Greybird

Angie, I've taken the liberty of extracting from their Facebook page (still worth a visit) for the benefit of non-FBers, and (from sad necessity) to alert those here as to O-faction: Not something from the Orthodox Church in Irvine, but a creation (clearly of long standing, with Taylor and Neal no longer alive) of the man who produced the re-release of the film of We the Living, and the more recent oral histories of the Objectivist movement. All the movers and shakers in such projects seem to have nothing to do with Pope Leonard I. That's hardly a coincidence. Also, to elaborate on their appeal for support, as their Kickstarter page says, time is of the essence: "This project will only be funded if at least $34,000 is pledged by Tuesday May 10, 6:55 pm EDT." They have, at the moment, $1,420. ... Well, $1,430. I'm pledging $10 and qualifying for a digital download of the film. Several other levels of support, with premiums for them, are available.

Here's RT's potent evisceration of MSNBC as an unexpected, but long-standing, source of warmongering. (My only reservation: They don't mention that GE, owner of MSNBC, is the biggest "defense" contractor of the Pentagram, erhm, Pentagon. Slightly germane, methinks.) This clip, if you watch it on YouTube, will take you to RT's subscribable video-collection area.

I cancelled cable TV in January. I am SO not missing it. Doing without even stumbling across the warrior pundits of More Socialist News Bites Central and Fascist News Central is one reason I'm getting a great return on my non-fees. Fortunately, RT also has its own growing video collection on YouTube. With others either re-posting RT segments, or, as with the clip above (thanks for that), talking about or reacting to them. RT, and its frequent questioning of the U.S. government as world Leviathan, is also available on local over-the-air viewer-supported stations. (Far more of private support than the little they still suck from governments' teats, which they really wouldn't miss if it were lost.) In L.A., these include both the now-not-PBS KCET and the now-"PBS SoCal" KOCE. The former also carries segments from Al-Jazeera, by the way, which also show the harsh and bloody side of "our" remaking of the North Africa - Levant - Central Asia region. (It would be far better if RT and AJ also questioned the politics closer to home in, respectively, Russia and Qatar, whose governments own them. Still, they're quite unfettered in casting a critical eye on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the State-intimidated media over here rarely return the favor by examining abuses abroad.) The few frequent anti-authoritarian elements on cable channels — for me, they've been some of "The Daily Show," nearly all of Judge Napolitano's "Freedom Watch," and all of John Stossel's programs — are findable these days on the channels' sites, or YouTube, or if necessary, BitTorrent. If I could re-subscribe to cable TV just for Comedy Central, Fox Business, and Turner Classic Movies, I would. Sadly, that's not currently possible.

Fortunately, nobody does. What tedious bilge they are. I won't share Rand editions that include them. No one seems to remark on how, if Rand is a writer of utter and almost pellucid clarity (and she was), such introductions become superfluous, if not pernicious. Peikoff couldn't see inside Rand's head. He likes to give the impression he could and, thirty years after her death, can still do so. I just felt something unaccustomed to me: a wave of pity for Peikoff. All he'll ever be remembered for is being a second-hander, giving unnecessary exegesis for his mentor's work, and traducing the prospects for its intellectual penetration into the culture. What a shabby way to frame one's own, irreplaceable life.

By all means, let's talk about menstruation. It's more interesting than taking up another thread talking about Phil's obstinacy. I'm simply not going to quote Phil or answer him any more until he uses the functions of this software and observes the mores of this forum. Oh, and to head off "Why don't you just 'ignore' him?" — that function is nearly useless, unfortunately. Those who do use the Reply function with "quote" tags end up displaying what an ignored person says, anyway. The benefits of Reply notably outweigh having to plow through the posts of those one would prefer to "ignore."

How far, you ask? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Tef3IEWCM "Through the good and lean years / And for all the in-between years." I'm ready to fire up the flux capacitor and go back to 1957. Far fewer people then had forgotten how to stand up to cretins like Graham.

Now that I've churned up even more drift in this setting, one more swirl of it won't hurt: Could we, please, not have any more threads using "To Whom It May Concern," or any variant, in the title? Shouldn't we be gunshy, apropos of the Rand-Branden fireworks of 1968, about using that title in any Objectiv-ish setting? And now it's been used twice {sigh} ... And as to the second usage, please, let's avoid using runs of all-CAPS in thread titles as well as in running text, shall we? It remains tantamount to shouting on the Net. (Yes, Jerry, I'm sorry, this does especially point at you {rueful smile})

I replied to the following in an earlier post, but two hours after the morning coffee began hammering on my neurons, I finally figured out what seems to be happening here. To wit (oh, and Phil, please note this self-documenting quote apparatus): Let's get something straight. There is nothing wrong with this site. Not in the sense you mean. [...] You didn't actually ask me what "sense I mean," though, did you? [...] I'm not going to play that game. You know perfectly well what a generalized insinuation is and does in a context like this. [...] The difficulty here, I fear, is that MSK is talking about "a context like this" that doesn't exist, apropos of what I have posted, due to thread drift. So I'll clarify and state some matters for the record. ~ I entered this thread solely to respond to Dennis Hardin about Jeff Riggenbach. I didn't have anything to say about Ted Keer or about MSK's handling of matters concerning him. I still don't, especially with my not having read the threads in question. (I do think Ted should have been, all along, less sharply pointed and, yes, more generally civil.) ~ I was making no insinuations (nor playing any "games") about MSK's operation of this site by virtue of posting in this thread. He apparently was assuming that I wouldn't be doing so if I didn't mean to thus insinuate. ~ That, in turn, doesn't mean I haven't differed with MSK and others as to their opinions and demeanor in discussions. I have had many such differences and always will. Not every such matter, though, is worth bringing up. (And silence about them doesn't mean endorsing what others may do.) ~ I have no complaints about how MSK has administered this site. To be precise, although I've seen emphases I don't care much for (mostly related to matters that ended up in, and the whole notion of, the "garbage pile"), none have risen in importance for me to the level of being worthwhile to complain about. ~ I'll go beyond this to say that I admire the even-handedness and fairness that MSK has used. These haven't been perfectly applied, but that's inevitable in any venue, and I appreciate his intending to and nearly always succeeding in doing so. ~ Thread drift is, from where I sit, both underestimated by MSK and overpracticed by all of us, including me. Tangents are too easily taken up and elaborated to the point of utter confusion. This very thread began drifting by its fourth post. It doesn't help to ignore that high drift velocity when claiming to see a context for what someone else says. As to this last, it's a matter of "spontaneous disorder," working against coherence, but I don't see how it can easily be avoided. Some forums (non-Objectiv-ish) I've taken part in try to hammer driftwood back into shape, but that usually ends up stifling discussion spontaneity and limiting thread endurance. MSK has avoided such hammering, which is praiseworthy. Seeing a context that isn't necessarily there, though, and assuming it's operative in someone's remarks — without, well, actually asking them? That can inadvertently have the same effect.

Thread bumpitude after a year ... and you must go to the original posting page and read the artist's sardonic (and sometimes facetious) comments. He brings a caricaturist's sensibilities to much of his professional work, including many book covers. Edit: My 666th post. {cue ominous organ music} No, I'm not evil, nor "laughing at the book," I simply can appreciate his sense of humor, down to that toy train engine.

I'm not going to play that game. You know perfectly well what a generalized insinuation is and does in a context like this. [...] Again, you didn't choose to ask me. And I'm not playing a game. And you didn't identify where I supposedly disagree with you. (Aside from saying to me, "OL is not a preaching site." Well, I've never said or believed it was, publicly or privately.) Individuals can be what's wrong with a site. They almost have to be, and usually are. It's not IBM's (truly) game-playing Watson we're talking about here. But, again, intense dissection of blame in a spontaneous order such as this is rarely worthwhile or helpful. Unlike, for example, speaking to a particular pronounced instance of unfairness, as I did above with Riggenbach. Well, that's a ringing endorsement of my presence! {sardonic smile}

George, your whole discussion of past epiphanies of yours (many paralleling mine, apropos of Roy Childs' "Open Letter"), and of comparative distinctions, has been fascinating to me — including those quotes. My only demurral is, in that Tucker quote (and for too many other writers, mostly pre-20th-Century), the lack of paragraphs. That does make it very hard to read, simply in physical terms of eye travel. I don't see the sotto voce insertion of paragraph breaks as being problematic for such quotations, nor a matter of changed meaning, though you may well differ on that.

You didn't actually ask me what "sense I mean," though, did you? And I didn't, and still don't, choose to elaborate. Mostly because I'm trying not to personalize what is largely a spontaneous order, going beyond what's done by either participants or administrators. Every discussion site has some things wrong with it. If this one's faults were worse than they are, I wouldn't be here. And when those faults worsen, instead of choosing to "disrupt" it, I absent myself until they improve.

Erhm ... not so fast.

Nothing that Jeff Riggenbach has said on this site has been either "vicious" or "mindless." A lot of it has been contemptuous of fools, dismissive of the rhetorically deficient, or disdainful of hypocrites, but your adjectives do not apply to any of that. (Whether his comments always come to a productive point? Well, that's a nearly universal failing around here, including with me.) I have to speak up to defend a periodic, welcomed acquaintance (and dinner partner) over the past 30 years. Riggenbach is not what (or who) is wrong with this site. That implication is preposterous, for Riggenbach or for anyone else. I have a nearly boundless contempt for Glenn Beck and for every pretentious asseveration he puts forth. This has nothing whatsoever to do with any appraisal I have of MSK, or of anybody else, here or elsewhere. They are individuals.

If you do attend, you'll be able to meet Neil Schulman, if you so desire. He's bought tickets for that showing. You can't miss him, visually or verbally. I should point out that this showing is early Friday morning, not early Thursday morning.

As much as I hate to ask this, I have no choice, due to the calendar and our culture's annual dementia on this day. And due to its claim of more than quadrupling the number of markets. Is this a joke (or ultra-hyped) press release, or is it serious?

Ye GODS. Greenspan's misleading influence strikes yet again! Their getting it this wrong (though it's not entirely their fault, sad to say) augurs badly for this being worth much. I'll look through it in the comics store, if my local store's owner orders one. I expect little of value from it, though.

Trump has met a payroll. In the private, productive sector. This should be made a constitutional job requirement. In the last sixty years, I believe only Reagan genuinely qualified. (Possibly Carter, LBJ, and Truman, briefly. Bush II had sinecures, not jobs.) We could do, and certainly have done, far worse.

I've tried twice to finish reading The Grapes of Wrath, but the naturalism never took hold of me. The film, however, has magnificent acting, especially from Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell. And stellar visual imagery as well. John Ford found it almost impossible to direct a bad movie. Fonda was cruelly robbed of the Oscar for Best Actor in 1940 by the Academy's make-it-up-to-'em tendency. James Stewart won for being the second male lead in "The Philadelphia Story," and he was brilliant and funny, but not in the same class as Fonda's smoldering, earnest Tom Joad. Yet that award was largely propelled by Stewart's being shut out in 1939, for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," in lieu of the sentimentality that favored Robert Donat's Mr. Chips. By the way, I despise the socialist and government-paternalist impulses in "Wrath" and the Lincoln-worship at the core of "Smith," but that doesn't at all diminish their achievements as compelling filmed stories.

Smith's talk will be stream-cast, quoth ARI's Washington affiliate: "The talk will be livestreamed through the Ayn Rand Center Facebook page! Just visit http://www.facebook.com/AynRandCenter and click on the 'Livestream' link below the profile picture." So Kat may not want to waste the gas. Wi-fi in Millennium Park, methinks, and enjoy a Spring day. Other events are to be streamed. It's always better to let ARI spend its money on you.

A perspective I've gladly endorsed for years. And have documented. (JR and others have responded, but not everyone's seen that thread from last Spring.) It's gotten to the point that I don't even waste the $10 or more (here in SoCal) and the gas and driving time unless I'm reasonably sure in advance that I'll want to see a film at least once more. Anyway, not only has Redbox relentlessly driven down the price of new-release rentals (and upped the convenience, with their being returnable to any such kiosk), but DVDs as commodities have drastically fallen in price. You can get a used recent-release DVD in superb condition, withdrawn from rental at one of the few Blockbusters left, for under $7 these days, and sometimes within six weeks of its store debut. Sometimes you can find brand-new discs of worthwhile movies for as little as $5, and not just at Wally World. Amazon.com Marketplace also dredges up almost any forgotten classic (or not!) on disc for a few bucks. It makes me sound like the middle-aged fart I've become, but all those teenagers and 20somethings with their cell phones are the height of that stupidity. They can't take in the experience that they've just shelled out $20 or more (with overpriced refreshments) to see? For two hours? Without keeping up chatter, text, voice, sometimes both at once? Those iPhones are like lighthouse beams in my face, dammit. * Whom I won't quote or respond to until he starts using the quote function himself, which is there for a reason.

Nobody hates teachers, as such. But many are getting sick of the whining from allegedly underpaid government-funded parasites. Turn over the school facilities to teachers' cooperatives (they've been homesteaded, in a sense), give up both the tax funding and the compulsory attendance laws, and be done with it.

Two forlorn observations as to how discussions are formed: One element (which I've often abetted, to my regret) is that Objectiv-ish venues seem to keep setting record velocities for thread drift. The other (which I've never been a part of) is that, if a picture does not create a genuine substitute for argument, then an embedding of a YouTube video is far less valid as such a substitute.

Martin, although I entirely agree with your appraisals of political leaders and their culpability for war crimes and murderous atrocities, I have to note that you are making an unwarranted generalization here. Many more than you see posting actively are not part of the neocon/neolib consensus for war and Empire that dominates what many post about. They just don't talk about their opposition. Much of it comes from a practical truce, in effect, to allow bringing up other topics with those same people. It's compartmentalizing of thought, true enough. Yet if that weren't done, no substantive discussion would get accomplished. I know that I rarely bring up matters of war and the culpability for it, because I'm tired of derision, context-dropping, and State-worship being proffered in lieu of argument. That happens in all discussion venues, though at Objectiv-ish ones, those anti-discussion traits are often put across with a distinct air of asserted moral superiority. It's as if the concrete evidence of abuse of individual rights and reasoned discourse is irrelevant, if the moral virtue of institutions one likes or endorses is asserted. You're expecting a questioning of the motives and practice of a sprawling statist institution that, in terms of following Rand's exaggerated worship, is excused from any serious moral blame due to what it supposedly was founded upon. Well, that skepticism isn't going to be expressed very often, not here, anyway. It creates more battles against irrationality than many of us have the stamina to fight in a single day, or a week, or a month. I never thought that the travails of Sisyphus, rolling that rock up only to be dashed down again for the gods' amusement, were worth emulating on a discussion board or list. For "gods," read: privileged discussion parties. This venue has them, both formally and informally. So does every other. Observing those facts and — generally — avoiding collisions accordingly doesn't make for fear-ridden discussants. No more so than admitting to and dealing with the greater (literal) firepower of the IRS makes one a moral coward.

Nice to get the definitive word. Those commentary tracks are extempore, and the speakers almost never have notes, so his remembering 60 percent of your title probably is better than anyone should expect {grin} Well, on the one hand, they wasted their money, or at least their time in contacting your publisher. Why not show the cover of the book, with its distinctive typography that would have punched up the title on screen quite nicely? A nonspecific book needed no clearance, really. On t'other hand, that title may have distracted from the action, "breaking the fourth wall" a bit. That's becoming my fave theory. The point of the scene was that ludicrous "intervention" by Mary's friends. On t'third hand, compulsive credit-freaks either got a pleasant jolt seeing your work noted (as I did) or got a great citation For Further Reading! ... and purchasing, one hopes.