9thdoctor

In Peikoff’s latest (today’s) podcast there’s an interesting tidbit about the Fountainhead movie. The question is why does Wynand commit suicide in the movie, while not doing so in the book. Peikoff’s answer is that it was done for the Hayes office, which he equates to the Catholic Church. The reason was they wouldn’t “allow a divorce on the movie screen”. This part of the podcast starts about 10 minutes in. So depicting suicide was preferable to divorce, lovely. I recall Barbara Branden’s book having material about Rand’s dealings with the Hayes office, but I don’t recall this tidbit. It’s the kind of thing that makes listening worthwile (hey, it’s free, and there isn’t even a loyalty oath!). The last question of the podcast concerns WW2, and the temperature rises as he accuses Roosevelt of conspiracy in Pearl Harbor and…just give it a listen.

Forbidden fruit I'd say.

I got this email from Nathaniel Branden yesterday, it has a link to Barbara Branden's foreword as a pdf file: Dear Friend, Thank you for your enthusiastic inquires regarding The Vision of Ayn Rand. The paperback edition has been printed and is in transit to the warehouse for shipping. The hardback and leather bound editions will take about 10 days longer. If you would like a deep insight of what the book is to be about, I urge you to read the foreword, written by Barbara Branden. Read the foreword (click here) http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/pdf/VISION_FWD_BB.pdf?utm_campaign=The%20Vision%20of%20Ayn%20Rand&utm_content=&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_term=Read%20the%20foreword%20%28click%20here%29 Order your copy (click here) http://www.lfb.org/index.php?cPath=50 In addition, Laissez Faire Books is having a banquet with me in Phoenix, Arizona on January 10th to celebrate the publication of The Vision of Ayn Rand. It is being held in conjunction with a Winter Retreat and Conference that Laissez Faire is sponsoring. The entire Sunday afternoon of the conference is focusing on Ayn Rand and her ideas and other speakers include Ed Hudgins, Roderick Long and Mimi Gladstein. More information on the conference (click here) http://www.isilretreat.org/ Buy tickets to the banquet (click here) http://www.isilretreat.org/product_info.php?cPath=73&products_id=344 Best, Nathaniel

We ought to do a thread on Mahler, btw I’m pretty sure my collection’s bigger than yours (picture an emoticon of a strutting peacock here, oh I’m sooo superior!). Favorite recordings, that kind of thing. Complaints about the ridiculous tempo Klemperer took in the 3rd movement of Das Lied, when he had the best tenor ever for the part (Wunderlich). Laud the sonics of Sinopoli's recording of the 8th. The video direction of Bernstein's LSO 2nd. How it’ll relate to Objectivism? Beats me, but we may come up with some surprise integrations. But whoever uses the stoopid-ass term "KASS" gets flamed.

My post about Umberto Eco’s Baudolino was #333, so it was crapola? For my reaction I’m torn between and Now you’re just listing books, not giving the rest of us a clue what you like about them, Phil’s standards are not being met! I need an emoticon of a schoolmarm with a ruler or a cane, but can't find one. Anyway, enough of the mock scolding, I’ve started Shogun, and its great. I haven’t rewatched the mini-series, but it's clear it was extremely faithful to the book. It's long, but doesn't feel it.

Looks like it's made it to YouTube already: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGs-KqOa-BA There are seven parts, this is just the first.

There are historical legal inconsistencies concerning “The Wall”, no question about it. I wrote (elsewhere) that the Treaty with Tripoli is only useful when debating with a Pat Robertson type who’s claiming the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. It pricks their bubble, after they’ve conflated the stories about prayers at the Constitutional Convention and what have you.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Napoleon Bonaparte

Alrighty, I looked it up, and it was in the body of the Global Balkanization talk. For some reason I felt compelled to retype it to share with all and sundry: I want to mention a hypothesis of mine, which is only a hypothesis because I have given no special study to subject of bilingual countries, i.e., countries that have two official languages. But I have observed the fact that bilingual countries tend to be culturally impoverished by comparison to the major countries whose language they share in part. Bilingual countries do not produce many great, first-rate achievements in any intellectual line of endeavour, whether in science, philosophy, literature, or art. Consider the record of Belgium (which is French speaking in part) as against the record of France-or the record of Switzerland (a trilingual country) as against the record of France, of Germany, of Italy-or the record of Canada as against the record of the United States. The cause of the poor records may lie in the comparative territorial smallness of those countries-but this does not apply to Canada versus the United States. The cause may lie in the fact that the best, most talented citizens of the bilingual countries tend to emigrate to the major countries-but this still leaves the question: Why do they? My hypothesis is as follows: the policy of bilingual rule (which spares some citizens the necessity to learn another language) is a concession to, and a perpetuation of, a strong ethnic-tribalist element within a country. It is an element of anti-intellectuality, conformity, and stagnation. The best minds would run from such countries: they would sense, if not know it consciously, that tribalism leaves them no chance. Ayn Rand, Global Balkanization Given the qualifications she makes at the outset, she's not totally off the rails, but this still isn't one of her fine moments. I'd like to hear someone from the Orthodoxy address what she actually said about homosexuality, the psychological immorality formulation. And plainly state the conclusion: she was dead wrong, off her game, bowling a gutter ball that night. Argh! Never heard of it, where's it from? I can get decent Belgian beer here, Hoeggarden and Leffe for instance, and various Bavarian ones. Beck's is from Bremen, you can get that anywhere in the US. I can't find a Kolsch though to save my life, or an Altbier. EDIT: never mind DF, I googled it, looks like it's from Hamburg, and is available in the US, though I've never seen it. I'll be on the lookout.

It looked Slavic to me, I thought it was weird at the time but didn’t know the explanation. Everything in Belgium was in multiple languages, and most everyone spoke English to boot. Great beer, too, the best, I loved Belgium. I’m feeling envy for Dragonfly, he’s probably just an hour’s train ride away. In one of AR’s answers she talked about her pet theory that countries with many languages produce fewer creative people, I’m pretty sure it was in the Q&A of the Global Balkanization talk. There were plenty of great Benelux creators though, Rembrandt, Spinoza, and Huygens come immediately to mind. When you get back around to transcribing maybe you could look up this one? I remember it as one of her lesser statements to be sure.

There’s a mighty small subset of living entities…I heard that even Binswanger wouldn’t go along with his 2006 voting pronouncement; I definitely saw where Betsy Speicher wrote a good reply disagreeing with him on that one. There's Comrade Sonia, but isn't the communication there most likely a one way street?

Translation? That is a pretty ambiguous line. Eunuch = no power? Can’t speak truth? Oh, I think I get it: Harem = the political establishment, which Cato can’t inseminate/penetrate. N’est-ce pas? Mon Dieu!

If John isn't Jewish he must have felt a bit out of place in the ben Shalom synagogue when he was a kid. Yaron Brooke (and the whole ARI cabal) are vocally pro-Israel, arguably to excess, while I can’t think when Stossel has addressed Israel policy or said anything that would earn him the title “Hebrew Hammer”. Unless there was something big in a special I missed (I’m sure I didn’t catch them all over the years).

Hebrew Hammer = Yaron Brooke? You couldn’t mean Stossel, I’m not sure but I don’t think he’s Jewish.

Wow, it’s really brave to post this to an atheist forum. Bravo for that, and the sincerity. I know you’ve been stung for it elsewhere. Dawkins pretty well captures my reaction: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=" name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> I’d temper it with something evocative about not casting off the wonder of youth, something Joseph Campbell might say. You did remind me of a high school religion teacher, a Marist Brother (Catholic), who would say: For those who are aware, no explanation is necessary, for those who aren’t aware, no explanation is possible. So you don’t follow any denomination? Or go to services?

No harm no foul. It’s probably just too much anticipation, you’re getting too excited. In Peikoff’s latest podcast he discusses pre-mature ejaculation, give it a listen, it may help.

Here's an old talk by Dixie Lee Ray, I remember showing another one by her to the old campus club, it was called Greenhouse Blues and other Myths and was delivered at Los Alamos. This includes the global warming part, there's more to it available on YouTube. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuQVX3fqTbo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuQVX3fqTbo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuQVX3fqTbo&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> One thing to bear in mind is that environmentalists now do victory laps over ozone, when there never was a problem, they passed legislation, and now there's...still no problem! I think AGW could have a similar fate. The controls they pass won't go away, they won't have to invest as much in propaganda to keep them going forward, and the liberty they take away, well who'll miss that?

D’Oh! I took French almost 20 years back, but yeah that was a pretty basic slip. You live in the Netherlands, right? I’m sure you have to keep up on it much more. This is way off topic, but I went to the Opera in Antwerp, and the house was called the Vlaamse. Which language is that name from?

I thought the debut was going to be Thursday. Today's Tuesday, n'est pas? Hope the TARDIS clock's not all fouled up again.

Indeed, it's useless in a current legal practice context, it only has historical interest. Against a Pat Robertson type who misrepresents the founding of the U.S. it remains useful. I don’t read galtgulch as advocating murder, he’s (she’s?) just using rhetorical excess, and certainly goes way over the line unless you read it (as I do) as satire. I remember years ago there was an Englishman who wrote a book divulging that he’d had an affair with Princess Diana, and there was talk about how the laws were such that he could legally be executed for it. Zero chance of that happening, but it sold some tabloids I’m sure. galtgulch has posted some groaners, but I read this one with at least some pleasure.

Hey now, while galtgulch definitely employs an excess of marketing puffery in his topic descriptions, they’re typically worth a look. I find reviewing early legislation interesting to a point, a favorite is the 1797 Treaty with Tripoli, see from Wikipedia: Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. Advocates of the separation of church and state claim that this text constitutes evidence that the United States Government was not founded on the Christian religion. The Senate's ratification was only the third recorded unanimous vote of 339 votes taken. The treaty was printed in the Philadelphia Gazette and two New York papers, with no evidence of any public dissent. ... Nice thing to pull out in a debate.

I read your post but couldn’t respond immediately (other things to do). I thought what you wrote originally was exceedingly harsh, and planned to respond later, when time allowed. I hardly tarred you, the tone of your reply is wildly out of proportion. Further, my post remains valid as a reply to your edited post, notwithstanding the fact I address your deleted statements on the lack of artistic treasure sharing (did that really sting so much?). Also I didn’t mess with the time stamps, but I’ve noticed they often add or subtract an hour for no apparent reason. I’ve replied to posts that show up as having been originally made after my reply, you’d think it was a Dr. Who episode. You claim that it is inexcusable netiquette to comment on a deleted post, I’ll point you to the following: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6539&st=158 I’m not the only one doing it, get used to it, and think before you post, the first time. You demand an apology, well, I can’t resist offering a favorite line from a favorite novel (Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco): Ma gavte la nata… Or would you prefer an insincere apology?

I have a rare feeling of solidarity with you. The St. Ambrose thing has to do with a subject he claims to be an expert on, but where I suspect he’s a poseur. But unmasking him wouldn’t be worth taking the trip to Bad Karma. Filthy water there.

Not much effect on the meaning. Robert Campbell Don’t vs. Won’t, Never vs. Ever, fair enough, I’m not going back to listen to it again. I know there was also an indistinct stutter somewhere that I skipped. His statement was so disjointed that I knew that to comment on it I couldn’t paraphrase it, so I aimed to transcribe it as is. By the time I was done I didn’t feel like commenting, it speaks for itself. I find the “hiss hiss” part the funniest, that’s just how it sounded.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=" name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-MEdAPhYA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-MEdAPhYA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-MEdAPhYA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>