Richard Uhler

Yep. In general I'm more interested in trying to convince the "Out-Of-Iraq-And-Into-Darfur" enthusiasts that further well-intentioned intereference in Africa is only making things worse. Not, I suppose, that there's much hope of that either...

This is indeed tragic, but what would you have us actually do?

Eat right, rest well and exercise regularly. Avoid bad habits like too much booze, smoking and drugs. Self esteem will happen all by itself. A healthy neurological system in a healthy body. Ba'al Chatzaf This is good advice for anyone.

The simple answer is that I am beginning to change. It's not so much that I am kept away from people as that I no longer allow myself to be affected as strongly by them as I used to do. I am less willing to make allowances for the behavior of others; I am slower to irritation or anger; I have greater self-control. I used to have a sort of knee-jerk unwillingness to judge others; now I find that, since I must see myself as I really am, then I must also see others as they really are, if that makes any sense. I am more able to admit when people are simply wasting my time or energy and pass them by - which is difficult when it's someone you've known for a long time or have to work with. And I have a very calm, aloof feeling about that; it's not a bad thing. I don't find that it harms my few important personal relationships, though; if anything I am becoming more conscious about how I behave in these relationships and that's no bad thing either.

I've been doing the sentence stem work in Six Pillars and have found it to be pretty useful. One side-effect is that the further I go with this work the more distant I feel from most of the people I deal with in daily life; I wonder where that's going to lead? But even without the stem-completion work there's much useful matter in the book.

Examples? OK, I'm making a value judgement - I tend to view pretty much anything she does as stupid, from letting her sex video get leaked to drunk driving to her public "sorry, I forgot to put underwear on, check me out anyway" appearances to repeatedly violating her probation. And sometimes she speaks. I've read that she never graduated from high school - obviously this hasn't affected her livelihood. If anyone I knew in actual life had dropped out of high school, they'd have spent the past however-many-years working at MacDonald's. IMO she has a choice to be educated and responsible and mature and she has chosen not to do so because *it just doesn't matter* - she's still secure for life no matter what she does. Most people I know...well, we don't have that kind of elbow-room; misadventures that do not affect this woman's security in the long run would affect our lives and livelihoods for a long time to come. We just don't have the option to screw up. Maybe it just irritates me that someone can be so famous and so rewarded for doing nothing of real productive value. As I said before, I know that she's managed to shift a lot of product, but...so what? It's crappy product. To hell with the Hiltons; I'm going to go work on my symphony.

Not only does she act stupidly without consequence, she seems to feel entitled to it; this pisses a lot of people off. I don't guess that's a philosophical issue, but I think it explains some of the off-with-her-head attitude we're seeing. Is she a *good* singer, or actress, or whatever? She has generated a lot of revenue, but by spewing out a lot of lowest-common-denominator crap for celebrity-worshippers. Not worth my respect. I should say that I don't view PH with any real rancor or resentment; generally she's been of no interest to me one way or the other. She should certainly serve her full sentence, esp. since she blew her chance to act like an adult by violating her probation; but there are a lot worse people than PH out there who have walked. E.G. if PH has to face consequneces, so should O.J. Simpson have done.

True enough, and yet...I can't think of anything more "wonder"-ful than men setting foot on the moon - long-term physical artifacts or not. The raw fact that it was done at all impresses me at least as much as a building or a statue or a wall does.

I plan to check this out later. My *real* choice would be the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo portion of the U.S. space program, but I might cast a vote for the Taj Mahal (for beauty), or for the Statue of Liberty (for nationalism), or for the Great Wall (because I'm impressed that the engineers of the time came up with something so...large).

On that general topic, perhaps you've heard about this in the past week: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2083785,00.html

I scored 36, which I found sort of disturbing, but I chalk a lot of that up to shaky childhood socialisation, too much time spent alone as a kid, and general orneriness rather than sort sort of "syndrome." I'd rather read or play my horn than go to a noisy party where I don't know anybody; I'm used to doing things on my own - so what? This and some other similar tests I've encountered lead me to think that someone somewhere is trying to establish "social and gregarious" as "normative and desirable."

Congratulations! The night I graduated from H.S. in 1979 I felt elated ("I made it!"), expectant ("now the next adventure begins"), and a little scared ("wow, Adult Life starts tomorrow morning. I'd better try to do this right"). And generally, things worked out OK. Best of luck to you.

I've heard of this woman before but this was my first exposure to her singing. I didn't finish it either because it stopped being funny about two minutes in. Florence Foster Jennings, Mrs. Miller, William Hung...there's one in every generation.

He sure did. Although I never thought of Kucinich as "intelligent and right thinking". Mick I can't get anyone I know to even admit having voted for this guy.

Well, I think Job was the most entertaining of that lot. I have to say that I was never very taken with Stranger either; I read this both as a teen and an adult (to see if age would give me a different opinion about the book- it didn't, really).

Don't be too disappointed if you DON'T like Heinlein. Some people actually don't, I being one of them. His fans tend to be men and his detractors tend to be women. Personally, I think he hadn't a clue what goes on inside the female brain, and that his women are all examples of what men WISH women were like. That said, "Moon" is one of his better books. Don't even consider "The Number of the Beast". ... Heck, I didn't even like "Number of the Beast." Actually I think Heinlein pretty much "lost it" after the late 60s.

Have you looked at Switzerland? It is a clean prosperous country that lives under The Rule of Law. Ba'al Chatzaf But do they have klezmer music there?

I've had that reaction a lot these past few years. I try to take it as an opportunity to further educate myself. Although: I find that there really aren't that many "legitimate" complaints against America - certainly none that couldn't also be leveled at any number of other countries. I'd still rather be here than any of the other available options.

I agree; Atlas, if filmed at all, needs to be a TV miniseries. It's a novel of speech and ideas; the small screen suits it better than the big screen. And I have to admit that not only can't I see Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart, I'm not even sure I see why so many people think she's so hot. Actually, when I think of Dagny, I picture Lauren Bacall ca. the early '50's.

Also by the same author -The Demolished Man-. Ba'al Chatazaf Also a good choice, of course. I didn't mention it originally because I didn't think it qualified as having a "cheerful ending," but it offers a well-constructed picture of a very different society and justice is certainly served at the end. "Tenser, said the tensor."

"Known Space" was a great series and my favorite SF "universe" (the last couple of Ringworld novels notwithstanding).

A random few: Robert Heinlein: Citizen Of The Galaxy and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle: Inferno, The Mote In God's Eye, and Footfall Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination Connie Willis: Doomsday Book And I heartily second Ba'al's recommendation of The Dispossessed. The Heinlein and Bester novels show their age (dating from the 1950s) but are still worthwhile; Heinlein held a great deal of optimism about humankind in general.

This led my spouse and I to discuss: if Mecca and the artifacts-of-worship located there were to be destroyed, what would be the effect on Islam? (I suspect there wouldn't be much of a long-term effect; the anniversary would become a Muslim holiday, the tale of "The Destruction Of The Holy City" would become part of the myth-cycle of the religion, and Muslims would continue to make the Haj to the ruins.)

Mainly on the 'net - Fox, BBC, Washington Times, The Australian, (UK) Times Online, Global Security, & Strategy Page for starters. Also several blogs incl. Little Green Footballs and and Michelle Malkin. I also follow Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor, which is not really a news source but usually includes many interesting news links. I don't watch much TV news. For local info there's usually an abandoned copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer lying around somewhere at work.

I used to love it back in the Tom Baker era (showing my age, I know) - even had a cheesy little schoolboy crush on Sarah Jane Smith! I did see one of the episodes with Christopher Eccleston which I thought was fairly cool. I keep picturing Alan Rickman as potentially a pretty good Doctor.