seymourblogger

A legal crime? As opposed to an illegal crime? Can't an intervention be done by his daughter? So, let me get this straight, the man has absolutely no responsibility, nor control over his actions. The woman shows up, she is intoxicated and therefore the Objectivist rational man" just has to fuck her. Really? Maybe he can next come out with a justification for slavery because the Africans gave indications that they wanted masters! Incredible. Adam Adam this is not up to your usual excellence nor my expectations.

Janet, What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged? Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. I'll answer you at solo. I'd prefer you to answer it here since you have decided to come back to OL. On another thread, you wrote that you want to place Rand among the post-modernist philosophers. What are your criteria for this? But Rand certainly is no postmodern writer. I have dug out some old notes from a seminar on modern vs postmodern literature I attended during my student years; the characteristics of post-modern llterature listed there in no way fit Rand's writing. On the contrary, those post-modern traits are diametrically opposed to everything Rand valued highly, for example the disjunction, deconstruction, the indetermination, the refusal to offer a definite meaning, to name but a few. All that is completely un-Randian.I forget, so tellen muttle will insult me again, but did I already mention to you that Fountainhead has a great deal of aphoristic writing in it. This is Nietzsche, and although he died more than 100 years ago, the aphorism is a post modern kind of trope,a special form of style requiring the reader to let the meaning resonate, to ruminate on it. As Nietzsche said, "Words written in blood are meant to be learnt by heart, not to be just read." Think Novalis, Wittgenstein. And of course Nietzsche. Rand wrote her words in blood. She gave up mother Russia, never an easy thing for a writer, (ask Solzhenitsyn) learned English, wrote in English so she gave up her mother tongue, but kept her accent, gave up her family, all to write her words in blood because that's what it cost her.

Right on point. On reflection I am not surprised that it is mostly men who are discussing this, because it is in fact about the man - the usual perpetrator of rape, whether the victim is female or male. Peikoff seems to have the archaic view that men once aroused lose their reason and "can't stop themselves" (a line used by many hoping to get lucky in the dim and distant sixties and seventies) Maybe he used it himself. I hate to tell you but that's exactly what the two women writers in the Atlantic Monthly zine of jan/feb 2009 come down to. Read Karen's power point fuck list. Peikoff is correct when you are dealing with the kind of athlete that Duke coeds were dealing with.

Let me know if you want me to send you a good story FF on this very subject within BDSM. She has recently had it published by a publisher but I still have it downloaded when it was on FF. I haven't bothered with listening or reading P on this and won't. His example of Kobe is interesting. I am quite sure Kobe was set up. Just as children now know they can set up an adult on sexual charges. (There's a terrifying documentary on this where a man's life is ruined before they grow up and confess they all made it up. It was a game to them.) Kobe's case was about money and IMO so was Michael Jackson's. Having done a lot of real estate and dealing with tenants, I know how one can get set up. An analyst I knew was set up providing a place for a vietnamese brother and sister to live in. I know he didn't rape the sister. Baudrillard has much to say about this date-rape thing. The jan/feb Atlantic Monthly 2009 has two articles on sex. One on Karen xxxx sex list at Duke, known for the other gang bang. The second was on porno and also analyzed coed porno and sex. It is an ambivalent problem as coeds now don't just gt drunk the way we used to get drunk, they get drunk to the point of blotto, pass out dead drunk. This is what turns guys on. The predators go to a frat party and deliberately look for the drunkest girl there. They rape her. In the bathroom, in one of the bedrooms, etc. The girls get stinking drunk to lower their PC Feminist dogma indoctrination so they can get laid, get a bf, attract a predator and not feel responsible. Not accept the consequences. In the past women had a gentleman's code. gentlemen did not do this, and his frat brothers would not tolerate it either. There are no such codes now and the authors of both these articles, very good writers, really don't have a clue. If you want to have more understanding of what's going on with women then read http://www.fanfiction.net to see what women really want as women are writing this stuff. It also explains why the Twilight irruption has happened that the PC Feminists hate so much. No one can have their cake and eat it too. No pun intended selene.

Janet, What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged? Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. I'll answer you at solo. I'd prefer you to answer it here since you have decided to come back to OL. On another thread, you wrote that you want to place Rand among the post-modernist philosophers. What are your criteria for this? But Rand certainly is no postmodern writer. I have dug out some old notes from a seminar on modern vs postmodern literature I attended during my student years; the characteristics of post-modern llterature listed there in no way fit Rand's writing. On the contrary, those post-modern traits are diametrically opposed to everything Rand valued highly, for example the disjunction, deconstruction, the indetermination, the refusal to offer a definite meaning, to name but a few. All that is completely un-Randian.The software here does lend itself to pro and con much better than at solo. You cvan quote over there by cutting and pasting. I have already answered your question partly on my blogs: guerrillablog ; cosmoplisfilm and intellectual terrorist, as all 3 have posts on Rand. You can go over there and ask your question in the comments part and I can answer it there if you don't like solo software. At my blog it is disqus which I like in some respects as it is more comprehensive taking in many many blogs. I can show you why she is POMO. Remember Fountainhead was in the 40's and Atlas in the 50's which is the cut off for modernism. Rand was following Nietzsche's instructions on reading and writing, particularly in F in which she wrote and was known for writing aphoristically. I can give you examples if you haven't identified them. But not here. I do not plan to be around here very much at all; just in certain circumstances. Her fiction anticipated POMO while at the same time exemplifying it as F was following Nietzsche

I also read it in 03 I think. OMG I can't remember exactly. My mind is disintegrating. Anyway I didn't think anymore about it either. 6 years later I read Foucault and the Baudrillard and reading Cosmopolis through the two philosophers, well, it is a different book entirely for me. Vija Kinski is pure Baudrillard. Let me know what you think. But it might be better if you go to my blog on it:: http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com as I have posted over 60 different ways of reading it. DeLillo is following Nietzsche's demand about reading Nietzsche. Words written in blood are not to be read but to be learnt by heart. Rand read Nietzsche like this as if they were words written in blood. And then she wrote novels "that were words written in blood." And now people have learnt them by heart, haven't they? It's hard to do what you don't know, have never had any experience with. Rand went to boot camp with Nietzsche, so she learned how to "write words in blood".

Well, that's one of the problems with the story, isn't it? If you know anything about billionaires, you know that they don't go out to get haircuts. The barber comes to them. I believe it was Clinton who had a barber come to Air Force One to give him a haircut, and all the airplanes had to circle until it was done; no one was allowed to land while the President was on the plane. It was one of the minor scandals of the Clinton era. Of course Clinton isn't a billionaire, I just use this as an illustration. I've worked for some mega-wealthy people, and can tell you that not only do they get home or office service, but they're on a schedule, worked out well in advance. It's expensive, but these people don't rub elbows with no plebs. Or proles. Whatever. You are reading it literally instead of through "floating signs" or at least through metaphors and/or symbols. http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com

Janet, What do you think is "terrible writing" in Atlas Shrugged? Too bad Jeff Riggenbach is currently not posting here. For he thinks Rand is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.I'll answer you at solo.

Suckered again. Me. Eric Packer is a multi linguist, reads poems in German, wants a Rothko in fact the entire Huston Chapel, .... all in this youtube video interview. And of course you could read my link to my blog http://cosmopolisfilm2.blogspot.com where I have over 60 different readings instead of the stupid one you quoted. When a novel takes place in one day all the stupid reviewers compare it to Ulysses. That's just one way of reading Cosmopolis. Another arrogant comment from me. Yes indeed.

Not so far back a computer-math-physicist-type whiz wrote a book entitled A New Kind of Science. It didn't matter what kind of science; it was all going to be displaced and recast. I said to myself, he's throwing himself right at the heart of scientific academica and will bounce right off its walls. This is because he was saying all your expertise and credentials mean nothing to my expertise; you will now bow to Zod! I can't evaluate his book and I know I couldn't even if I were to read it. I got this thought from reading some previews. Scientifically he may be right. I only say that out of an ignorance that cannot really address what he said. But I knew he was saying even genius in a stupid way. Now you drive in here with your Wombat 12 DD--not! and you bounce off the walls. Unlike the science, however, I have a much better handle on what is going on for I've been going down on it all my life--in spite of the salty taste. So far, you are only the Chinaman who suddenly appears in Rome 100 AD with a message from your biggies, inscribed on silken tapestry. Silk? We'll take it! Spice? We'll take it! Message? Uh. Sure. Thanks. --Brant when do you invent gunpowder? As you said I don't have the staying power. so I'm gone. It didn't occur tome that no one knew anything at all about what I was talking about. Foucault's work is not exactly mainstream in academia,but it is taught, seminars are held in it, and it is an intellectual force. That people at solo from New Zealand would not be keen on it is expected, but I thought the intellectual level here might be broader as in the very beginning there were a few that were not antagonistic and were very knowledgeable, so I was mistaken in generalizing. I didn't expect Michael as director of the site to be so heavily involved in its day to day. Almost every post of mine received an email that he had replied. I gradually weeded out everyone else that I didn't want continued arguments with, but it was difficult for me to ignore Michael as it is his site. It was a constant harassment to me and I realized it was his way of trying to get me to leave as he didn't seem able to just say it directly. So I did it for him. And of course every reply explaining myself just dug me in deeper. When I replied in one-liners, that was not acceptable either. I really am only interested in talking with a very few people here, but I have been inundated with those I had no interest in and there seemed no way to avoid them the way the software is set up. I don't know what the agenda is here but evidently MIchael does not want to offend the VIP people nor have them leave and I can understand that. But I have an agenda that doesn't fit here and I don't intend to change. I have loved funning around with you and I love the way you keep turning things on their head. I will miss that. Very much. See you at solo from time to time. Only you are not so easy going there. Nor am I. A pity says Jane.

OK, I hadn't really thought of it in these terms until now, but I'd rather you not be here. I don't mind discussing post modernism. I don't mind people disagreeing or any of the rest. I do mind your constant sterile mind games. And I don't like you. I built this site to attract people interested in ideas. Not preachers. You need a flock. That's not going to happen here. If for no other reason than I'm in the way. Michael Done. See honesty is best, isn't it.

Are you really trying to bait me with all these comments directed at me. You can just tell me directly that you would rather I not be here. I can deal with that. Why this incessant pestering. I answer you each time because you are the director of the site. The only reason. Just say what you mean and mean what you say. I can handle it.

I like the way you wrote that.

As I understand it, Foucault's basic point was that it is inappropriate to judge Islamic culture -- including its horrendous treatment of women -- by Western standards. Correct? Ghs Yes. Islamic countries are within the Sacred Order not the Order of Production, not a Secular order. You cannot judge them from within ours, tempting as that may be. I presume you are talking about genital cutting among other things. Stoning because of adultery, etc. They are a culture that has a great fear of women. And women are the cornerstone of their culture /religion. Exchange and property. This is a total belief system. And I think you know about beliefs. You may suppress the behavior but you are not going to get rid of it. You may punish and try them as we do in the US, but thaat still is only going to suppress it, the belief will still be there. Maybe here after a few generations it will not happen. Ousmane Sembene's last film was on genital mutilation. He is a filmmaker, educated in France, from Somalia and has always done films on taboo subjects, exposing hypocrisy. It shows that other women in the village are the most adamant on the cutting, and the young girls want it as a ritual of feminine adulthood, otherwise they will not be marriageable and then what do they have if they cannot marry. It's complicated. Mothers often try to spare their daughters, but other women undermine them, grab their daughters and do it anyway against her wishes. Human rights belong to secular orders not sacred orders. Then why do they judge our culture? --Brant Whaaaat! What kind of question is that? How would I know the thousands of reasons they do. They do because they do, just as we judge them. A question well asked is one half the answer - Bacon Really if you ask questions like that you can never find out anything or know anything. I missed this one. I studied cultural anthropology in college. I didn't know you were a cultural anthropologist. --Brant why didn't you say so? I've studied some cultural anthropology. With Wallace at Penn. He seemed bored with teaching it. I've read more widely. Do I consider myself a cultural anthropologist. Actually I don't consider myself anything with an academic label anymore. How come you can get away with one line responses. Or does Michael get after you also?

Seymourblogger, Why are you worried about integrity? Integrity means consistency to principles. You're not supposed to have any of that little people stuff. You're supposed to be beyond good and evil. Oh... I forgot... The thing is the gesture and the illusion, not the fact. You need to give the appearance of integrity. So saying it is ugly, huh? Michael Is that your definition of integrity. Holding onto absolutes. The best case for absolutes is in the fiction Smilla's Sense of Snow. I guess we differ on that definition. Remember in the beginning, was it a week ago? how you were so eager to learn something new and I saw deeper into your surface meaning to know that I was being set up. Now the fury erupts. When I taught I worked with learning resistances. The first day: What is it you want to learn? Whadda ya mean. You supposed to teach us. Teach us. I'd love to teach you, what do you want me to teach you? Whatdda mean what do we want ya to teach us? You the teacher, you supposed to know what we need to learn. That's what. And around and around the merry-go-round until they figured it out. Then we got down to real business and real learning. Not just stuffing heads full of rote mimicry. By the end of one semester a beginning college reading class could take a Freud case study and chew it to bits as well as what any of my analytic peers could do. Better than anything I've seen around here so far.

This is exactly why I avoided all the Rand sites for "over a decade". Either nasty and aggressive or plain boring if they weren't. You have nothing on Diane Hsieh tho. But she is good about doggies and rescuing them. It seems to be play with my marbles my way or take your ass elsewhere. There's less authoritarianism at solo, but it is insular. Here you have a few, a very few, very intelligent and/or funny people. You are not one of either category. No offense meant of course, as Mellin Swittle says. Whether they are enough to keep me around, we will see. Perhaps if you tell them to ignore me that will work. I'm now 78. You have no idea of anything I've done in my life and I am not here to offer a resume. When you are 78 I wonder if you will be excited about new things. Somehow I don't think so since you aren't excited about them now. A different way of thinking about things opens your mind in an amazing way. Obviously you are not interested, not that there's anything wrong with that. I, however, am incredibly excited. The Discourse is changing in many different fields. It's speed is breathtaking. When you get old it can seem as if the world is whizzing past you because it's so different from when you were young. Old people tend to keep moaning about the good ol days and how the world is going to hell faster and faster. Well, it always has been. Nothing new there. But to be involved in learning something radically new feels like waking up from the fog. Like Scarlet.

George, I admit that I'm interested in seeing a mind work that is totally inverted. (But my interest is only up to a point.) Facts mean nothing to this person. The dismissive gesture is all. Note that she frequently screws up the facts and gets confused when people correct her, but the dismissive gesture is identical in every case--and she gets pissed when it backfires. It is conceit without substance. Gesture as an end in itself. The facts are not important enough to bother with before a "truth" of gargantuan magnitude--that the person belongs to the vastly superior Chosen Ones, those who are far above the riffraff. This poster uses Nietzsche as validation for her conceit and constantly harps on some dialectic mumbo-jumbo to validate her lack of substance. But all this is merely window display so it will look good. After all, where's the value in looking down on people if they don't look back? I sometimes bring out a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald in similar cases because this passage is where I first became aware of the lonesome vain stuffed peacocks among us. He was discussing wealthy people (from upbringing), but I think many modern academics fit the pattern perfectly. ... I have met people who fit the above description to a tee. Even if they lose everything, they somehow imagine that they are innately superior to the rest of mankind. There is no merit involved in this sentiment, only upbringing. This gets really irritating to be around... Especially if you have things to do. They will piss your life away on trivialities if you let yourself get entangled. (And I admit it. I'm a fool for this game. I constantly kick myself after I see I did it again. It's an ex-druggie thing, I guess...) Michael Here's where I got the Tufts info. Department of Philosophy-Tufts University ase.tufts.edu/philosophy/courses/Cached - Similar You +1'd this publicly. UndoMiner Hall, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 | Tel: 617.627.3230 | Fax: 617.627.3899 | email ... 168-01, Newton's Principia, George Smith, 167 or consent, 12 ... George Smith - Tufts University - RateMyProfessors.com www.ratemyprofessors.com › ... › Massachusetts › Tufts UniversityCached You +1'd this publicly. Undo See ratings and read comments about professor George Smith from Tufts University in MA. Evidently a different George Smith. A mistake but an honest one. I went back to wiki and didn't see anything so then I began to wonder if Gellen Mettle was right, that I was losing my mind and memory. Since I just did a google search, the page came up, and I opened up wiki not paying attention to the fact that Tufts wasn't on there. I remember wondering how he could teach at Tufts with no advanced degrees but let it go......I will never get anything but a zero at Trivial Pursuit. Glad to see how fast you all are at damning someone though, attacking their integrity, etc etc. Have any of you read Solzhenitsyn's or Herman's visits to the KGB department in the Soviet Union in Lubyanka? Jes wonderin'. Brant's right.

Having been an analyst for many years I know an atack when one is delivered. I think........I can't remember... I'm so old my me mory is lousy.W ho w as it told me that? Belle n fuddle was it? N o sellen twaddle , that's it. Isn't it? Wait, now I'm not sure . Keyboard is skipping can't remember what to do. Oh I remember now....... Sucker me once, shame on you. Sucker me twice, shame on me.......I acted on good faith with you. You did not. That's where I am now. No offense meant of course.

I checked out the rewright squad. For us bean counters. 1. It was posted in 09. So 26,000 (rounded) in 3 years. 2. My post 5 months and 12,000 almost 13,000 today. I am assuming you are not math challenged in stats. Let's see, he's watching how many lines I put in a comment. One is not enough. 2? 3? 4? Will that do I wonder. Hmmmmm. Maybe I had better post something serious. I got yelled at for not respecting Geo Smith enough as a well-known philosopher. I went to wiki and read about him. He has worked hard and spent a lot of time with Cato Institute for which I.........never mind. And has had articles published by The Journal of Libertarian Studies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Smith And he left college before he got his degree and he teaches at Tufts. all this is wiki-ing. Kinky? No no that doesn't belong in this thread tenaj. Does this make him a world class philosopher? Hardly. He's a worker bee in the bosom of academia. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've been there meself. Post modern thinking doesn't rewrite history. all it does is put it in a different order: The Order of Things.. Foucault has frequently said he is NOT a theorists. He does not deal in theory. He has proposed a method, his Tool Chest as he calls it. Nothing to make fun of. Just a different way of thinking. Doesn't mean you can't think other ways also. Just means you have more flexibility. Whew! I escaped the one liner sort of ultimatum.

My Harriman thread has over 42 thousand. Me so tough! http://www.objectivi...ndpost&p=106683Thread? where did I mention threads? Posts I said, posts. Just one post, that's all. One.

Where she plainly doesn’t fit. This is like listing Zeus among the Aztec pantheon, next to Quetzalcoatl. I might have to start posting more material from Foucault’s Pendulum just for illustration’s sake. The section on the typology of morons, cretins, lunatics, and fools comes to mind. Do you not realize that the person you’re addressing qualifies as a “serious philosopher”, who happens to take Objectivism seriously? Thus disproving your assertion, and/or qualifying it as an insult? Or do you have criteria for “serious philosopher” that GHS doesn’t measure up to?Umberto Eco wrote Foucault's Pendulum I am referring to Michel Foucault. Two different people. Notice I didn't insult you for your embarrassing and ignorant mistake. Geo Smith? I genuflected last night when Brant told me NOW and twice this morning. I wish I had an effigy of him to worship. Do you have one or could you tell me where I could buy one?

Hmmm.... Those Foucauldians are a tricky tribe. Ghs ... and quite versed in 'concept stealing' ('The root of the problem is that there is not root of the problem'). For the background of my reply you would have to spend a lot of time with Foucaut's The Order of Things. I have spent a lot of time with The Order of Things. In fact, I reread large chunks of it over the past few days. Given how you misuse Foucault's ideas, you don't seem to understand Foucault any better than you understand Rand. You merely throw around a few of his phrases here and there in an attempt to impress people, but you are not fooling anyone on OL. My earlier offer to participate in a thread about Foulcault's ideas is still open. I will even start the thread for you, after which you can post of a summary of what you regard as his most important contributions. You won't do this this, of course, because you cannot do it. You are a fraud. Ghs You can start it. I might visit. Good idea.

I love Dali too. Still greatly underestimated. Quite outside the Dominating Discourse of art history. And his work is very uneven. I still love him. I went to see this painting when I was a Randian just because Rand said it was her favorite.

You are kidding, right? Time to play "Mine's bigger than yours"? Here's one thread bigger than yours and I just started looking. Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God? That one has 27,356 views as of this posting. (This ain't rocket science and it's easy to go on, but I'm not going to spend all day on childish stuff.) Michael EDIT: Maybe I am childish. I couldn't resist including this one: Ayn Rand's favorite painting - Corpus Hypercubus by Dali which has 16,189 views right now. Where did I ever say it was a serious post?

Seymourblogger, At least one good thing can be said of your inner "dominating discourse." You have a most casual relationship with logical consistency, if not outright contempt. You are correct about this Michael. What kind of response is, "No, I'm the one who yada yada yada..."? Are we in a kindergarten version of "back and forth ad infinitum within the dialectic" all of a sudden? Joke, Michael, joke! I am the one in redneck territory now. And I have learned to have a lot of respect for them. They were on to NObama on day 2 of his taking office way way ahead of the neo-liberals. Incidentally, I am literally a hillbilly--born in Wise County, Virginia and raised by hillbillies. I was born in neighboring Norton because Coeburn (where I should have been born) didn't have the medical facilities in to handle my mother's difficult delivery. You're a hoot, though. I've never seen a person try to bluff about being a hillbilly as an intellectual plus. Michael You've been away from them too long. Actually I think all the Snopes left Yoknapatawpha County and came to the Ozarks.