Mike Hardy

Ellen, I hadn't heard about Alan Gotthelf having contact with either BB or NB. ("G" is "Gotthelf", isn't it?) So what happened? -- Mike Hardy No, dear. "G" is Greenspan, one of the signatories to "For the Record," the text of which is quoted and the signatories to which are listed in the post to which you replied. And Gotthelf's first name I believe is spelled "Allan," not "Alan." Duh. LNS ___ OK, look: I'm pleading not guilty to all of these scurrilous accusations on the grounds of temporary stupidity. -- Mike Hardy

Ellen, I hadn't heard about Alan Gotthelf having contact with either BB or NB. ("G" is "Gotthelf", isn't it?) So what happened? -- Mike Hardy

Mike, I am unsure about the meaning of your statement and question, and if I get it wrong, I apologize and would appreciate a clarification. If it means what I think it does, I admit that in the USA lawyers are expected to lie in defense of their clients, so they don't really need to make any amends when they are caught lying. Dey are jus doink der jops, Herr Führer! Sieg Heil! Although I do think that in some circumstances the legal system encourages lawyers to be dishonest, I was actually referring to something else. Valliant said the Ayn Rand archives contained nothing to corroborate that Barbara Branden met with Ayn Rand in 1981. Later he said the archive does contain some such corroboration. That could be a mistake rather than actual dishonesty. But you seemed to complain that he didn't say "I made a mistake" when you thought it was appropriate. Now Valliant could say "As long as I allowed later that the archives do corroborate that the meeting happened, thereby setting the record straight, no one can consider it dishonest." But if he's extremely averse to saying "I made a mistake" when that could be appropriate if we're talking about _him_ rather than about the topic of his book, then we might consider under what circumstances might that behavior be appropriate. It would be appropriate if he had a duty to keep things strictly on the topic of the Brandens and to make whatever case could be made against them consistent with the evidence. Why would he have such a duty to advocate for one side rather than acting like a judge or a scientist weighing the evidence on all sides of the dispute? -- Mike Hardy

[snip snip] Valliant's failure to say "Sorry about that; it was a mistake" (in reference to his statement that nothing in the Ayn Rand archives corroborates that Barbara Branden met with Ayn Rand in 1981) would be appropriate if he were representing a client before a jury, since he would need to avoid letting it look to the jury like his client's mistake. He allowed that, yes, something in the archive does corroborate the story of the meeting. That's enough to set straight the information the jury gets about that point. But he didn't say "I was wrong when I said nothing in the archives corroborates it." 'Nother words, he's acting like a lawyer whose duty is to a client who has taken a certain position. So why might that be the appropriate way for him to behave? -- Mike Hardy

OK, here's the youtube video. It was 1959. I could easily be wrong. (Sometimes.) -- Mike Hardy

So here I am on my monthly visit to Objectivist Living and I see this, and what I think of is that a while back someone posted a link here to a youtube video of Mike Wallace's interview with Ayn Rand in about 1960. Someone who commented on that youtube page mentioned that AR never blinked in the 10 minutes or so of the interview. And I think that was correct. -- Mike Hardy

It's been a frequently repeated cliche since the '80s to say the Kelley-Peikoff split is like the Protestant Reformation. -- Mike Hardy

Ellen ___ Very interesting video, Ellen. Thank you. Youtube is a magnificent thing. -- Mike Hardy

Yes, we gods require you our worshippers to express your worship in _practical_ form. In Craig Ferguson's novel _Between_the_Bridge_and_the_River_, page 304, we read:

Leonard Peikoff studies hard and is not exactly brilliant. Branden taught him how to deal with NBI students. No? In her _Liberty_ interview she said that about NB, in almost exactly those words: no one has that kind of power without seeking it. Then she explicitly said Rand did _not_ have that kind of power and NB did. Can you tell me what page of her book this is on? -- Mike Hardy

When I read _To_Whom_It_May_Concern_ (years after the event), I also felt she was wrong to ask people to condemn someone without being sufficiently specific, as if she's saying "Judge him as immoral because I say so." She says he lied, but doesn't give specifics. She mentions some allegedly immoral behavior without saying what it was. Consequently I didn't believe her. Could a rational person read between the lines enough to realize he had deceived her about a relationship with another woman, and that that's why she didn't want to be explicit, and take _that_ to be enough specificity to form a judgement? It was from Nathaniel Branden's own writing, in _Judgment_Day_, conjoined with Barbara Branden's _Liberty_ interview, that the picture formed in my mind of NB as "scaring people into line". He wrote that he loved having his students feel fear and awe of him. He also wrote that when AR was angry at people, he took her side and attacked the object of her anger. As a psychologist he must have known exactly what he was doing. In her case, on the other hand, it would appear that her anger was just emotion, rather than calculated to manipulate. Her attention must have been on the issues she was arguing about, rather than on the dynamics of power. Those issues were obviously what she cared about. Picture the situation: she's angry at someone; NB leaps in to attack that person and does so with great skill; the person then remembers that it was AR who attacked him, and NB who merely was a cheerleader; this makes _her_ look like the one maintaining power over people and trying to scare them into line. It's in _Judgment_Day_, but not very explicit. -- Mike Hardy

Sorry, Chris, but that typo -- expAnsive -- is too appropriate to pass by. ;-) "ExpAnsive proposition," both geographically and bloviatingly indeed. If they really are inviting Perrigo...how can they present any facade of intellectual seriousness? Ellen ___ Geez, where's Roland Pericles? -- Mike Hardy

So that means the king of Thailand is officially a citizen of the USA. -- Mike Hardy

Michael Michael, Michael . . . . The important question is . . . did RAND name him as her intellectual heir? Alfonso No. She called Nathaniel Branden that once. Then he betrayed her. Would she risk making the same mistake twice? I think Peikoff makes a mistake trying to assume that title, unless he makes it clear that others may also be her intellectual heirs, without being named such by her. People think he's trying to say she declared him her successor, to lead the movement after her death. That can only make him look silly. -- Mike Hardy

Heinlein wandered all over the philosophical map without much attention to philosophical inconsistencies; he didn't care about that. His novels for an adult audience were generally not very good. I found _The_Moon_is_a_ _Harsh_Mistress_ exciting when I read it at the age of 13, but the implausibilities of it now strike me as comical. Farmers on the moon exporting food to an overpopulated earth? Fearing that they will run out of natural resources in seven years? How did those resources get there, and why could not more be brought the same way? Zillions of other problems too...... ON THE OTHER HAND: Heinlein's stories for you people (aged 10 - 16 or so, maybe?) are sometimes (not always) absolutely brilliant and can be enormously enjoyed by adults, especially adults with unusually high IQs. _Starman_Jones_ is flawed and its flaws just don't matter. It's great (see the review I posted over at amazon.com). _Have_Space_Suit:_ _Will Travel_ is brilliant. Anyone who doesn't love it should be euthanized. In fact, L.N. Subtle, if you're reading this: read the latter book first. -- Mike Hardy

All true. Once upon a time (early January 2002) I was attending a convention in San Diego---the joint meetings of the American Mathematical Society and a couple of allied organizations. Kirez Korgan lived in that vicinity at the time, and one evening we met for dinner. I was dressed differently from usual since I had been meeting with some prospective employers. He met me at the convention center. I told him I'd be dressed like a respectable person, so he might not recognize me. He said "OK, I'll look for a respectable person." (Last I had any very specific information, Kirez was living in Siberia, but I've heard he's moved on since then; I don't know the truth. But he's as adventurous as Roland Pericles (and uses standard spelling conventions for some reason).) -- Mike Hardy

He was a superb public speaker and I would say he seemed dignified in video recordings of him that I've seen. I like playfulness, as some here will attest. But sometimes it seems as if physicists take the term "theory of everything" literally. -- Mike Hardy

BTW, am I the only one who thinks physicists make themselves ridiculous by using the term "theory of everything"? I think they obviously ought to choose a more difnified term. -- Mike Hardy

I'd heard of this thing only a few days ago. I remember all the publicity last March about E8. Very unusual for research in mathematics to dominate the front page of a section of the New York Times. I came across the name of Marcus du Sautoy, who is quoted as commenting on this, for quite different reasons recently. Small world and all that..... -- Mike Hardy

Ellen, this stuff about manuscripts shockingly reappearing reminds me of the recent publicity (since about 1998) concerning the Archimedes Palimpsest. I guess I'd heard that Newton's anti-trinitarian writings didn't become publicly known until Keynes announced them in the '30s, but I hadn't heard most of the stuff you wrote. -- Mike

Was his alchemical work disjoint from his "natural philosophical" work? One may feel inclined to dismiss alchemical work as worthless because it is reported to rest upon a theory not even approximating the truth: that water, air, fire, and earth are the four elements of which all matter is composed. But experimental alchemists did a lot of work on making substances out of other substances that had industrial and medical applications and became part of the data on which chemistry was eventually based. So the question would be whether Newton's work on alchemy was included in that latter category. Any interest on research in the sort of questions that chemistry answers might have been regarded in Newton's day as an interest in alchemy. -- Mike Hardy

You've got to be really careful about stuff like that. G.H. Hardy (not related to me, as far as I know) was an eminent mathematical analyst and number theorist, and famously the mentor and patron of Srinivasa Ramanujan, and he wrote some very very disparaging comments on Lancelot Hogben's book _Mathematics_for_the_Million_, which caused me to view that book with contempt for many years without ever having opened it. Then I saw a web site on which David Mumford, a winner of the Fields Medal, spoke very highly of it. Finally I looked at it and found that my previous position, adopted when I was young and naive, was unjustified. -- Mike Hardy

So Ellen, what Inquiring Minds really want to know about you is this: Was there _really_ a photograph of you that JeffO (who apparently has never met you in person) once saw that caused great excitement among the JeffOs of this world (all _one_ of them) sufficient to explain the style of rhetoric with which he has sometimes written about you, and when are you going to post it here? -- Mike Hardy

Actually, a couple of weeks ago I posted in a thread you were participating in. I was replying to something Robert Kolker had said. I don't think anybody noticed my posting. -- Mike

Sounds like something someone on ATL might write (back in the day) or (maybe???) on ATL2 now. Then someone could quote it out of context and say "Look, Ellen admitted something is beyond her ability." (_I_ would never think of such things, of course.) -- Mike Hardy