jack9f

I deleted your irrelevant words for clarity and found a contradiction. But since your request came last I'll take that as the your official stance which deserves and answer, which is "No Thanks and Good Bye!"

Please tell us if you are talking about "Love to Love Me Baby" or "She Works Hard for the Money" I liked DS and enjoyed the Disco thing, but I don't see much connection to Love there.

Robert wrote: “It is self-hating not to call Hispanics spicks or women bitches or blacks niggers? Huh? Did I miss something here?” Your goddamn right it is, when the label applies. I don’t care much for people who use them to imply ALL those in a certain group deserve the label, just like I don’t like the F-word inserted between every other word. It implies ignorance and I’m very short with people like that. OK I think it’s time for some examples. 1. Mike Nifong’s so called victim of rape = Nigger Ho 2. Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby and such = Gentlemen 3. Al drove 80 RT miles to work for $7/hour on the night shift in an old Ford Probe. We became friends. I showed him what to do and he did the job well. He confided in me that he had 5 children by 3 different women, and had been convicted of a felony. One night he called me and said his car broke down on the way to work. I went and picked him up. A few days later he showed up in a new Chevy Impala. At lunch time he would sit in his car and have lunch. One time, I stopped by his car to say that it was time to go back in and I smelled marijuana. I never mentioned it to the boss. Was Al a Nigger? No, he was just a black guy, but I wondered why he acted like a Nigger sometimes. 4. Is Michael Stuart Kelly a spick? I don’t think so. I’ve met many people from Mexico and some from Brazil and I can’t remember any that I would use that word to describe them, but I reserve the right to the word if I find someone it applies to. 5. I’ve met some Germans that deserve the label of Kraut. 6. My ex is a bitch. I’m full of mixed feelings about her and it’s too bad she became a bitch, but the fact remains. Chris Wrote: I recognize that George Carlin and Lenny Bruce make such references but let's try to do better. Comedy Central does a roast of a famous person every month but I found it so offensive in the William Shatner that I couldn't sit through it. I didn’t see that one and you have every right to change the channel, but I don’t think we ought be thinking of “Doing Better” than GC & LB. We should be thinking that the government overstepped it’s authority when they sent LB to jail.

Chris I really like Always on My Mind and I like the way Willie does it, but I have never felt it was my song. The words just don't fit me. I don't know if I'm simply not humble enough to say "Hey I screwed up" or what, but I don't want anyone even thinking about that song when I'm dead.

Is this a "selective recreation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments" for the sense of touch? Michael Yes, I saw that, but I didn't think about it much until I saw it here. Now it reminds me of a documentry I saw on TV about a family from NJ that traveled to Kenya. It was very interesting that after a few days the kids were crying about the terrible conditions. The Kenya's were comforting them with a lot of touching and walks in the desert hand in hand. It made me think about the lack of touching in our society, but it also reinforces my thoughts about the importance of emotions. Thank you for posting that.

I'd call it ironic squared! My first reaction to this thread was very good. Jeff; you make me feel, yes feel, hopeful. You are evidence for my arguement against "These kids today....". Then there was this strange reaction from Shayne, much of it charged with emotion. I don't know what more to say.

"Or maybe the woolly mammoth is due payback for the past sins of man in oppressing woolly mammoths?" That made me chuckle!

That sounds interesting. A few years ago I went to a talk/demo on Japanese flute. The guy explained that many of the tunes were developed by monks who traveled the country as spys. In order to tell if someone they met was part of their clan they would play part of a tune. If they other person could continue the tune then they would know they had found a friend.

No I don't care for bigots either, and I've met a fair amount of them, but I'm a fan of George Carlin and Lenny Bruce. I'd also say that the Internet is a pretty long stick. I guess it's time for me to shut up or take this to another thread. This has nothing to do with books.

Interesting! I wonder who is going to make one about the self-hating WASP or WHAM (White Able-bodied Heterosexual Male). You know the guy who thinks we should not say queer, bitch, nigger, A-rab, or Spic, like for example, Ernest Hemingway in Winner take Nothing (1934, page 200) wrote "I wish I could talk spik . . . I don't get any fun out of asking that spik questions." I watched FoxNews, that bastion of conservative thought, the other day and they went on and on about Barak Hussein Osama I mean Obama. NOT once did they mention he is black. Finally some black fellow came on and said "He has brown skin". Yea, no shit Sherlock! The silly thing is that if I were a pinko then I would like the guy. He kicked ass in his debate with Alan Keyes, who I like a lot. Poor Alan has not been seen since.

I'm speechless! Well, almost anyway.

Chris and Mike Yes, my use of the word queer, worked to perfection. It got a comment from both of you that I am happy to reply to. You see, also, that I don't mind ending a sentence with a preposition. I know the rule in standard English, but I think the web rule is that you can type anything you like, just the way you speak. It's fun getting to know you this way. I'm surprised again about the Brazilian connection. Bon Dias! My first exposure to the language of Brazil was about the time you were born (1957) when my Physics professor told how he had lived in Brazil for several years. He said he lived on hot dogs and Coke until he learned to speak. Then he showed us how his dog would sit up with a kibble on his nose until he counted to ten in Portuguese. I don't have any AR books nearby, but I think she used words much stronger than queer. In fact I think I'm more accepting of minorities than she was. But that doesn't matter. Quoting AR is never a good way to win and argument. I think that all words are acceptable, except for those like “Fire!” in a theater. This habit I hear of people saying “The N-word” is just silly. I have know many black people over the years and seldom would I use that word to describe them, but now and then I see a nigger and I see no reason to abandon the word. So, back to my question about state control. How will you vote? May I use the N or Q word? On this board? Standing on Main Street?

Chris I must take exception to "All English teachers". If you said Many, Most, or the Majority, then I might go along with you. I'm very much opposed to socialists and post-modernism, but it's not true that ALL of any group fit a certain profile. My wife has a PhD in Education from a university in the former USSR and she will defend her dissertation for a second PhD from the University of Michigan next summer. She has some ideas which are to the left of mine, but she is no socialist. Along this line, Isabel Meyers states that nearing 50% of teachers in the USA are SJ personalities, well out of proportion to the general population. The SJ stands for the 2nd and 4th component of ones personality type and represents Sensing Judging as opposed to Intuitive Feeling. This may explain more about their propensities than anything I’ve read.

Matus I think you are correct that I'm missing something and I'm smiling now. It is so easy for things like this to happen on the web. Please read your second sentance again and then remember who said "Love is the price you pay" On one hand I think that both of us are very limited in our ability to write something that transmits our real feelings. On the other I think about "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." So let's face the fact that we can write about love all we want but we will not be called The Bard. Hell, we ain't even as good as Eric Segal. :console:

Maybe we are talking to different leftists. :pirate: But seriously, it does not take a lot of brains to disassociate yourself from the USSR now. Lenin? I don't here anyone talking about Lenin, it's mostly that dirty rat Stalin. Of course they don't want anyone to think they are Marxist. Mention Marx and most of them will ask "Harpo, Groucho, or Zeppo?" Anyway, I have little proof, and I'll be gone anyway, but mark my words and in 50 years you will know if my intuition is correct. Not one of those people that want to save the commons, air, water, animals, and the climate, queers and abortionists will vote against government interference in your life.

I guess I'm the only one in this country that's no worried about Bush and the so called wire-tapping. Watching C-Span the other day I saw an interview with Paul Tibbits. He's the guy that flew the Enola Gay and dropped the bomb on the Japs. I wrote to him in 02 and got a reply. Anyway he was telling about his time before August 6, 1945 when he was getting ready. It seems the FBI found 4 felons working on his crew. He called them in and showed them the only copy of their records and then told them that if they did a good job then at the end of the war he would give them the records and a match to burn them. Then he told about a spy the FBI found in Chicago. They tapped his phone, found he was going to meet his contact, shot them both, and threw the bodies in the ditch. Tibbits asked the FBI if they were not worried about someone finding the bodies and he was told "Two stiffs in a ditch on the South Side? No one will ask any questions." Jump forward 60 years. If I find some Arabs in the ditch, then I'll throw some lime on them and keep my mouth shut.

"But that was all pre-web and such." Wow! That was ancient history Bettcha don't remember pre-TV Achaya It was 1961 the last time I saw 17. But I still remember being different. I wrote a paper about reducing the size of the government and got an "A" because my teacher was a big Barry Goldwater fan already. I also remember one night after a party and I was sitting on the stoop with my friend Jerry. Some cool guys came out and got in thier fancy car. Just as they were about to drive off they waved for us to come with them. Jerry ran toward their car and they took off laughing before he could get in. I was still sitting on the stoop because I didn't realy care for them anyway. It was about 5 years later when I read Ayn Rand. I still don't care much about people that can't see a value in me.

I guess you are right about the reading. It just seemed odd. Same with Jenna. It was just my observation, colored by my interest in the USSR and it's variants, including here in the USA. I often wonder if the first 10 years of this century will be considered the "Red Decade" ;)

So what do you talk about? IPods, Bluetooth, American Idol?

Obviously I disagree that "Love is the emotional price we pay for having values." I can't imagine thinking of love as something I would pay for. Love is balance. A balance between emotion and reason. Between desire and yearning, yada, yada, yada.

Emanual or Emmanual or Immanual or Immanuel? The only one that MSWord likes is the last one. But whatever. I don’t get worked up by spelling of peoples names, especially when they are foreign born. My granny was a Mc from Scotland and everyone always said it should be Mac, but she didn’t care. She was a Scot and that’s all there was to it. My other grandmother spelled her name Scheffler and we always thought we were German. Then about 4 years ago I found her father’s signature and it was Sefler, a Lithuanian name. Besides the borders change over there all the time. Kant was born in Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) and I’m going to visit there and see his statue no matter how his name is spelled. I can’t say I know a lot about him or his works, but I appreciate his brain. I don’t go in much for newletters or mags anymore since I spend my time on the web and how much crap I get in the mail everyday. Thank you Mr. Boydstun. I like the way you put it. I never had much doubt about myself. It was you and my Objectivist friends I was checking on. Some of them are more Atheist than Objectivist and they like others to comply. Screw that!

In my first reading of this thread (today) I have to agree with MSK that balance should be our goal. I see the denial of emotions as very detrimental to our place in this world. Reason certainly separates us from the apes, but we are infused with emotions that control our actions to a great extent. As someone that has played “between the pipes” I can appreciate it when a winning goalie is described as been unconscious during a game and there can be little doubt that reason has little to do with a home run hit off of a 98 MPH fastball. Even in our everyday lives of dealing with family and co-workers our emotions play a role and we need to acknowledge this not only to control them, but to put them to work in favor of what is right.

I don't mind at all. I was living in the west suburbs of Detroit. I was raised in a family of inertial religion. That is to say that we were Baptists because my Granny was Baptist. Not the rolling in the aisles type, but American Baptist, which seemed to promote the idea of making up your own mind about things. I don’t recall how I got a hold of Ayn Rand, but I already had leanings toward the individualist bent, and her words made sense to me. Interestingly, Isabel Meyers, of MBTI fame, labels me from birth as a ENTJ who is living out my inheritance. I’ve tried to raise this subject with my group, without success.

Ivan (John), Not your belief. Your right to hold your belief and to own your own life. Michael Yes, I sorry for my imprecision. Not my belief in God, but my belief that I can remain an Objectivist in spite of my spritual beliefs.

Impressions of this thread. Please do not take offence to my observations. Interestingly, not one answered "Reading nothing" JennaW wrote about communism as a reaction to Nazism. Hummm? I thought the Russian revolution was in 1917, well before Hitler. I guess she is referring to that period before Stalin was recognized as an equal or greater evil. Which just goes to show the Clinton and Bush haters how good our system is. Then Paul’s piece on determinism and such. Is it just me, or does this kind of talk go right over your head also? Does “What if the agent creates a new principle for making a choice by generating new integrations of the evidence?” make any sense? Then to the books (First most recent): 1. The Idiot by Dostoevshy 2. Gifts Differing by Isabel Meyers 3. Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey 4. Guns, Germs, Steel by Richard Dawkins