9thdoctor

I have a collection of those foam thingy's you put a drink into to keep it cold, the text on one of them reads: I'm experienced enough to recognize the mistakes I'll make again. Another, going off topic a bit, reads Beauty is in the eye of the Beer Holder

We didn’t date. She got involved romantically with a Christian fundamentalist, and didn’t come to Objectivist meetings regularly for very long (a few months). I remember having to track her down at a science lab to get a signature on something. She wasn’t a 10, she had acne that went from mild to pretty bad in the time I knew her. Also, she was underage. It feels funny to disclose personal details about her, but she’s put her life out there for all to see, so why not? Yes, FSU means Florida State in Tallahassee. BTW, there’s an article out there called “My Dinner with Andy” about someone’s bad experience hosting Andrew Bernstein. I didn’t have a terrible experience with him, but there was a part of that article describing him being fussy and complaining that there wasn’t anything on the restaurant menu that he could eat. He did the exact same when we brought him for a talk, the description is spot on. http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/dinner.html

A friend of mine attended a conference in the late ‘80’s, pre-Kelley split, and reports that John Ridpath said he once was a Beethoven fan, and on AR’s advice that this pointed to a problem (psychological, sense of life, whatever), he worked on it and got over liking Beethoven. Szeryng with Monteux is tops. Perlman with Giulini is…also tops. Bach went to jail for participating in a brawl. Sheep may safely graze indeed… Do you know the original version for two pianos? Brahms wrote many of his works originally for piano duet (Hungarian dances) or for two pianos (Symphonies, Haydn Variations, String Quintet, the string quartets). But avoid recordings of Argerich & co., they don't know how to play Brahms. Argerich’s version of the 1st Piano Quartet is a dud, go with Gilels. I liked her recording of the 2 piano version of the Piano Quintet.

C’mon Adam, lay off the Germans. I’m about ½ German, and have visited 4 times. Every culture has some historical shame in its past, and has been the victim of oppression at some other time. If you feel an urge to stoop to Xray’s level, try employing gibberish. You’re going too far.

In the early ‘90’s I was President of the FSU Objectivist club. One of our officers (Secretary/Treasurer I think) was a freshman named Brooke Magnanti. She was a nice, bright girl, we weren’t especially close and I haven’t seen her since ‘93 or ‘94. As I recall she was 16-17, she had skipped grades. A friend of mine from back then recently pointed me to this: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6917495.ece I’ve googled her blog and don’t find any Rand references, but based on the photo and the biographical info there’s no question it’s the same person. Holy Shit! From Dr. Who (note my avatar) I’m an admirer of Billie Piper, who later did the Secret Diaries of a Call Girl program for Showtime, based on Belle de Jour’s book. Small world. Congrats on your success Brooke.

No Turkey? I was in Cologne about a year and a half ago when Turkey beat another country in a championship runoff, and there were car horns blasting all night afterward (there are lots of Turks in Cologne). A week or so later they were eliminated, and they showed crowd reactions on TV, and people were weeping bitterly. I counted it as payback for the sleep I lost.

Good luck with your piece. You write that you’re based in Florida, but your profile says Cleveland. Perhaps contradictions do exist after all…

Now, now, let's not underestimate Merlin's supernatural abilities. <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> Use the charm...

I thought he'd gone off the air, sounds like he's back. He used to be based in South Florida, then he moved to Los Angeles. I have a lot of his old Best Of cd's, and there are some YouTube clips showing him doing his act, it's quite a sight. Getting back to the main thrust of this thread: <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foueSK21_n0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foueSK21_n0&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=foueSK21_n0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

I just posted about the Heller bio on another thread, Rand’s cat Frisco comes in for rough treatment in the book, so by free association I thought I’d share this bit of radio ventriloquism. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuqYZEN3bfc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuqYZEN3bfc&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=iuqYZEN3bfc&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

I just finished the audiobook of the Heller Bio. Here’s some random thoughts and first impressions: An audiobook naturally lacks an index, is harder to quote and reference, and there are no illustrations. On the plus side it is quicker to consume. Audible.com is a good deal if you go with a membership plan, the Heller book was cheaper this way than buying a hard copy. The reader is Bernadette Dunne, who’s very good, not too shrill as some female readers are (e.g. Janeane Garafolo the reader of Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, which I haven’t been able to finish ). Her attempts at voice impressions aren’t convincing, but there are only a few instances of that. She pronounces Reisman as “Rice-man”, paean as “pee-on”, and Francon as “Fran-cone”, but these are mere quibbles. Heller seems intent on deflating the propagandistic elements of AR’s life story: debunking the tale of 12 publisher rejections of The Fountainhead, that “no one helped” her, etc. She generally doesn’t give AR the benefit of the doubt on details of her life story, as Barbara Branden does. She even calls into question the tale of her first meeting with DeMille, turning to (then 8 year old) Fern Brown’s opinion that AR “stalked” DeMille. She harps on AR’s hygiene and housekeeping, to the point of holding her up to scorn. Even her cat Frisco is demoted from an adorable humanizing element in her life, whose paw AR held as he was dying, to merely a source of stench and upholstery damage. Until this Bio, I’ve never associated AR with smells, Heller succeeds in activating that sense. She doesn’t use an omniscient nararator voice to describe AR’s mental and emotional inner workings, as Barbara Branden often does in PAR. Her approach is much more journalistic, this is not a “non-fiction novel”. She tries to integrate the philosophy into the story, though not nearly as well as BB does. Heller often takes opportunities to snipe at AR for hypocrisy, for example suggesting that her lying to a border officer in Lithuania contradicts her later instruction never to fake reality, though she lets AR off the hook in this case. I didn’t think the example helped to communicate philosophical principles, and ultimately came across as a mere cheap shot. I don’t recall hearing before that AR had had an abortion, Heller’s evidence seems to be a loan from Frank’s family to pay for it. AR’s heated view on this subject long made me wonder if it had a biographical root. AR’s use of prescription amphetamines has been disclosed before, what further evidence does Heller have besides Isabel Paterson’s letters to suggest she abused them? Messy handwriting in The Fountainhead draft, not very convincing. Every review harps on this subject, it seems out of proportion. An impression I have of Paterson is that she was out to score points, to maintain her mentor status, and here was an easy issue to push, like smoking could have been. Heller writes that John Hospers stayed the night with AR before going to meet a publisher with his first book. His first book was published in the ‘40’s; Introduction to Philosophical Analysis was (I believe) his first, published long before he met AR. The evaluations of TheBrandens TM and Leonard Peikoff I infer from Heller are somewhere between those in Passion of Ayn Rand and Judgement Day. I felt that the Nathaniel Branden of the 1960’s wasn’t vilified as harshly as in JD, but this is ultimately a function of emphasis, he has less stage time here. Barbara Branden is trapped by forces she can’t control, as in PAR, and the promiscuous vixen implied in JD is absent. In JD, NB heaps scorn on Peikoff, PAR is comparatively gentle, primarily raising the key question of Peikoff’s integrity in the ‘68 split and aftermath. Heller targets him, devoting space to his failed career in academia, and depicting him as a cultist who denied her access to Rand’s papers. Note: I haven’t read PAR or JD in over 10 years, though I pulled out PAR recently to look up the Nietzchse material for a post on this thread, then skimmed it a bit. So that’s fair warning that my impressions of both books are dated. No, I haven’t read PARC. Altogether I give the Heller Bio thumbs up. It was engaging, and it provided plenty of new disclosures to chew on . However, if you need to maintain illusions of an unblemished heroine, it’s not for you.

And WHY is it pointless in your opinion? If you have found error, please quote alleged error and explain why you think it is in error. It’s not worth one more minute of my free time to uncoil that snake.

Good stuff!

I have read Branden's essay, and also the rest of TVOS. It contains the Objectivist presentation of the "correct" ethics ("egoism" as opposed to "altruism"), and is therefore no different from other ideologies presenting their subjectve moral choices as "objective values". After making the general remark that "Ethics is a code of values to guide man actions", Rand disciple NB quickly switches to telling the reader what man's self-interest "should" be. In short, it is arbitrarily decided for others what the "right" moral values are. Everything not fitting the Objectivist mold is dismissed as "blind whim", "mood", "impulse". As for me discussing altruism, this has been done in detail here at the Cardinal Values thread in Ethics. What Rand and her disciple NB call "stolen concept" is simple conntotative use of language. Both Rand and NB seem to know very little about linguistics. When someone says "All property is theft", it is a subjective value judgement. There are countless examples in language where its audiovisual symbols are used in a metaphoric sense. In the sentence "The reverend spoke to his sheep", shall we cry "stolen concept" too, arguing "but sheep are four-legged animals, while these are humans? The "stolen concept" is my objectivist pet term, my favorite. Oops, I'm guilty of theft again, having "stolen" the term "pet" from the animal kingdom. And "kingdom", stolen too. Animals clearly don't have that form of government. Absolutely pointless.

I’m not your research assistant, and if it turned out AR misquoted someone, it would be easy enough to substitute some juicy quotes from Mein Kampf or the Little Red Book to make the point about “unconvincing adversaries” and altruism. I’m sure someone has recommended you read the essay Isn’t Everyone Selfish? and the rest of The Virtue of Selfishness, if not, read them and then make an intelligent critique of ethical altruism vs egoism. This is newbie stuff, a crashing bore. You were mocking the Stolen Concept in earlier posts, you can read the original essay for free here: http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/articles.php?tPath=2&page=2#

If no one engaged you anymore, would you call that killing the messenger? It would in fact be weariness at deceased equine abuse. I was providing a concrete example of what Rand was dramatizing. You charge that she portrays “unconvincing adversaries”, I’m giving a real life example of just such an adversary. I didn’t say that you were appeasing altruists, how did you arrive at that interpretation?

Explaining a metaphor is the height of tedium, I avoid the Xray dialogues for just this reason. Nevertheless, note that when you beat a dead horse, the horse is by definition already dead. “Threatening cherished beliefs”? No, boring as reality TV. The emoticon you used is right on target: the ganging up is indeed primitive tribal behavior. On Survivor, contestants are voted off the show, in accordance with defined rules, hardly primitive behavior. The ceremony concludes with their torches being snuffed out, cut off from oxygen (read: the attention of other posters). There’s another thread where the qualities of the “OL Tribe” are discussed; the designation is perhaps too similar to “The Collective” for comfort, but the irony is obvious in both cases. "In the early 1930s an assistant of Jane Addams, the famous social worker, went on a visit to Soviet Russia and wrote a book about her experience. The sentence I remember is: 'How wonderful it was to see everybody equally shabby!' If you think you should try to appease altruists, this is what you are appeasing." Ayn Rand The Sanction of the Victims I’m going to take Muttnik for a walk, I could do with company that provides some degree of psychological visibility.

Everyone’s picking on Xray again! I don’t want to get in the middle of one of these dialogues, but I came across an emoticon that I think has metaphorical value:

I’m not familiar with Adam’s quote, though it looks like it was written by an informed commentator. At least it doesn't read like advertising copy. The following is from Wikipedia: One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his admonition to "follow your bliss." He derived this idea from the Upanishads: Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked. He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life: If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s. By the time that The Power of Myth was aired in 1988, six months following Campbell's death, "Follow your bliss" was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public—both religious and secular. During his later years, when some students mistakenly took him to be encouraging hedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, "I should have said, 'Follow your blisters.'" ... Power of Myth gets replayed on PBS every now and then, or you can rent it (Netflix carries it). That’s probably the best place to start, but the longer works are ultimately more rewarding. His work can be a great springboard for studying anthropology, history, and literature, he was quite a polymath. He often quotes Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Jung, and Spengler, so his views are often at odds with Objectivist thought, but I infer from the Xray dialogues that y'all enjoy a challenge.

http://www.nathanielbranden.com/ayn/ayn01.html http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/8219-1 Thanks for the link, the actual quote is: If I were asked today as I sometimes ask in shorthand from where I stand today, what's my morality — I'll give you a one sentence summation. I would say today live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss.

We could go on and on about what the proper definition is, but when it came time to choose whom to pack onto the cattle cars to Dachau or Auschwitz, Hitler’s view ruled. To history’s most notorious anti-semite, Jewish meant a race. Felix Mendelssohn had Jewish grandparents (at least on his father’s side), so he was either a Jew or a Mischling (mongrel) depending on some other tests. He would have been subject to discrimination in Nazi Germany either way. Yet he was a practicing Lutheran, and so was his father I believe. BTW his paternal grandfather was Moses Mendelssohn, a philosopher who crossed swords with Kant, and Felix took a philosophy course taught by Hegel. Small world. We’ve drifted off the topic of Joseph Campbell, I just want to add that in comparing and contrasting different religions he opened himself up to charges of denigrating one or the other. But that was his job. I haven’t seen it in a very long time, but I remember Nathaniel Branden’s interview on CSPAN back in the late ‘80s, when Power of Myth was new. Brian Lamb asked him what his philosophy is now, he said “respect the rights of others and follow your bliss”, clearly a nod to JC.

So if your parents "were jews" then you are as well? But how to determine the "jewishness" of the parents then? This simply shifts the issue from you to your parents. There is no such thing as a "jewish race" however there is certainly a jewish culture/religion. Hitler's view was racist, to the statement "isn't the set of "jews who do not subscribe to the jewish religion" empty?" he'd say no. There was a legal framework in place to determine who was Jewish or not (or even partially so), it obliged people to trace their ancestry as far back as 1750 in some cases.

Consider the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi Holocaust. The Inquisition didn’t target practicing Jews, it targeted “Conversos”, Jews that had converted to Catholicism, but had retained some Jewish customs sub rosa (e.g. not eating pork). The Nazis are a clearer example, the Nuremberg laws were concerned with parentage, not religious belief.

There’s only an abstract of the article available, so I can’t give a proper reply. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=3906 AR comes in for a little bashing in these letters to the editor written in reply: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3846 I’ve never seen even a comment by him about AR, and he certainly was exposed to her via fans. I’ve read a lot of Campbell, and wouldn’t call him anti-semitic. However, if one points out that Judaism contrasts with Christianity and Islam in that its more tribal and exclusionary; Yahweh is the true god and Dagon or Ba’al are demons, we are the chosen people etc. there might be enough there to trigger a knee jerk cry of anti-semitism. I don’t know if that’s what this critic was talking about though.

Nathaniel Branden's interview is up, he recounts that Rand was open to trying marijuana, but doesn't say whether it ever happenned. I'm a pretty imaginative person, but my limit is exceeded trying to visualize the episode.