Reidy

The sexiest piece of music I know is Pohjola's Daughter by Sibelius. It has a most realistic simulation of an orgasm about 3 1/2 minutes in. You'll recognize it when you hear it.

For what it's worth, I heard Nathaniel Branden say the same thing during the NBI era: killing animals can be justified for food, clothing, self-defense, etc., but he couldn't see why anyone would enjoy it as an end in itself.

Valliant is the excommunication I'm looking forward to.

Robert Rodi writes thickly-plotted farces that I can recommend. He addresses a gay audience, but you don't have to be gay to enjoy them (just so you'll know what's up when the librarian / bookstore cashier gives you a certain look). My favorite is Kept Boy. Drag Queen, Closet Case and Fag Hag are also worth reading. The last takes place in the libertarian / survivalist milieu. I didn't enjoy the last one I saw, Bitch Goddess, a roman à clef about Joan Collins.

If you mean the can, I don't know of any pictures. They sold it when b&w tv was the technology of the moment. You might try contacting the company.

In the 1920s, especially in California and Florida, buildings in the shape of hats, shoes, hot dogs, pianos and dinosaurs, among other non-architectural inspirations, were popular. The ones I've seen didn't say Roark to me. Wright built a research tower for Johnson Wax, and they proceeded to put their flagship product in a can that looked like the building. For years I thought that the inspiration had gone in the opposite direction and he was imitating a can of floorwax.

Rand said, "philosophically, he was anything but an Objectivist," so she knew this and was willing to overlook it. For more about the two of them, see http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-24-Wright_Rand.aspx.

Another interesting book along these lines is Merit and Responsibility by Adkins. It traces the ancestry of what eventually, with Plato and Aristotle, became philosophical ethics, through centuries of earlier literature.

Don't even remember the name. Lauren Holly plays a flight attendant who lands an airliner safely after criminals hijack it. Worst movie I'd go back to again and again is Garbo's Mata Hari, because the last few minutes are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen on the screen. Somehow I doubt the scene would have such an impact on a viewer who hadn't suffered through the previous hour plus.

You could contact ARI (aynrand.org) for the address of her childhood home.

WHAT a coincidence. I cited that same course earlier today about misdefinition of religion. As I recall, Peikoff made a distinction between what he called "metaphysical" and "epistemological" possibility. The first looks to me like what we usually call logical possibility; given what things are, this is how they can act. An airplane is heavier than air and subject to gravity, so it can crash. Epistemological possibility is the possession of particular evidences such as you mentioned. Without such evidence - i.e. without particular reason to believe the plane is going to crash - you can be certain that it won't.

Interesting footnote: When Peikoff lectured on definition by non-essentials years ago at NBI, his principal example was an over-broad definition of religion, Niebuhr's "area of ultimate concern." (The phrase "consists in," without qualifications, in the original quote makes it a definition.)

Hint: one is a fave of AR's.

Too old and not pretty enough. Keating worked his way through school as a model.

See also Branden's "Benevolence vs Altruism" in VoS. The fundamental point here, which Branden makes in "Isn't Everyone Selfish?", is that what's good or bad in fact isn't necessarily the same as what you want or don't want to do; that's part of what the word "Objectivism" means. Ideally the two will coincide, but that isn't a matter of definition. The difference (between what one wants to do and what's objectively, as a matter of fact, right) can show up especially clearly in cases of giving and generosity. This can come from bad motives (such as the desire to make them feel somehow obligated), and, if it facilitates their evildoing, can be distinctly reprehensible, even if it makes you feel good.

Given the findings of the Lovenstein Institute study a few years back, we can be sure Bush won't have the smarts to keep this from happening here. They can enforce the ban with revenues raised from the email tax.

A few of the others: Nozick, Hunt, Hook and Rasmussen are all academic philosophers. Nozick and Hook are both dead. Hook was a teacher of Peikoff's at NYU and wrote a nasty review of For the New Intellectual in the NYT Sunday book review section which prompted Nathaniel Branden to reply at length in the form of an ad for NBI. I don't think any of them knew her personally. Alan Collins was in the publishing business, her agent or editor or what have you at one point. Barbara Branden's biography could give you more detail. Ron Paul is a congressman from Texas and an enthusiastic libertarian. I think he was the only Republican to vote against going to war in Iraq. Joan Blumenthal is an artist, one of the original Rand circle. Her husband is Allan, the psychiatrist. Her first husband was Alan Greenspan. Poole is part of the Reason Foundation and a board member of TAS / TOC.

While we're on the subject of tapes, does anyone know if Rand's interviews with the Columbia University radio station are still around? She made them in the early 60s with student questioners and, in some cases, Nathaniel Branden or John Hospers. They talked about humor, the media and science fiction among other topics, and they'd make interesting documents today.

Rand was a professed admirer of the Fairbanks Zorro, and Francisco's double identity seems to come from him or from the Scarlet Pimpernel (which she also enjoyed), so this is a likely surmise. The suggestion that Rand's characters are Russians is an interesting one. Could somebody expand on this? It could be a dissertation's worth of material.

The source I cited in #7 has this to say about the Suarez quote in #1: I can't do a good job on this without the context. For example, "sententia" can mean various things. It means something like this ... The first proposition is that the claim we took from Aristotle is not primary, but rather this (is primary): everything that is, is. (i.e., every entity is an entity; in Greek this would be "pan to on estin on") This is what A.A. maintains in his Quaestio 5 on Metaphysics Gamma (book 4). And he replies to Aristotle that he (Aristotle?) called that other thing (the Principle of non-contradiction, I suppose) the primary principle among those which are considered to be general (principles), such as "every whole is greater than its part" etc. But this author (i.e., A.A.) gets it wrong even in his principles, because that proposition (everything that is, is) is an identity and is superfluous, and this is why it is not assumed as a principle of demonstration in any science, but falls outside every branch of knowledge (ars). I hope that this is helpful. Suarez is a name known to me, but A.A. seems to be pretty obscure. Apparently he had something to do with Duns Scotus.

Some religions have learned to behave themselves - Christianity at the time of the Enlightenment, Shinto at the end of WW2, Judaism a couple of thousand years ago - but this is in their essential scriptures just the same. Islam hasn't, and maybe Bhuddism didn't need to learn it. Peter

Re #9: I didn't say it was a good definition, only that it was Aristotle's. Maybe the considerations you bring up are why "rational animal" replaced it as the standard. (Birds wouldn't be a counter-example for Aristotle because wings, not feet, are their primary means of getting around.) Re 10: "Featherless biped" comes from Plato - Sophist, I think - as an example of a bad definition. I recall the plucked chicken from Barbara Branden's efficient thinking lectures, though Peikoff could have used it as well.

Peikoff is on record (don't remember where) as saying that Objectivism = what Rand said; others can make valuable philosophical contributions, but they won't be Objectivism. He may yet come up with some Orwellian rationalization, but this is what he'd have to rationalize away.

Following up on #4: Aristotle's definition is "two-footed footed." Some references are Parts of Animals A3, 644 a4 ff and Metaphysics Z11 1037b. As either Lennox or Gotthelf explained this in a talk, for Aristotle each successive differentia must be a way of belonging to its genus. Animals move. Having feet is a way of moving. Having two feet is a way of having feet. That way, the genus at each stage will imply the one above it. In this case, the genus "footed" implies "animal" as the next one up the hierarchy. I once asked someone in the business about "rational animal", and he said that the definition originated in the Academy a few generations after Aristotle's death. His successors might have been taking off in turn from his classification of types of soul - nutritive, common to all living things, appetitive, common to all animals, and noetic or rational, special to man. This shows that he would have agreed with the statement that man is a rational animal but not that he would have considered it a correctly put-together definition.

Curious about the Fountainhead play (items 5905 and 5906). Does Barbara Branden have the rights to put it on in public?