bricks that had crumbled. In the shadow of the ruin, like a blade of grass fighting to live at the roots of a dead giant, there stood a small diner. Its windows were a bright band of glass and light. She went in.

It is in the other scene, with Eddie Willers, where your remembered line occurs ...

He turned a corner. In the narrow space between the dark silhouettes of two buildings, as in the crack of a door, he saw the page of a gigantic calendar suspended in the sky.

It was the calendar that the mayor of New York had erected last year on the top of a building, so that citizens might tell the day of the month as they told the hours of the day, by glancing up at a public tower. A white rectangle hung over the city, imparting the date to the men in the streets below. In the rusty light of this evening's sunset, the rectangle said: September 2.

Eddie Willers looked away. He had never liked the sight of that calendar. It disturbed him, in a manner he could not explain or define. The feeling seemed to blend with his sense of uneasiness; it had the same quality.

He thought suddenly that there was some phrase, a kind of quotation, that expressed what the calendar seemed to suggest. But he could not recall it. He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it nor dismiss it. He glanced back. The white rectangle stood above the roofs, saying in immovable finality: September 2.

Eddie Willers shifted his glance down to the street, to a vegetable pushcart at the stoop of a brownstone house. He saw a pile of bright gold carrots and the fresh green of onions. He saw a clean white curtain blowing at an open window. He saw a bus turning a corner, expertly steered. He wondered why he felt reassured—and then, why he felt the sudden, inexplicable wish that these things were not left in the open, unprotected against the empty space above.

Both compelling scenes for a Rand fan, of course. It is a good thing that the lack of maintenance in Atlas Shrugged is not as widespread and dangerous in the real New York today. Makes me think of Times Square:

Edited June 23, 2015 by william.scherk

[Selene]

Thanks William and Brant.

Geez, I thought it was Eddie!

On the Goddamn first page!

I do not think the time frame is that close yet.

However, and I have to look into this poll that I heard about on Rush today.

Essentially, the question was, would you vote for a person for President who was ___________.

There were eight or nine fill ins.

Most, e.g., were Yes in the low 90% range for Catholic, Jewish, Black, Latino, Woman etc.

Then the percent drop was significant for Muslim into the low 60's.

The stunner was Socialist at 47% support...that means we are one and !/2 generations away from that opening page in Atlas...

A...

[william.scherk]

However, and I have to look into this poll that I heard about on Rush today.

Essentially, the question was, would you vote for a person for President who was ___________.

There were eight or nine fill ins.

Most, e.g., were Yes in the low 90% range for Catholic, Jewish, Black, Latino, Woman etc.

Then the percent drop was significant for Muslim into the low 60's.

The stunner was Socialist at 47% support...that means we are one and !/2 generations away from that opening page in Atlas...

A Gallup poll, apparently. Rush's transcript is at his site: Gallup: Americans Are Not Wild About Electing a Socialist

I will search down the poll. I wonder if they added 'Atheist' to the list of woudjas. I suspect it will be lowest of the low.

I am thankful I live in a place where the religion (or lack thereof) doesn't much matter in elections. We have the first Muslim mayor of a major North American city (Calgary). Naheed Nenshi was re-elected with 74% of the vote in 2013.

[Added: and I would be wrong in my suspicion. If the survey is correct or reasonably representative of opinion, then an atheist could get ten percent more support than a socialist, and just slightly less than a Muslim ...

Among religious identities, while the large majority of Americans would vote for a Catholic or Jewish presidential candidate, smaller majorities say they would vote for a candidate who is Mormon (81%), an evangelical Christian (73%), Muslim (60%) or an atheist (58%).

These dynamics can affect 2016 candidates' efforts to attract American voters in the upcoming primaries as well as the general election next year, particularly because the field is shaping up as one that will have some diversity in terms of race, gender and, particularly, religion.

Five declared candidates are Catholics -- Republicans Jeb Bush, George Pataki, Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum, and Democrat Martin O'Malley. Two are women -- Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and Republican Carly Fiorina. Republican Ben Carson is the sole black candidate in the race, while two candidates are Hispanic -- Republicans Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Independent Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, is the only Jewish candidate in the race. And while a large majority of Americans are willing to vote for a candidate of his faith, Sanders' self-identification as a socialist could hurt him, as half of Americans say they would not vote for someone with that background.

More of the Gallup survey details here]

-- it's really hard to find a picture of the Calgary mayor without him smiling. Here he is with the socialist premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley.

Edited June 24, 2015 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

I am thankful I live in a place where the religion (or lack thereof) doesn't much matter in elections. We have the first Muslim mayor of a major city (Calgary). Naheed Nenshi was re-elected with 72% of the vote.

I've heard about the "Calgary stampede." Was that everybody leaving town?

--Brant

[william.scherk]

The Stampede is just a rodeo, fun if you like horses, horses, horses and horses and cows. Calgary is the fourth fastest-growing city in Canada, the nerve-centre of the country's petroleum industry, a financial powerhouse and a point of Alberta pride. Crazy traffic, great food, prairie hospitality, cheap liquor, busty belles -- all the cliches that used to work for Idaho.

[Selene]

Thanks Bill...

http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/Atheists-Muslims-Bias-Presidential-Candidates.aspx?utm_source=tagrss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syndication

http://www.gallup.com/poll/183713/socialist-presidential-candidates-least-appealing.aspx?utm_source=Politics&utm_medium=newsfeed&utm_campaign=tiles

Between now and the 2012 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be _____, would you vote for that person? June 2012 results

[Selene]