Roger Bissell

2 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

4 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

 the Estate gets a better royalty (same list price of $14.99) from CreateSpace, so please order from there, if you would. Thanks!

Certainly gratifying to know that the Estate is being cared for so lovingly. Reminds me of Cousin Leonard's selfless devotion.

My understanding is that the royalties are going to be devoted to distributing free copies, such as to libraries. Nobody is getting rich off this, that's for sure! So, yes, lovingly - as in, labor of love.

REB

1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

4 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

Oh, and by the way, the print version of POET will not be available from Amazon.com for 3-5 business days - but is available NOW from the CreateSpace e-store (the above link).

Amazon says I can have it by Thursday.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1548486671/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1501030474&sr=8-3&keywords=barbara+branden

I hate to ask, but is there an index?  And was it proofed against the pagination?

I, for one, really appreciate that you (and whoever else was involved) have made this available.  Nathaniel's Vision of Ayn Rand too.

Hey man - I hate to tell you, but there is no index, sorry. However, the good news is that there's no pagination either! (Just joking.)

And I'm glad that Amazon seems to have stepped up their game - if you mean they said you could get it by *this* Thursday (i.e., the day after tomorrow).

The main people working to make this happen were Chris Sciabarra (foreword), myself (transcription, introduction, bibliography), and a trustee of Barbara's estate, who shall remain anonymous.

REB

The print version of POET is now available!  You can order from CreateSpace (link below) or from Amazon, but the Estate gets a better royalty (same list price of $14.99) from CreateSpace, so please order from there, if you would. Thanks!

https://www.createspace.com/7304022

Oh, and by the way, the print version of POET will not be available from Amazon.com for 3-5 business days - but is available NOW from the CreateSpace e-store (the above link).

Enjoy, y'all! :-)

REB

On 7/20/2017 at 7:19 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

Aristotle and Plato made careers out of misapplying ideas.  Which is unfortunate because they held up the development of real physical science between 1000 and 2000 years. 

 

Three comments - take your pick over which to distort or misrepresent:

1. Aristotle and Plato held up the development of real physical science between 1000 and 2000 years. Isn't that an awfully wide range of values? Is Heisenberg screwing with us again?  

2. Aristotle and Plato defined the laws of logic, including the law of identity, which some claim to not be able to find in Aristotle or Plato. This held up the development of science? This sounds more like a Sophist argument.

3. Only 1/4 of Aristotle's works survived to the Renaissance and the Modern Era. Would "real physical science" be better off or worse off today if ALL of Aristotle's works had survived? If NONE of them had survived? Do you have candidates for "wish they hadn't survived"?

REB

P.S. - I suppose you have a point. I see a similar problem with how Rand herself held up the development of Objectivism, perhaps by 50 years or more by various of her practices and policies. (And I'm not talking about Closed Objectivism.)

On 7/20/2017 at 0:19 AM, Brant Gaede said:

If you negate something then "something" was always nothing.

If you negated nothing then nothing was always nothing--there was nothing to negate, only a false proposition. Negation is epistemological. Non negation is metaphysical.

These are semanticals.

You can't negate something and you can't negate nothing. You can try. You can only negate propositions.

Hmmm, this sounds like a (proposed?) Law of Conservation of Existence!

REB

11 hours ago, Peter said:

Draw me a negative one without using the representing number and minus sign.

13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

15 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

Aren't "temporary wartime expedients" wonderful? My favorite is the federal income tax withholding, which was invented by Milton Friedman as a way to help the federal government jump-start the financing of our participation in World War 2. If Trump's not careful, he's going to wind up making "America First" as unpopular as it was back in the 1940s. Trump = the new Charles Lindbergh? 

I liked your first two sentences. The second two don't make any contemporary sense.

Charles Lindbergh led the "America First" campaign, trying to keep the U.S. out of the European War, and was smeared as a Nazi sympathizer once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It was all the rage to think of ways to be patriotic, once we entered the war, and Uncle Miltie's withholding gimmick was one. We were promised they were temporary, but obviously they were too juicy to give up, once the war was over. Trump is trumpeting his ersatz brand of economically ignorant "patriotism" as "America First," and he's going to end up discrediting genuine patriotism *and* destroying another big chunk of the free market by his protectionist policies.

REB

13 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Uh-huh. First cause (Unmoved Mover) was plain enough in Aristotle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover#Aristotle.27s_theology

Final cause (teleos) did more damage, because you could make up any insane "end" to justify brutality and ritual.

Why am I discussing this with a horn player?

Uh-huh, yup, you betcha.

Sure, Aristotle talked about Unmoved Mover, though he didn't call it "First Cause." That was added in the Middle Ages by our Scholastic pals. And it was added by our ARI pal, Leonard Peikoff, to refer to the function of free will in human consciousness.

Aristotle's four causes were Efficient, Formal, Material, and Final. The end or final cause or TELOS (one e) of any action is not inherently evil any more than the instigator or efficient cause of that action is inherently evil. 

If Aristotle *had* thought of the Unmoved Mover as a cause, it would have been a *fifth* cause. Either that, or maybe a four-in-one of the others. Sort of like Certs mints on steroids.  

As Ba'al noted, in addition to being a "horn player," I occasionally do mathematics - and even philosophy, several hundred pages of which have been published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies since 1999. But Ba'al has pledged not to buy my book(s), so I expect no less from you. 

REB

On 4/6/2017 at 11:13 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

WW 2 is the reason why we have employer paid medical insurance plans.  During WW2   wages were frozen by law and the only way employers could attract employees   was not by higher wages,  but by offering benefits as a non-cash kind of salary inducement.  A bonus as it were.  That is how Blue-Cross and Blue-Shield became the major players  they became. 

Aren't "temporary wartime expedients" wonderful? My favorite is the federal income tax withholding, which was invented by Milton Friedman as a way to help the federal government jump-start the financing of our participation in World War 2. If Trump's not careful, he's going to wind up making "America First" as unpopular as it was back in the 1940s. Trump = the new Charles Lindbergh? 

3 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Aristotle was more concerned with causation, and he named four types, of which First and Final became a two-headed monster that ate whole civilizations.

Aristotle's four causes were Efficient, Formal, Material, and Final. First cause refers to religious notions such as God as First Cause of the universe or free will as First Cause within human consciousness.  

REB

On 7/6/2017 at 9:36 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

The Heisenberg Indeterminancy Principle implies that we cannot get either the temperature or the length exactly.  We have to settle for an interval. The very act of measure the length of a body  causes the length to change a bit.  I bet Ayn Rand did not know that....

Here's something else that Ayn Rand - and apparently other people closer at hand - did not know:

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-smart-atomic-cloud-heisenberg-problem.html

3 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Explains why football, basketball, baseball, and hockey are universally shunned and ridiculed.

Would this also apply to polo?  

For those who need a little help in understanding the title of my book, it comes from one of the chapters, which is a fanciful tale of an imaginary meeting between Albert Einstein and beings from the Red Planet.

And just to be clear, "discovered" in the title is intended in the sense of "found out about" or "learned about" (not "invented" or "were the first to develop"). So, contrary to the apparent misapprehension of one over-wrought commentator here, I was not trying to rewrite the history of mathematics and deny credit to the Arabs or whomever!

Mainly, I just thought that might make a more attention-getting title than "What's the Deal with X-to-the-Zero Power?" But obviously, if the horse does not want to drink, then the horse will not drink. 

REB

1 hour ago, syrakusos said:

Thanks, Roger.  I ordered the book.

 

Thanks, Michael!

On 7/15/2017 at 9:20 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

I merely responded to his promo.  The promo was riddled with errors.  I fear for the book.  I am not going to read it, by the way.  Anyone who writes  a math book by calling algebra and set theory mind numbing is off to a bad start.

Couldn't agree with you more, BC. And the next time you want to condescendingly, sneeringly put down my announcements about my work, at least give a passing nod to objectivity by actually quoting me instead of putting words in my mouth I didn't say. :-P

REB

It's in print! Available here:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Martians-Discovered-Algebra-Explorations/dp/1548260622/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=how+the+martians+discovered+algebra&qid=1568326882&s=books&sr=1-1

 

"How the Martians Discovered Algebra" by Roger E Bissell

This exploration of induction and philosophy of mathematics is presented as a look "under the hood" at the process of mathematical theorizing, a detailed view of how the process of induction actually works. It also provides an alternative to the mind-numbing constructs of modern logic, mathematics, and set theory, explaining the true nature of zero and empty sets and revealing the flaw in Cantor's writings on infinity.

There are original ideas here, including the author's view that zero and the empty set function as "operation blockers," as well as his explanation of why the value of the zero power of any number is always 1. The author also offers his own discovery of a new method for generating Pythagorean triples. He lays out both the deductive validation of his method and the details of his exploration of the Pythagorean equation that uncovered the relationships underlying his method.

Academics, college students, and intelligent laypersons interested in philosophy and mathematics will all find this a challenging and stimulating read. They will be rewarded with new perspectives, not only on the theoretical landscape of mathematics and logic, but also on the value in learning the mental processes involved in induction, as well as the endless opportunities for fascination and delight to be obtained from mathematical discovery.…

CREATESPACE.COM

 

The cover file and "internal" file of POET have been submitted for review by Amazon CreateSpace. Once the files have been approved, we'll probably order a "proof" copy, and then about a week later, if that looks good, we'll push the button to publish! So, stay tuned for an announcement around July 20 that POET is available for purchase in print form!

REB

I finished the cover design for the paperback edition of POET yesterday and got a go-ahead from one of the two people whose approval counts on the design. So, we may actually get this done sometime in July. Stay tuned!  

REB

I finished formatting the print book this evening. Now I need to make a front-back-spine design for the cover, and then we're ready to upload to (Amazon) CreateSpace. Because of personal schedules, it may take another two weeks to get this finished, but I figure by mid-July the paperback version will be available. Meanwhile, the Kindles are selling like hotcakes!

REB

Hey, folks, Barbara Branden’s legendary lecture series, Principles of Efficient Thinking, is now available for purchase as a Kindle e-book!

 Here are details and ordering information.

https://www.amazon.com/Think-Your-Life-Depends-Principles-ebook/dp/B072N1YF3J/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1497921550&sr=1-1&keywords=think+as+of+your+life+depends+on+it

We are hard at work, preparing the print version of the book for publication on Amazon’s “CreateSpace,” and we anticipate it will be available by late June or early July.
 

I know nothing about this process, sorry. Send them an email.

http://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_JARS.html

$22 per individual issue

$35 per year (two issues) - print or online

$46 per year (two issues) - print & online

JARS: New July 2017 Issue Arrives!

Posted by chris on June 6, 2017 07:33 PM | Permalink | Posted to Periodicals | Politics (Theory, History, Now) |Rand Studies

The July 2017 issue of Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is now available!

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/002284.html

On 4/29/2017 at 6:55 AM, EQ ZERO said:

Really looking forward to the release of this book. Any update?

I'm also wondering if LP's Introduction to Logic lecture could possibly make it to print in a similar fashion?

Thank you!

1

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I have good reason to believe that POET will be published by this summer or fall. Stay tuned!

REB

P.S. - I would love for LP's logic course to be published, but I have absolutely no information about future publications from that corner of the movement.