9thdoctor

You want me to take Viagra and then turn my thoughts to you? Guess I should feel flattered…I'm going to try to be gentle...

Beyond what was covered in the reply? Maybe it's too late at night, but I'm not sure what you're asking to discuss further.

Just shameless schadenfreude over SLOP getting hacked...c'mon, this is the Rants forum, there are standards to be maintained! Seriously, the Department of Weights & Measures may come in and impose a fine for putting diluted Rants in the designated Rants section. Please insert here an amusing/mocking comment directed at Phil, I can't think of a fitting one right now.

Here's the reply, I don't like the guy's voice but he makes sense

Here's something from Berlinski, including him talking about whales and cows I'm sure on Dennis Miller's show he was funny, here he's just nauseating. There are other clips from him out there, and someone took this clip and inserted answers to his points, but with a annoyingly shrill voice.

Check out some material by Richard Dawkins. There’s plenty on youtube you can watch for free, and he has a great website. http://richarddawkins.net/ Eugenie Scott is another person to check out, she works more in the trenches (legal activism), and has exposed how ID is just creationism repackaged.

The Dr. has sent out a follow up: Dear Friend, I sent you an email last week about a remarkable self-development course, and I just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss this opportunity. For a few more details on the Lifebook story, please take a look at this short video. Best, Nathaniel

Adam: I rate ID propagandists about a notch above Holocaust deniers, I’d say they belong on the same rung of hell, but IDers can stay lakeside, while the HDers belong in the flames. Here’s a couple lines from Berlinski’s Wikipedia page: Berlinski appeared in the 2008 file Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which he told interviewer Ben Stein that "Darwinism is not a sufficient condition for a phenomenon like Nazism but I think it's certainly a necessary one." He also says It'd be nice to see the scientific establishment lose some of its prestige and power...Above all, it'd be nice to have a real spirit of self-criticism penetrating the sciences. Now if he was critiquing the supposed “consensus” on global warming I’d applaud, but not in this context. He works for an outfit that wants ID forced on public schools. Next, I thought the Expelled movie was obnoxious and juvenile, so there’s two strikes. The link you gave didn’t have the Dennis Miller interview you said you liked, and I can’t find anything positive on this guy. Help?

Here's a link to the Enright article. Could it be more positive? http://www.objectivistcenter.org/cth--1916-James_Clavell.aspx Most of his books are really long, I think that's why I just haven't started one yet. As for Phil's self-diagnosis, I'd say it rings true...

Notice the vile one’s shirt reads: Life is too short to drink cheap wine This is surely below the aesthetic standards of the slimy one, who claims you can fit all of Wagner’s worthwile music on one cd, while worshipping Mario Lanza (whose Italian diction and style were highly suspect, but I digress), thus it’s a fitting toast to Jabba:

Then Parve means Kosher + no dairy + no meat? So it’s a subset of Kosher. Close enough for a (hopefully amusing) acronymic neologism.

I saw Ted’s post. This thread is in the Rants forum, so there certainly is truth in advertising. I didn’t get his beef though, you won’t delete a (dumb) reference to him by Jeff Riggenbach on the Peron thread, and then there was something about a Wikipedia TOS violation. It seemed misdirected and totally out of proportion, so what did you really do MSK? Confess!

Robert: Jabba can ban you anytime, right? I think he doesn’t because you give him an outlet for his rage. I have to admit I do find entertainment value in following it, but it’s on a public forum so everyone looks bad to the newbies. You’ve stated your reasons for sticking around there, I respect your view, but maybe this will resonate: “he heard Francisco's voice, asking him quietly in the ballroom of this building, yet asking it also here and now: "Who is the guiltiest man in this room?" He heard his own answer of the past: "I suppose—James Taggart?" and Francisco's voice saying without reproach: "No, Mr. Rearden, it's not James Taggart,"—but here, in this room and this moment, his mind answered: "I am."” Substitute Jabba for James naturally. I do get a kick out of the references to Jabba’s Palace, FWIW my conception was that LP is both Jabba and the Rancor, a dual identity like Tyler Durden in Fight Club. Now how to work in the Sarlacc? And the pig-faced guards (Gamorreans, I looked it up)? Ah, the riches yet unexplored. A couple other (hopefully) amusing items I’ve come up with but haven't found opportunity to share: PARVE – designates food is Kosher in real life (also spelled Pareve). As an acronymic neologism for the Objectivist subculture, I propose the following: Peikoff Approved Rand Veneration Effort. Burns and Heller’s books aren’t Parve, PARC of course is. Careful, you may choke on it. LARVAE – Linz Approved Rank Vicious Acrimonious Eggheads. Neoteny is a characteristic trait of the species. Diet: SLOP, naturally. Having never posted on SLOP why do I target them this way? I consider Branden-Bashing to be the number one gateway drug to Objectivist evasion and irrationality. Coming across a forum that discourages it ended the Rip Van Winkle I did after MDOP faded away. That OL is then smeared as a home of pedophile apologists is a vicious package deal: absence of Branden smears = Pedophilia. Pathetic, sickening, and childish in execution. Fire with fire anyone?

I read your post on the other thread, but you didn’t raise any questions and I didn’t find anything to reply to. Just so you know you’re being read. I find defending Rand literarily to be tedious, she just doesn’t connect with some percentage of readers. I think people develop a taste for ambiguity and even for the opaque (myself included), and Rand’s fiction lacks these elements. I think Rand’s most effective hook is her appeal to teenage alienation, young readers identify with Howard Roark the same way they identify with Holden Caulfield, qua virtuous outsider. But with Rand the waters are both clear and deep, and some don’t like what they see. Or how it’s shown. I was at a TOC event about 5 years ago, it was held at the Institute for Management Accounting in New York; David Kelley, Nathaniel Branden, Tibor Machan, and Ed Hudgins were there. I don’t have notes on the logical steps that got the discussion to this point, but there was general agreement that something about Rand was off-putting, and that while Objectivist ideas should gain more cultural traction, Rand herself will remain a marginalized figure. Someone summed it up with a shoulder shrug and the comment “We’re just weird!”. I wonder if there’s a tape of that event. I remember John Stossel made similar comments at the 1997 event in Washington DC; that one was a lot of fun (Promise Keepers everywhere! Stand in the gap!).

When I saw the topic heading I expected an Oscar Wilde quote. Here's a few more or less on topic: When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is. Time is a waste of money. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Anyone who lives within their means suffers from lack of imagination. It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. ... Has anyone read his Soul Of Man Under Socialism? If he wrote it today, after the blood spilled in the 20th century, it could only be in the spirit of Swiftian Modesty.

A couple I found to be utter snoozers: Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha Robert Pirsig: Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance One I can’t seem to get back to: Thomas Pynchon: Against the Day I got through Gravity’s Rainbow, with difficulty, and like to dip back into it on occasion, but Against the Day is just too damn big and goes off on so many tangents, and I’m only about a third through. I haven’t touched it in months.

I just got this email from Nathaniel Branden: Dear Friend, It is my great pleasure to introduce to you a man and a program of stunning originality and practical results. The man is Jon Butcher and his program is Lifebook. Lifebook launches you into its world by inviting you to deeply examine 12 separate aspects of your life that, in reality, are not separate at all. In each category you are stimulated and inspired to clarify your beliefs, identify your goals and define what needs to be done to actualize them. You capture and document your thoughts and feelings along the way using the Lifebook software. This step-by-step, highly structured process results in your own, self-authored Lifebook a detailed description of the life you want to live and a strategic plan to guide you as you move toward it. Although it does borrow from my work, this program is not psychotherapy. It is about self-actualization. As you work through the 12 categories, you get to know yourself in inspiring and challenging new ways. Consciousness, energy, and self-responsibility rise together. The future is experienced as unobstructed. You are witness to your own transformation. The Lifebook Program is a 4-day seminar experience, held monthly in Chicago. Normally $2995, Lifebook has agreed to extend a $1000 savings to admirers of my work. (For the record, I have no financial stake in this offer I pass it on to you because I believe you will find it to be a truly extraordinary experience, as I did). To learn more about this special offer, please CLICK here. http://www.mylifebook.com/lifebook-story.html I simply cannot recommend this program highly enough. If you wish to become the author of your own life, Lifebook may be exactly what you have been waiting for. Sincerely, Nathaniel Branden

Does anyone have any comments about James Clavell? Jeffrey Smith’s rather exotic recommendation (post 334) made me think of him, though I haven’t actually read any of his books. I saw Shogun when I was 10, and was totally hooked. Since then I’ve seen Noble House and The Last Valley, both very worthwile. He was a big Rand fan.

I think NLP calls for its own thread, it’s an interesting subject but here we’re seeing lots of thread drift. Xray’s doing a victory lap over JR’s refusal to engage her further, I’d like to add my voice to the chorus of support for JR by noting that I no longer bother to read her posts. Except when another poster replies and includes a quote from her, and then the value I’m seeking is primarily amusement. However, even Adam (OL’s Regius Jester) isn’t putting in much effort anymore on this count. So tedium is the order of the day when the conversation includes Xray. Perhaps a special Xray analysis thread is called for? Lead lined to minimize the health risks from repeat exposure? Thanks Ted, for posting the Joyce poems. They show how readable he can be. A clarification to my post #330, I wrote that “Ulysses…must be heard, not read”, I really should have said “heard, then read”. FWIW Ulysses is not on my top ten list, not even close, but spend a Bloomsday (June 16) eve in an Irish pub, with a pint (or 3) of Murphy’s or Guinness, with committed fans in period dress reading excerpts aloud, and you can’t dismiss it as “trash” like Binswanger does.

Maybe my TARDIS is all fouled up again, but wasn’t the interview last Thursday? I saw it, I know I saw it, I’m not going mad, no I’m not! Ah, for the sweet air of Gallifrey, I tell you life’s not been the same since the Time War, those damned Daleks...and don't get me started on the Cyber-men, and do you know The Master has a last name? It's not in the series but he does! And it's Bates! How pathetic is that?

From Mother Jones you'd expect some kind of sneer, but this is pretty straight, except for the Jerry Lewis shot, but he always looks like that. I liked the first comment, from "Richard", I'm copying it here in case it gets moved or is no longer the first later: Be careful with the word "cult", it has a range of connotations. You will find that Objectivism has a following of the same quality as those people who agreed with Galileo that the Earth orbits the Sun, or the early Greeks & Chinese who grasped that the Earth was round. In that sense, and that sense alone, it is a set of outsiders who have good reasons for respecting a new understanding of the world that has not yet reached social prominence. Objectivism, and Ayn Rand veneration, is not a religious cult, or a fad. Sounds like an ARIan (Ayn Rand veneration?), but still a really good comment on balance.

MSK: Great story, really well told. But are you sure it was Dostoevsky you were reading, and not Kafka’s Metamorphosis? Go to a hypno-therapist my friend, I fear that was your forgotten/repressed roommate you squished. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis About the kittens, they’re safe now that Phil’s taken the time to sample something by Umberto Eco, even though he didn’t read the parts of How to Travel With a Salmon that I pointed him to.

If the Oscars were awarded to the following in a given year: Best Actor: Marlon Brando Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn Best Director: Alfred Hitchcock Best Score: Sergei Prokofiev … Best Film: Glen or Glenda? (Ed Wood’s 1st ; they couldn’t hold off until Plan 9 from Outer Space confirmed his skill) no one would take the Oscars seriously. So it is with the Nobel’s, though finding out that the peace prize is awarded by an altogether different committee means I’ll have to revise the blanket dismissal of other Nobel’s.

Phil: I read The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum before Baudolino, I don’t know which you should read first. FWIW I believe The Name of the Rose has sold 50+ million copies worldwide, which is more than all AR's books put together. And Dan Brown's done even better (gag!). I remember when I was in Italy repeatedly seeing high school aged people reading it on the train/subway. The Name of the Rose starts with a pretty long history lesson before the plot kicks in. If you haven't seen the movie don't before reading the book. Not that it's a bad movie. That's enough I think, now I have to go pray for the soul of a kitten.

There’s a cringe inducing new article in New York Magazine, using the Heller book as a springboard for some spirited ad hominem. http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/60120/