Robert Jones

As for the old (and thus, true) Ayn Rand books and publications, you can still find all the old titles and editions for sale in used condition at amazon.com, even the pamphlet edition of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and the Palo Alto Book Service printings of The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist and the Ayn Rand Letter. 41 copies of "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution" are available from various book dealers there. Even "Who Is Ayn Rand?" you can get for a penny from one of amazon's affiliated booksellers (while it lasts!) To wit: Why make ARI even one penny richer? Capitalism affords us all alternative markets.

This is the most egregious airbrushing of Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz I've seen yet.

That was definitely not one of David Lynch's better moments.

He didn't smile so much when he played the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: J However, he DID smile a lot in his role as Ernie (left) on the 1960s TV show "My Three Sons":

I imagine you must have seen "The Black Cat" (1934); that's a favorite of mine. MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE ALERT! MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE ALERT! ;) Well, it's less so than, say, "Eraserhead." Just bustin' chops!

Here are my 100, which is taken from a previous thread. It needs to be updated, but I'll do that later. Victor: You'll see we share a lot of the same faves. Enjoy! My all time top 100 favorites: 1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) 2. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) 3. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) 4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967) 5. The Godfather, Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) 6. All About Eve (Joseph Manckiewicz, 1950) 7. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) 8. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) 9. The Third Man (Carroll Reed, 1949) 10. High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973) 11. Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998) 12. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) 13. North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) 14. Terminator II (James Cameron, 1992) 15. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1925) 16. Death Wish (Michael Winner, 1974) 17. Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959) 18. It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1947) 19. Rocky (John Avildsen, 1976) 20. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) 21. The World's Fastest Indian (Roger Donaldson, 2005) 22. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) 23. We the Living (Goffredo Alessandrini, 1942) 24. Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) 25. Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964) 26. Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984) 27. Confidentially Yours (Francois Truffaut, 1983) 28. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) 29. The Taking of Pelham, 1,2,3 (Joseph Sargent, 1974) 30. King Kong ((Merian C. Cooper, 1933) 31. A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957) 32. The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985) 33. The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952) 34. Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger, 1962) 35. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) 36. The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1953) 37. El Dorado (Howard Hawks, 1966) 38. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) 39. Key Largo (John Huston, 1948) 40. Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979) 41. I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) 42. The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963) 43. The Great Santini (Lewis John Carlino, 1979) 44. Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1973) 45. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) 46. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962) 47. To Be, Or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942) 48. For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965) 49. To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) 50. Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995) 51. In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967) 52. Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) 53. The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) 54. Airplane! (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker, 1980) 55. Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970) 56. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock. 1960) 57. Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) 58. The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949) 59. White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) 60. This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984) 61. Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963) 62. Demolition Man (Marco Brambilla, 1993) 63. Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957) 64. Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) 65. Scent of a Woman (Martin Brest, 1992) 66. Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) 67. From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinneman, 1953) 68. Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974) 69. The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1980) 70. A Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961) 71. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) 72. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963) 73. High Noon (Fred Zinneman, 1952) 74. Ray (Taylor Hackford, 2004) 75. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940) 76. Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1952) 77. Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989) 78. Only the Lonely (Chris Columbus, 1991) 79. The Untouchables (Brian DePalma, 1987) 80. Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960) 81. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1985) 82. Kingpin (Farrelly Bros., 1996) 83. Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948) 84. The Little Thief (Claude Miller, 1989) 85. Papillon (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1973) 86. The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) 87. I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock, 1953) 88. Hoffa (Danny DeVito, 1992) 89. Citizen Ruth (Alexander Payne, 1996) 90. Ben Hur (William Wyler, 1959) 91. Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951) 92. On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952) 93. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph Manckiewicz, 1947) 94. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1957) 95. The Edge (Lee Tamhori, 1997) 96. The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1952) 97. Strangers On a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951) 98. The Boys From Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978) 99. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) 100.Carlito's Way (Brian DePalma, 1993)

I imagine you must have seen "The Black Cat" (1934); that's a favorite of mine. MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE ALERT! MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE ALERT! ;)

I had a fortunate intellectual upbringing. In addition to being blessed by very good teachers from grade school on, I had parents both of whom loved, read, and accumulated books. Our house was a mini-library; I once estimated that there were on the order of 2000 books in the place. Among those was a fair collection of books on philosophy. Also the set called The Great Books. My own idea of the history of philosophy, from the time I was a child, has been summarized by the title of the introductory volume of the Great Books set: "The Great Conversation." I have thought of philosophy as a discourse amongst intelligent minds grappling with difficult questions in an ongoing dialogue over the ages. Back in the '70s when I took Leonard Peikoff's two overview courses on the history of philosophy, "the great conversation" way of approach to the subject was what I felt was Leonard's own, native emotional attitude -- an attitude which I thought emerged in his becoming enthused, his getting really "into" the perspective of whichever philosopher he was presenting. Via some conversations with him and with some other persons who were either part of or close to the Rand inner circle, I learned that this attitude of enthusiasm on Leonard's part had often resulted in troubles between him and AR. He took a long time "getting" -- internalizing -- the message that the history of philosophy was supposed to be mostly a wasteland lit by only a few bright beacons prior to Rand. Judging from what I've read about his DIM-hypothesis course, he's at last fully internalized the message. More's the pity. I agree with Barbara that it's very sad indeed if young Objectivists form their impression of the history of thought from what Leonard Peikoff seems to be telling them today. Ellen ___ I am about as much a scientist as Stephen Hawking is an Olympic pole vaulter, so I am self-admittedly ill qualified to speak on physics at all, Newtonian or otherwise. However, Ellen, I LOVE the Brittanica Great Books, a set of which my father handed down to me and which I devoured while in college. As a history teacher, I used them all the time to supplement my lecture material. I guess you and I have the only "dog-eared" set of Great Books out there!

Black Snake Moan. Hmmm, looks interesting. Will see! I saw 300, liked a lot. But most of` all LOVED Das Leben der Anderen. On video, just got Face in the Crowd, Rocky Balboa and Ran.

They are back together, and one of my wishes before I die is to see them live in concert!

I am not an Objectivist. I am not really any "ist" at all, but I am often "pist" at the world around me. Likes: Objectivist sense-of-life, Romanticism, individualism, capitalism, pro-Americanism, individual liberty, Roark, Francisco, Andrei, Gail Wynand, and Objectivist (and Objectivist sympathizers) writers who have their heads screwed on straight. Worship of Rachmaninoff and Salvador Dali. Objectivists who are not only in the world, but of the world, even if that means disagreeing with other Objectivists. Dislikes: Randroids, "airbrushing," excommunications, people who aren't just intransigent but rabid atheists, the attitude that photography isn't really an art (but for some inexpicable strange reason, cinematography IS), Peikoff and Schwartz's hysteria. People who don't read outside of the Objectivist "Canon." The whole cant of the article "The Possible Dream," which is determinism at its worst.

Hey Robert, well I'm going to weigh in on this one as your movie reviewer: Firstly, I thought Daniel Craig DID reinvent the role, and it DOES have a prequel feel, and DOES succeed at erasing Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, George Lazenby and Remington Steele from memory.... But NOT Sean Connery! All I could think while watching "Casino Royale" was "Jesus, I wish Sean Connery had these writers around when HE was making Bond films!" I agree with you mostly about Moneypenny and Q, but I think Judi Dench as M was all wrong! Notice she's got both the "woman with something to prove" AND the Napoleon complex going on, totally undermining her authority as Bond's boss. Bernard Lee was the ultimate M, because he had that quiet but firm unflappable British reserve which Bond doesn't quite have yet, because of youth and inexperience. Judi Dench is always walking around starting her sentences with "Bond, what the hell did you just do?" to show she's a "tough gal." I think her "reinvention" of M was done by making her the butt of a running visual short joke as she harumphs about in her pants suit. For example, I cannot imagine EITHER Connery or Craig hacking into Bernard Lee's computer account access files! Bernard Lee's M would've had Bond on the carpet for that, giving him a well-deserved dressing down. Now, onto this being Bond as Ian Fleming imagined him. True, but rather, this is how I saw Bond reading the books, especially short stories like "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights" in which Bond is more of an assassin than covert agent. However, from what I know about Ian Fleming, his own first choice for playing Bond was David Niven (!) and second was Cary Grant (unavailable, but at least plausible). Thank God Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman went with the more rugged, yet still urbane Scotsman Sean Connery. Daniel Craig is Sean Connery with weight training. But there will never be another Sean Connery. Even if Daniel Craig redifined James Bond, Sean Connery set the mold, and I think twenty years from now people will be making Bond comparisons to both Connery and Craig.

Well, I'm one of them. I did, however, read "Shalimar the Clown." Good book.

Ross: Be careful. Islamocommunism coming to a town near you in Thailand. Keep five years, Rob't.

I saw it and loved it. It was especially better in the original German (which I speak fluently), as the subtitles didn't pick up on the shades of difference between German and English. Ulrich Muehe's performance was a real tour-de-force!

Say what you want about Mantovanni; He could makes his strings SING!

The question is: HOW To arrange forums. There're a LOT of Objectivist writers out there who've published books. Or should we add forums to writers in other areas (as is already the case with so many who have their own forums/subforums). For example, i am glad there's a Sciabarra subforum, but what about Kay Nolte Smith or the Holzers? Some great lit out there! Let us reason together on this.

It was like a trailer or commercial. Good use of visuals, but music was definitely generic sound electrostock, too muzaky.

Rick James's "Superfreak" is hardly "stupid music" IMHO. It's the apotheosis of Funk! A true funk MASTERPIECE! Not even George Clinton or Earth Wind & Fire could touch it (pun and props to M.C. Hammer intended).

There was a little talk going on about Georgia O'Keeffe so I decided to share one of my favorite paintings. This painting is awesome! It is huge and is at the Art Institute of Chicago in a very bright stairway under skylights. This little web image certainly does not do it justice. The painting is 24 feet wide by 8 feet high and if you get a chance to go to the Art Institute, it is definitely worth a look. It seems so simple, and it just makes me smile. It brings me a childlike joy that few works can match. Inky used to have a print of this in her room when she was a little girl and she loved it. As Inky would say, "It makes me HAPPY!!" Kat As a photographer, none of my influences in color photography are photographers. Most are painters, and O'Keeffe is one of them (along with Edward Hopper and Karin Kneffel).

IN fact, the title of my movie review for it was "See the Movie First, THEN Read the Novel."

Steve: Wilkommen!!! Anyone who loves "Little Miss Sunshine" is right up my alley! I was cherring when Arkin won his best supporting actor trophy. Oh my God: Eddie Rabbitt died? When was this? Til this very day, when I'm driving, I cannot but help hear his song "I Love a Rainy Night" playing in my mind to the rhythm of the windshield wipers.

Peter: I agree about Karajan. My first introduction to him was a CD he recorded of Sibelius in the early 1980s, slow, flaccid, boring. But a friend got me to listen to his earlier stuff, and he has that fire in the belly going on, I admit. Walter was sublime with Beethoven. Are you speaking of his earlier, mono, recording of the Fifth? That's the one I have, and it's as perfect as Toscanini's Seventh, also with the NYPO. Did Perlman and Giulini record Beethoven's concerto as well? I have them performing the Brahms. BTW, I've hear a recent performance by the German conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra on NPR of the Beethoven Fifth, and man does he ever blow the dust off that score! He doesn't sound like a German at all, but a hot blooded Italian; it was like hearing Toscanini all over again, or Riccardo Muti.

Thanks for your reply, Barbara. That's an interesting point you make about Rachmaninoff's darker pieces. My own favorite is Die Toteninsel, a tone poem in 5/4 time, very much impressionistic for the Russian composer. Interesting point, Robert. I wonder if she ever heard "Isle of the Dead"? It's a great piece, but certainly not joyous in any sense of the word, except perhaps for the middle section, and that ends in the inexorable ride to the island. Judith Ah, yes, Charon, the rower! The middle section is indeed piu dolce, very heartrending, bittersweet. Glad to know someone else knows this piece. It's Rachmaninoff's most succinct yet thorough musical statement, a world-within-a-world, like Sibelius's "Tapiola."

First off, let me praise Michael for being man enough to admit when he's wrong (about the implications in the title). That, let me say, is NOT common among the more rabid Randroids, who think that the main puropose of principles is to make baseball bats with which to bash people's heads in. Greybird: I'm with you, almost 100%. I've seen "Little Miss Sunshine" three times already, and I'm VERY uncomfortable that someone would even think I could even be capable of paedophilia for this. I saw it three times because it's a great comedy! Further, I found your observations about the movie to be spot-on. In fact, as the movie reviewer for The New Individualist, "Little Miss Sunshine" was the movie I most regretted not reviewing. When picking films to review, I often see four or five movies to get two reviews. Most movies, however, just aren't terribly relevant to the mission of TNI and since I review them within the framework of rational individualism, they have to make that "cut." "Little Miss Sunshine" didn't make that cut. That, however, didn't make it any lesser movie in my *personal* estimation, mainly because I don't go to the movies to see my personal philosophy of rational individualism validated (although, it's nice from time to time). I go to movies to get out of the house and have a good time. In that respect, "Little Miss Sunshine" passed with flying colors. What a charming movie! Before we go too far over the deep end analysing its "implications" and "unspoken premises," let us be reminded that "IT'S JUST A MOVIE." In particular, it's a comedy, NOT a "message movie." Sure, there's a message (one that too many uptight Objectivist types, present company excepted, ignore), namely that you should give your family unconditional love. Yet, beyond that, the movie rang true with me: YES, in many ways, these characters ARE losers. THAT'S PRECISELY THE POINT: To the extent they were losers is to the same extent their family was messed up. The lesson I got from it was "Having survived this bizarre odyssey, and having grown faith in each other as family members, and as parents becoming a little less self-centered and caring a little more about our kids, perhaps now we'll have something to build on to start winning for a change." Did I hear somebody wince at the phrase "unconditional love"? Then let me humbly suggest, with all due respect, that you've never lived on the receiving end of Objectivist parents. I have. I don't hold it against my father or mom now, but try to imagine, if you will, growing up having to hear your parents make statements qualifying their love for you as a child. To hear, growing up, that my father's love for my mother, because *chosen,* is on a higher, more *worthy,* plane than their love for me, because I -- after all -- was not planned. I just "happened." Tell me I'm wrong! Maybe most Objectivist parents never utter those words to their children, and I pray they never do. But, this "applying" Ayn Rand's ideas to every goddamned thing in life (which, as we know, has caused a lot of anger, hurt and pain to others when zeal for righteousness overrides such trifling concerns as paternal/maternal instincts, tact, and just plain human decency) left emotional scars on me until well into my thirties, because I heard this shite as a young child, and didn't realize its source until my dad lent me a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" at 17. Well, for the next 15 years or so, I knew where my parents got that wrongheaded garbage about qualifying *levels* of love, but repressed its inherently damaging nature because it "made sense" to me, "logically." But, I did some soul searching when I realized one simple thing: That the evidence of my experience said totally otherwise. I loved my father because he was kind and gentle to me, despite those crackpot ideas he picked up from Ayn Rand and Objectivism about placing a higher value on love for the "chosen" over love to "unchosen" family members. To be fair, let us say that my parents "misapplied" those ideas of Rand's. That said, anyone who tells me that notions like that weren't, and aren't, in the air in Objectivist circles is a bald-faced liar. Another thing that was damaging to me as a child was all that Objectivist judgmental crap my parents absorbed from reading Ayn Rand's books and newsletters and listening to lectures, especially the part on the evils of withholding judgment. At an IOS conference, I even heard an audience member question Nathaniel Branden about the moral necessity of pronouncing moral judgments (again, tell me I'm making this stuff up). After the questioner sat down, I just had to rise, and say to Branden that where does everybody get off thinking they owe other people their *unsolicited* moral judgments and opinions, particularly in a personal setting? While I thought this observation would draw some sounds of recognition and resonance, you could really hear the crickets chirping on that one! It's like I stepped off a rocketship from Mars and right into Rand World, so naive was I in my belief that people should just mind their own business, unless their obnoxious and nosy moral judgments really *are* solicited by others! Thinking about it, considering the damage done to me as my parents improperly "applied" Objectivist "principles" in raising their children, Objectivists are lucky that I'm even giving them the time of day. But, one thing I picked up from Rand, Objectivism and other Objectivists was the value of thinking for myself. There is much in Objectivism of great value, and over the years I've learned to be "objective" about Objectivism. However, I know more than a few damaged souls who've washed their hands of the whole sordid messes their lives have become because of the almost Puritanical, humorless and obsessive judgmentalism that's the ugly baggage of Objectivism. The reason I loved "Little Miss Sunshine" is because, at the end of the day, these family members still love each other, *and are there* for each other, unconditionally. I look at my own boy, who is eighteen months old: How could I as a father, in good conscience, ever give him any message other than that I love him unconditionally? How could I ever say those hurtful, confidence destroying words to him that he wasn't "chosen" and that my love for him is not as "great" or as "special" as my love for my wife? I plan to raise my boy to be a good, decent, moral and productive man. I will teach him about honor and use many opportunities to teach him right from wrong. I will push him to excel in his passions, but never live vicariously through his achievements. But, to help him grow strong and independent, there is a need that must be fulfilled, a need that all children have in the marrow of their bones, and in their heart of hearts: That, his daddy will always be there for him, that his daddy may judge his actions but never his soul, and that, no matter what, his daddy will always love him.