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[caroljane]

Carol:

Insurance companies[sic] are frequently suggested as the best arbiters of all civil matters in hypothetical government-free libertarian societies.

Really? You have some sourcing for the above statement? Or, maybe a definition of "frequently" that I have not frequented?

.

The union movement will not be killed for the simple reason that it cannot be stopped from reproducing. New workplaces are unionized regularly to fight for the rights of the individual worker

Actually, in the United States, the percentage of union membership, in the non governmental sector has regularly declined since the 1930's, net, with some spikes, to today's lowest percentage.

Moreover, I am not arguing for the elimination of unions. My argument is that public sector unions should never be:

1) closed shops;

2) able to collectively bargain all issues because their employer is the state, and, by extension, the taxpaying public; and

3) due to their public character, their ability and right to strike is and should be severely restricted by contract, e.g., air traffic controllers, police, fire, prison guards, teachers, etc.

Adam

I am not surprised at any drops in US unionization. I was thinking of worldwide.

Re my first point I speak from impression and ask your indulgence on this. You yourself have done the same I think. My readings of libertarian and anarcho-capitalist literature have been narrow, but in constructing a society without government, I strongly remember the replacement of government and lawyers with the responsibility of insuring oneself against every every eventuality, and the competing roles of private companies in providing this insurance.

I could be totally wrong in this impression - I will williingly be told so, rather than try to research what I only dimly remember.

No comment on the cummings?

[kiaer.ts]

Why would anyone bother to read this thread when Shayne and George are mudwrestling in the thread on ethics? Much more entertaining, no? What makes this site what it is.

[Selene]

Carol:

Since Wisconsin is in the US and the Wisconsin conflict involves an American public sector union, my comments were restricted to the US. Worldwide, unions will form, grow, die and morph as they did in the US.

As to insurance companies and libertarian/limited government societies, they would be one aspect of dispute resolution which would be dominated by the actual contract which would follow the basic rules of common law contracts:

1) a meeting of the minds, or mutual consent;

2) mutual consideration, or the exchange of something of value;

3) performance or delivery;

4) good faith; and

5) no violation of public policy; <<<<<<<<<<<<<now this last one would have no force or effect in an anarchist society, but might apply within a anarchist commune.

As to ee cummings, I like his work, but I am never sure I understand him.

all ignorance toboggans into know

all ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again: but winter's not forever,even snow melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then? all history's a winter sport or three: but were it five,i'd still insist that all history is too small for even me; for me and you,exceedingly too small. Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave merely to toil the scale to shrillerness per every madge and mabel dick and dave —tomorrow is our permanent address <this is the money line

and there they'll scarcely find us

(if they do, we'll move away still further:into now

ee cummings

One of his love poems written circa 1944 with all the horror of WW II and it's influence.

How do you read it? Also, why did you pull those two (2) lines out and what did you intend them to mean in your post?

Adam

Edited February 22, 2011 by Selene

[Brant Gaede]

Unions and Wisconsin: the unions lose because the money isn't there and water flows downhill to the ocean of you take but you pay.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

> Shayne and George are mudwrestling in the thread on ethics? Much more entertaining, no? [Ted]

Laurel and Hardy bitch-slapping contest in slow motion:

"Whap". 20 minute pause. "Whap". fifteen minutes. "Whap"... They started around 1 am. And kept going at it till nearly 4 am. Yikes.

I see them sitting at their keyboards fuming, long past normal bedtime, just waiting ten, fifteen, twenty minutes for the next rebuttal, fingers itching...steaming coffee cup at the side. Letting this damage the next day's productivity by not getting a full night's sleep staying up half of the night just for this because an exchange of one-upsmanship put-downs becomes Obsessive/Compulsive Patty Cake.

(I'm at a loss, Ted, to understand why this, repeated across many threads and not just by Shayne and George, is entertaining and why some here would apparently be 'bored' if they didn't have an amphetamine jolt of this.)

Edited February 22, 2011 by Philip Coates

[PDS]

Roger,

I'm almost as excited about this movie as I was when I was reading Atlas Shrugged. That apparently someone has been able to put together an adaptation of this novel that has scenes that work with visual pacing is amazing. It's obvious to me that dialogue is being adapted to make it the character's own. That was the huge problem with The Fountainhead movie. You could tell Gary Cooper wasn't natural with his lines and it showed. These actors are really getting their characters. The IMPACT of seeing Rand's characters brought to life is stunning.

Jim

I agree. I am much more excited about the movie after seeing the trailer and the Rearden clip. It may be a good thing that a lot of Rand's dialogue was not included verbatim in the movie. This remains to be seen, but I am enthusiastic about what I have seen thus far.

Ghs

Agreed on all fronts.

Now for the matter of the soundtrack...

[caroljane]

Phil and Ted, I am afraid that I understand the entertainment value all too well. A timid and polite person, I ventured onto this site and two weeks later was engaged in an unsightly public brawl, giving as good as I got. There is such a thing as the joy of battle.

Adam, I love Cummings and always know what he's saying, I just can't explain it. That is his mystery, as Renault would put it.

But you will understand this I am sure.. (long quote alert!)

"his sorrow was as true as bread

no liar looked him in the head;

if every friend became his foe

he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

....

then let men kill which cannot share,

let blood and flesh be mud and mire,

scheming imagine, passion willed,

freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,

a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,

to differ a disease of same,

conform the pinnacle of am.

though dull were all we taste as bright,

bitter all utterly things sweet,

maggotty minus and dumb death,

all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth

-i say though hate were why men breathe-

because my father lived his soul

love is the whole and more than all."

-for J.F. Stuart

May 1,1923-Feb.17,1984

I forgot the date this year, but all day Thursday I felt low and a little lost for no reason; Friday I remembered.

Still miss you, Dad. Yesterday we had a great time at your first great-grandson's 2nd birthday party.

Your grandsons grew up fine and the one you didn't get to meet looks just like you.

[Greybird]

The idiosyncratic anti-punctuation ejaculations of E.E. Cummings (capital letters, goddammit!) were, and are, so pretentious as to drive me crazy. I can take eccentric phrasing, meter, line arrangement, even omitted punctuation for the ends of song-lyric lines, even misspellings for ironic or satirical points. Yet not even trying to observe the conventions of the English language, for spacing and the use of punctuation, is a waste of my time and life.

God knows, I've tried. Only on rare occasions as brought about by other media, such as a poem cited and read by the characters in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." And every such time, I've given up on Cummings in frustration at being suckered in yet again.

[Greybird]

As for the film, I'm not going to see the bonus scene. It's out of context. It's going to remind me of what was omitted, as against Rand's context. And I've had a hard enough time already, avoiding picking up Atlas for any re-reading over the last two to three years, in a deliberate attempt to put Rand's dramatic framing out of my head.

The film deserves to be taken on its own terms. It's not the same as the book, cannot be, will never be, and the media differ so much as to be incommensurable. Even Rand admitted this about her own screenplay, as brought to visual and auditory life, for The Fountainhead.

I saw the preview (not "trailer") and that's more than enough out-of-context spice, itself largely bound to be changed, as I noted earlier in this thread.

[PDS]

The idiosyncratic anti-punctuation ejaculations of E.E. Cummings (capital letters, goddammit!) were, and are, so pretentious as to drive me crazy. I can take eccentric phrasing, meter, line arrangement, even omitted punctuation for the ends of song-lyric lines, even misspellings for ironic or satirical points. Yet not even trying to observe the conventions of the English language, for spacing and the use of punctuation, is a waste of my time and life.

God knows, I've tried. Only on rare occasions as brought about by other media, such as a poem cited and read by the characters in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." And every such time, I've given up on Cummings in frustration at being suckered in yet again.

So I suppose you are against Homer's epithets as well?

[Selene]

Phil and Ted, I am afraid that I understand the entertainment value all too well. A timid and polite person, I ventured onto this site and two weeks later was engaged in an unsightly public brawl, giving as good as I got. There is such a thing as the joy of battle.

Adam, I love Cummings and always know what he's saying, I just can't explain it. That is his mystery, as Renault would put it.

But you will understand this I am sure.. (long quote alert!)

"his sorrow was as true as bread

no liar looked him in the head;

if every friend became his foe

he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

....

then let men kill which cannot share,

let blood and flesh be mud and mire,

scheming imagine, passion willed,

freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,

a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,

to differ a disease of same,

conform the pinnacle of am.

though dull were all we taste as bright,

bitter all utterly things sweet,

maggotty minus and dumb death,

all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth

-i say though hate were why men breathe-

because my father lived his soul

love is the whole and more than all."

-for J.F. Stuart

May 1,1923-Feb.17,1984

I forgot the date this year, but all day Thursday I felt low and a little lost for no reason; Friday I remembered.

Still miss you, Dad. Yesterday we had a great time at your first great-grandson's 2nd birthday party.

Your grandsons grew up fine and the one you didn't get to meet looks just like you.

Carol:

I understand.

Beautiful.

Adam

[George H. Smith]

> Shayne and George are mudwrestling in the thread on ethics? Much more entertaining, no? [Ted]

Laurel and Hardy bitch-slapping contest in slow motion:

"Whap". 20 minute pause. "Whap". fifteen minutes. "Whap"... They started around 1 am. And kept going at it till nearly 4 am. Yikes.

I see them sitting at their keyboards fuming, long past normal bedtime, just waiting ten, fifteen, twenty minutes for the next rebuttal, fingers itching...steaming coffee cup at the side. Letting this damage the next day's productivity by not getting a full night's sleep staying up half of the night just for this because an exchange of one-upsmanship put-downs becomes Obsessive/Compulsive Patty Cake.

(I'm at a loss, Ted, to understand why this, repeated across many threads and not just by Shayne and George, is entertaining and why some here would apparently be 'bored' if they didn't have an amphetamine jolt of this.)

4 a.m may be past your bedtime, but it is not past mine. I actually went to bed earlier last night, having grown sleepy from reading your posts.

If the game of "Obsessive/Compulsive Patty Cake" disturbs you so much, then why have you raised the topic on another thread? Hiding out, are you?

Ghs

[Greybird]

The idiosyncratic anti-punctuation ejaculations of E.E. Cummings (capital letters, goddammit!) were, and are, so pretentious as to drive me crazy. [...]

So I suppose you are against Homer's epithets as well? {lol}

Homer — if we can really give those works an author's name, even one of legend — had an excuse. For the first few centuries, such tales weren't even placed into written form. No writing means no orthography to gut, traduce, or discard. Cummings had no such excuse.

[caroljane]

The idiosyncratic anti-punctuation ejaculations of E.E. Cummings (capital letters, goddammit!) were, and are, so pretentious as to drive me crazy. I can take eccentric phrasing, meter, line arrangement, even omitted punctuation for the ends of song-lyric lines, even misspellings for ironic or satirical points. Yet not even trying to observe the conventions of the English language, for spacing and the use of punctuation, is a waste of my time and life.

God knows, I've tried. Only on rare occasions as brought about by other media, such as a poem cited and read by the characters in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." And every such time, I've given up on Cummings in frustration at being suckered in yet again.

I believe he did it for some weird intellectual reason. He knew the rules of form and style perfectly, so decided to break them. Maybe there is a computer programme that would reformat his work into standard English and you could enjoy it then. He naturally wrote in a fairly classic poetic style (you notice he keeps the stanza form)

and combined it with his own sensibility. As Snodgrass wrote in April Inventory:

"there is a loveliness exists;

preserves us; not for specialists."

[kiaer.ts]

The idiosyncratic anti-punctuation ejaculations of E.E. Cummings (capital letters, goddammit!) were, and are, so pretentious as to drive me crazy. [...]

So I suppose you are against Homer's epithets as well? {lol}

Homer — if we can really give those works an author's name, even one of legend — had an excuse. For the first few centuries, such tales weren't even placed into written form. No writing means no orthography to gut, traduce, or discard. Cummings had no such excuse.

And not even spacing or punctuation until long after he was first recorded. Not sure what that has to do with Homeric epithets.

[Selene]

I guess we should hang Ogden Nash also...

The Bronx?

No Thonx.

and then we can get that Dr. Seuss bastard also....who has a really cool website.

Adam

forming the Haughty & Effete Live Poets Society [HELPS]

[PDS]

I guess we should hang Ogden Nash also...

The Bronx?

No Thonx.

and then we can get that Dr. Seuss bastard also....who has a really cool website.

Adam

forming the Haughty & Effete Live Poets Society [HELPS]

I've always hated that Evelyn Waugh had a girl's name. I'd love to see Evelyn and ee in a cage match, but alas, they are both dead. Therefore, I cannot join any "live poets society"--not that you asked.

Edited February 22, 2011 by PDS

[kiaer.ts]

Some lines from a manuscript of he Iliad:

[Selene]

I guess we should hang Ogden Nash also...

The Bronx?

No Thonx.

and then we can get that Dr. Seuss bastard also....who has a really cool website.

Adam

forming the Haughty & Effete Live Poets Society [HELPS]

I've always hated that Evelyn Waugh had a girl's name. I'd love to see Evelyn and ee in a cage match, but alas, they are both dead. Therefore, I cannot join any "live poets society"--not that you asked.

PDS:

You would be a welcome addition and that is meant as a compliment.*

Wow, it has been a while since I heard that name!

Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by which God continually calls souls to Himself". This is achieved by an examination of the Catholic aristocratic Marchmain family, as seen by the narrator, Charles Ryder.

Here is another Ogden Nash piece of targeted satire:

Family Court

One would be in less danger

From the wiles of a stranger

If one's own kin and kith

Were more fun to be with.

Ogden Nash

Adam

*Required disclaimer under the new umbrella of civility rules imposed by the bi-polar twins Phil and Shayne,

[caroljane]

I guess we should hang Ogden Nash also...

The Bronx?

No Thonx.

and then we can get that Dr. Seuss bastard also....who has a really cool website.

Adam

forming the Haughty & Effete Live Poets Society [HELPS]

I've always hated that Evelyn Waugh had a girl's name. I'd love to see Evelyn and ee in a cage match, but alas, they are both dead. Therefore, I cannot join any "live poets society"--not that you asked.

PDS, as a Brother of the Sacred Igloo, you can infiltrate any society you want.

[caroljane]

[quote name='PDS' timestamp='1298399755' post='125927'

I've always hated that Evelyn Waugh had a girl's name. I'd love to see Evelyn and ee in a cage match, but alas, they are both dead. Therefore, I cannot join any "live poets society"--not that you asked.

Did you know that Evelyn Waugh's first wife was also named Evelyn? Those Brits are so kinky.

As to the cage match, many such were arranged on sctv in the 1970s under the sponsorship of the Mystical Outreach Wing of our Sacred Brotherhood, and who knows when there might be a revival.

[PDS]

Some lines from a manuscript of he Iliad:

All the letters are capitalized! That really pisses me off.

I don't see any punctuation, either.

[kiaer.ts]

Some lines from a manuscript of he Iliad:

All the letters are capitalized! That really pisses me off.

I don't see any punctuation, either.

"Capitalized"? What a silly barbarism that word is.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Ted Keer

[RightJungle]

Gosh, I feel almost embarrassed to bring up my mundane subject of the big protest in Des Moines. I chose Selene's suggestion for one side of the sign; Who is John Galt? Atlas Shrugged the Movie, April 15, 2011. It did bring a few strangers over to talk to me. On the other side it read: Taxed to pay Union Dues? Wha?!

The union members were bussed in in really big touring buses. They were mostly big guys who looked like they work out every day. Hmmmm.

We were mostly a bunch of softies. We had a pretty good crowd between 12:00 and 1:00, but then the vast majority of them had to get back to work.

The really aggravating thing, above and beyond the hauled in Hoffa clones with their pre-printed signs was the fact that a bunch of union members were bussed in from around Des Moines on school buses. Dang it all, anyway.

Got together with a couple of Objectivists who drove over from Council Bluffs and Omaha. That was fun.

The one question everyone asked me about the movie was "Will it show in Iowa?"

Edited February 22, 2011 by Mary Lee Harsha

[Selene]

Gosh, I feel almost embarrassed to bring up my mundane subject of the big protest in Des Moines. I chose Selene's suggestion for one side of the sign; Who is John Galt? Atlas Shrugged the Movie, April 15, 2011. It did bring a few strangers over to talk to me. On the other side it read: Taxed to pay Union Dues? Wha?!

The union members were bussed in in really big touring buses. They were mostly big guys who looked like they work out every day. Hmmmm.

We were mostly a bunch of softies. We had a pretty good crowd between 12:00 and 1:00, but then the vast majority of them had to get back to work.

The really aggravating thing, above and beyond the hauled in Hoffa clones with their pre-printed signs was the fact that a bunch of union members were bussed in from around Des Moines on school buses. Dang it all, anyway.

Got together with a couple of Objectivists who drove over from Council Bluffs and Omaha. That was fun.

The one question everyone asked me about the movie was "Will it show in Iowa?"

Mary Lee:

I am hoping that they increase the opening to all fifty (50) states, but I am clueless as to what that would involve in terms of risk ti return ratios.

What did the strangers ask?

Were the goons displaying any purple? Windbreakers etc?

Adam