The OL "tribe" and the Tribal Mindset

[Dragonfly]

There wasn't this editing process with Atlas; she didn't delete from the text what wasn't in it to start with.

Father Amadeus? Stacy Rearden?

[Ellen Stuttle]

If you want to know what's in the first printing of a book, and copies of said printing are not merely extant, but require neither the combination to a vault nor a route bypassing museum security—why not get off your duff and ask to see or borrow a copy?

Yeah, I believe that Ms. Stuttle never saw a first printing.

But whether she saw a copy isn't a terribly interesting question.

The interesting question is why she didn't see one

Robert, I was scarcely interested in the issue and have never said anything about it anywhere except in some private correspondence until the subject came up here connected with the Amazon discussion.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

There wasn't this editing process with Atlas; she didn't delete from the text what wasn't in it to start with.

Father Amadeus? Stacy Rearden?

The editing process referred to, only in the previous sentence, pertained to historical people and places. Father Amadeus and Stacy Rearden were those?

In the first edition of the book, 11 points were listed about Rand's editing process. In the second edition 10 points are listed. Point 5 as quoted, pertaining to historical people and places, was deleted from the second edition of the book. The other 10 types of editing are still listed.

Ellen

[Robert Campbell]

Ms. Stuttle, as is her wont, keeps going in circles.

Some direct quotations from Dr. Milgram's lectures would be more than slightly helpful here.

I've never heard them; neither, I suspect, have most of the other participants in this discussion.

Ms. Stuttle says she has heard them. How recently?

Maybe Dr. Milgram's actual words are of no more interest to her than seeing the first printing of Dr. Younkins' book.

Meanwhile, a new post over on SOLOP helps bring perspective to Ms. Stuttle's ongoing realignment toward the Ayn Rand Institute crowd.

http://www.solopassi...7#comment-85710

Superficially, nothing new happening. It kisses up to Jim Valliant, getting convoluted enough in the process to border on bafflegab.

But at a somewhat deeper level, it might lead us to anticipate Ms. Stuttle falling down on her knees and commencing her loud prayers to the Goddess Ayn:

About Ayn and Frank and why Frank "put up with it," as people seem to see his acquiescence both to leaving the ranch and to the affair... "Something between them he [NB] didn't understand" -- quoting a PARC chapter title.

What was the nature of Ayn's and Frank's relationship? It's been the subject of so many conversations I recall, a chronic source of puzzlement.

I think maybe something which causes difficulty with understanding it is not taking account of the relationship's not being any "usual" marital relationship because of Ayn Rand's not being any "usual" woman. Maybe Frank did accept, truly accept, not simply from being a "passive" sort but because of understanding the importance of and the needs of the woman to whom he was married.

Is Ms. Stuttle about to become the first non-Objectivist to affiliate herself with the Ayn Rand Institute? Will she usher in the practice of Rand-worship for its own sake, unmediated by the customary ideology or philosophical system?

At the deepest level, though, isn't she just expressing the narcissist's craving for people who will bow down, serve, and gratefully accept their function as ego accessories?

Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi.

Robert Campbell

[Dragonfly]

The editing process referred to, only in the previous sentence, pertained to historical people and places. Father Amadeus and Stacy Rearden were those?

No, but how do you know that she only deleted fictional persons?

[Ellen Stuttle]

The editing process referred to, only in the previous sentence, pertained to historical people and places. Father Amadeus and Stacy Rearden were those?

No, but how do you know that she only deleted fictional persons?

Something's getting lost in translation. The points listed are from Milgram's research on the drafts. They come from taped lectures she gave. I haven't been in the archives myself to check if Shosh was right in what she reported. She's a careful researcher. I know that.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

She didn't list all eleven items as applying to all of Rand's work. The lectures were on research she'd done on Rand's literary drafts, not just those of Atlas.

The relevance of the point #5 being in the first edition pertains to the question you asked about why it couldn't have been a printer's-staff error or typographical glitch. Those types of errors might mess up or delete material, but they wouldn't insert a full meaningful phrase relevant to the topic into the text. It's not a case of something deleted or garbled but of something meaningful added.

Right, but, if I'm understanding you correctly, it seems that you're not considering the possibility that once it was decided that editing needed to be done, the opportunity could have been taken to alter additional content which had by then been reconsidered for reasons other than typographical errors.

For example, if I were to write that "apples are aaa ggggooooooddd sssource of vitamins A and C," and I decided to recall the first printing to correct that sentence and hundreds of similar typos, I might think that as long as I was incurring the cost of reprinting, I might as well also remove or clarify some of my comments on vitamin C because I had by then pondered more deeply my previous position and realized that it wasn't as strongly supported by science as I thought it had been. The fact that typographical errors were the reason that I recalled the first printing wouldn't necessarily mean that I had to limit myself to making only corrections of typographical errors.

I don't have the tapes. I've heard them but don't own them. I don't know if he was using exact words or not, but the issue isn't one of "stating similar ideas in similar terms." It's stating the results of research, conclusions from archival research of the drafts of Rand's novels. It's not an issue of "I think such and so about Rand's work." It's conclusions drawn from examining the source material directly. There's no way Younkins could have gotten the facts he was listing except from Milgram's research. No one else had done this research.

Consider a parallel example: Suppose someone were to list conclusions from Sciabarra's examination of the Rand transcripts and not say who had done the examining, where the information came from.

Okay, then I'd be interested in hearing more about her research and conclusions.

Such an error could explain a Reference section being left out. However, wouldn't it be rather weird for the text also to be missing all the (X work) notices?

Not necessarily. I've used a variety of graphics and pagination applications which don't always communicate well with each other, and sometimes something like the use of superscript or subscript text will mess up a line, part of a line, or make it disappear altogether. If an item in the body copy had a superscript number indicating a footnote below, the superscript number and the footnote might both disappear either because of the same superscript glitch or because of separate but similar glitches. Or some or all of the text near a superscript number might be converted to random dingbats, which might be deleted by someone on the production crew who lacked the curiosity to investigate.

Again, the issue isn't "similarities of his ideas and hers." It's stating conclusions which could only have been gotten from her work.

Does anyone here know Younkins very well? I think it would be interesting if someone would ask him if he'd care to comment on the issue.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....]

The relevance of the point #5 being in the first edition pertains to the question you asked about why it couldn't have been a printer's-staff error or typographical glitch. Those types of errors might mess up or delete material, but they wouldn't insert a full meaningful phrase relevant to the topic into the text. It's not a case of something deleted or garbled but of something meaningful added.

Right, but, if I'm understanding you correctly, it seems that you're not considering the possibility that once it was decided that editing needed to be done, the opportunity could have been taken to alter additional content which had by then been reconsidered for reasons other than typographical errors.

That's getting the order of events backward. The edition with point 5 in it is the first edition. You asked if it might have been that the text sent to the printer is that which appears in the second edition of the book, which edition has references -- i.e., if the missing stuff in the first edition might be missing because of printer or typographic error. But a grammatically correct, properly inserted (punctuation-wise), and meaningful to the context addition couldn't have been such an error.

I think exactly what did happen is that once it was seen the book had to be reprinted, some further corrections were made, among them deleting point 5.

Okay, then I'd be interested in hearing more about [Milgram's] research and conclusions.

Then get the lectures?

Does anyone here know Younkins very well? I think it would be interesting if someone would ask him if he'd care to comment on the issue.

I don't know him at all, but Robert does.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

That's getting the order of events backward. The edition with point 5 in it is the first edition. You asked if it might have been that the text sent to the printer is that which appears in the second edition of the book, which edition has references -- i.e., if the missing stuff in the first edition might be missing because of printer or typographic error.

No, I didn't ask that. I asked if you had seen the text which had been provided to the publisher's production crew prior to the first printing (let's call that text the "initial final draft"), and if you had compared the initial final draft to the first printing. I haven't been assuming that the initial final draft is what appears in the second printing, nor have I asked anyone if the initial final draft is what appears in the second printing. In fact, my entire point has been that seeing the first and second printings is not enough to make any conclusions about plagiarism or about which errors were contained in the first printing. One would have to compare the initial final draft to the first printing, not the first printing to the second printing, in order to determine in which ways the initial final draft differed from the first printing.

I think exactly what did happen is that once it was seen the book had to be reprinted, some further corrections were made, among them deleting point 5.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying as well. That's what I think probably happened.

J

Edited March 23, 2010 by Jonathan

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't have the tapes. I've heard them but don't own them. I don't know if he was using exact words or not, but the issue isn't one of "stating similar ideas in similar terms." It's stating the results of research, conclusions from archival research of the drafts of Rand's novels. It's not an issue of "I think such and so about Rand's work." It's conclusions drawn from examining the source material directly. There's no way Younkins could have gotten the facts he was listing except from Milgram's research. No one else had done this research.

Consider a parallel example: Suppose someone were to list conclusions from Sciabarra's examination of the Rand transcripts and not say who had done the examining, where the information came from.

This is such a crock of doody that it's embarrassing to talk about it.

Supposing somebody listed Chris's Table of Contents is more like it.

Here is the excerpt from the final edition I posted earlier. I'm not 100% certain, but I don't think Ed Younkins deleted a bunch of details he allegedly lifted from Milgram's examination of Rand's documents in the Ayn Rand archive and only kept these bullet points.

But there is another, more subtle, meaning I want to make clear. You used the term "uncredited material," which implies to most people an exact quote. Well, I looked it up. Here is the passage in question (taken from a screenshot of the Google books page, Ayn Rand's Atlas shrugged: a philosophical and literary companion By Edward Wayne Younkins, p. 2--hat tip to Dennis for the link).

And here is where the "uncredited material" was taken from (p. 5):

So this is the big deal? We are talking about less than one average size paragraph of study notes taken from an audio lecture? Numbered bullet points at that? This is what is being called "plagiarism"?

Gimmee a break for real!

Dayaamm!

This is worse than I thought.

Ok, since nobody talked about this, let's talk about it. Let's take the items one-by-one and see if they are "facts" and "conclusions" that could only be drawn from examining Rand's material in the archives.

"1. Remove or trim passages to gain greater impact while maintaining precision and unity."

Do I really need to examine Rand's papers in the Archive to conclude that she removed and trimmed passages during rewrites? Good Lord!

Do I really need to quote Rand's published works on writing and aesthetics, or even Who Is Ayn Rand?, in addition to Barbara and Nathaniel's books on Rand, to prove that this was a normal habit of her writing in general?

"2. Improve dialogue and descriptions to make them more concise, to the point, and more telling."

No! Really? In other words, no one would ever know that Rand did rewrites on her dialogue and descriptions unless they examined her papers in the Archive? Gimmee a break!

"3. Remove large portions of text to achieve integration and conciseness."

Doesn't anyone remember the widely aired cuts in The Fountainhead? Why is this something only a person who examined Rand's papers in the Archive would know or conclude?

"4. Continually search for the right words to attain clarity."

Well, obviously, we all know that Rand NEVER continually searched for the right words to attain clarity, except for her work in Atlas Shrugged. Without special access and scholarship, we would never find that out. (I'm being sarcastic.)

"5. Strive to make all aspects of the novel consonant with its tone."

This is exclusive knowledge? Gimme a friggen break.

"6. Find better events to illustrate her ideas."

All you have to do is read the Journals...

"7. Develop more precise formulations."

More exclusive knowledge? I still need that friggen break.

"8. Clarifying passages."

This is getting wearisome. Is the idea that Rand normally did not clarify passages when writing and rewriting?

"9. Substitute implicit and action-oriented scenes in place of explicit descriptions."

This is the only one that might have a sniff of a chance at an exclusive conclusion. But all you have to do is look at the stories of what Rand read to the the Collective during the writing of Atlas Shrugged, or, say, her own criticism of her short story, "The Simplest Thing in the World," where she said there was no real plot--just a man sitting and thinking. Or her criticism of Victor Hugo for long descriptive passages, which she thought marred his works because they interrupted the action (albeit she considered them excellent qua descriptions).

Ultimately, no special examination is needed to conclude that Rand considered action to be fundamental to plot and applied this value to writing Atlas Shrugged, especially during rewrites.

"10. Develop passages that concurrently serve different purposes and that operate on various levels of meaning."

Gimmee a break again! Hasn't anyone read anything about Rand's views on literature?

In order to believe any of this is a "conclusion" or "fact" that could only be made by Milgram after she examined top secret documents, you have to turn off your brain or not be familiar with anything at all about Ayn Rand.

I'm not saying that these are not bullet points that Milgram gave in her lecture. They probably are. I am saying that treating this little list as exclusive knowledge is so stretched as to be intellectually painful.

There is certainly nothing academic here, neither in the bullet points, nor in Stuttle's overreached claims. Quite frankly, I don't see anything to plagiarize. It's all been common knowledge about Ayn Rand during decades...

Michael

[Rich Engle]

MSK-

There is certainly nothing academic here, neither in the bullet points, nor in Stuttle's overreached claims. Quite frankly, I don't see anything to plagiarize. It's all been common knowledge about Ayn Rand during decades...

Uh, yup. OMG. WTF? This whole thing is just (edit edit edit)...

Saying one doesn't know whether or not Ayn Rand used the reductive (subtractive) editing technique is yay-close to saying one is unaware whether or not sculptors use chisels. ~I~ know--let's mount an exhaustive research campaign! Yes! Then, we could scour through all kinds of papers (including hers) and pontificate wildly as to exactly what she meant! AND, we could take on Collective members who talked/wrote about it, one-by-one, and do the same, PLUS question their general validity based on various moral criteria (based, of course, on how we think they should stand in the overall historical context, if we think they were poo-poo heads, etc.). By undertaking this Great Mission, we will continue to serve what seems to be the Ortho-O-Prime Directive<tm>, namely, to fiddle-eff around endlessly, generating high word counts about diddly-squat and dead horses, serving our own (socially metaphysical) self-interests, and generally reheating the soup rather than making new.

I like it!

Modern literature, particularly modern American Literature, is practically linchpinned on subtractive editing. Hemingway knew this, heck, virtually all the expatriate American writers were busy at it. It was one of the things that defined modern style. You can, if you have the right kind of eyes, see this in all their work. And if that doesn't do it, all you have to do is compare it to that from which they were trying to break away.

What's next? You guys wanna talk about the name of her typewriter again? Who owns that thing? It needs to be locked up before Valliant, or someone like him, gets it off of e-Bay. What if somebody else typed on that thing when she was sleeping? Clearly, we need verifiable samples where we can prove, for sure, that she was the one typing on it. Hell, that alone will generate another few thousand posts! You see, using forensics, you can identify people by analyzing keystroke pressure, and, and...

Holy Crap.

Here, I'll hit the edit button on this after I post, just to say I did.

rde

Editing down since sometime in high school Brit Lit class.

Edited March 23, 2010 by Rich Engle

[Jonathan]

Unless someone can show that the bullet points were lifted word for word from Milgram's work, it sounds to me that, at worst, Younkins may have been guilty of a breach of scholarly etiquette, and probably to a somewhat lesser degree than those who have written about ideas that TheBrandens™ had contributed to Objectivism but without crediting them (in fact, if I'm remembering correctly, weren't there cases where credit was not only omitted, but that, unlike in the Younkins case, it was implied that someone other than the originators had come up with the ideas?).

J

[Rich Engle]

Unless someone can show that the bullet points were lifted word for word from Milgram's work, it sounds to me that, at worst, Younkins may have been guilty of a breach of scholarly etiquette, and probably to a somewhat lesser degree than those who have written about ideas that TheBrandens™ had contributed to Objectivism but without crediting them (in fact, if I'm remembering correctly, weren't there cases where credit was not only omitted, but that, unlike in the Younkins case, it was implied that someone other than the originators had come up with the ideas?).

J

What? No, Joe, say it ain't so! C'est impossible!

More like the revisionist history that went on during the Stalin regime...talk about using elimination as the primary form of editing...

rde

They Are Dead To Us Now. Or Else.

Edited March 23, 2010 by Rich Engle

[Dragonfly]

When I see that list with points, I wonder what all the fuss is about. Aren't these just general elements of what every good writer does? Is there anything particularly Randian about that list? Do you really need a "scholarly" study to come to the trivial conclusion that Rand did such things? I think such things are standard fare in every How To Write A Book course. The pretentiousness of making such a hubbub about this!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

You are way too generous. Calling this crap "pretentiousness" shows just what a good man you are. It's much worse than that.

Some quite nasty people are trying to use this "pretentiousness" to slime innocent, good, and productive people. That is unacceptable.

And the worserness that is even worser goes deeper. (How's that for original? )

In addition to this being basic how to write a book stuff, all Milgram did was confirm what Rand herself said she did. Not only did Rand say it, she said it in public, in her letters, in her journals, no doubt in discussions, and she said it over and over starting way before writing Atlas Shrugged.

To her credit, Milgram is not making any great claims to originality here. At least none I have been aware of.

Only the boneheads are.

With defenders like that, who needs enemies?

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

[What] I asked [was] if you had seen the text which had been provided to the publisher's production crew prior to the first printing (let's call that text the "initial final draft"), and if you had compared the initial final draft to the first printing. I haven't been assuming that the initial final draft is what appears in the second printing, nor have I asked anyone if the initial final draft is what appears in the second printing. In fact, my entire point has been that seeing the first and second printings is not enough to make any conclusions about plagiarism or about which errors were contained in the first printing. One would have to compare the initial final draft to the first printing, not the first printing to the second printing, in order to determine in which ways the initial final draft differed from the first printing.

No, of course I didn't see the "initial final draft" (how could I have?). I misunderstood you. I thought you were thinking in terms of the Introduction as it appears in the current book having been the originally submitted copy and somehow getting mucked up during the printing process.

Your description "breach of scholarly etiquette" (from your next post) is a good one. Unfortunately the use of uncredited material from Milgram (however the non-crediting occurred) was a particularly inauspicious gaffe if Younkins had any hope of receiving favorable marks from the ARIans.

Ellen

Edited March 24, 2010 by Ellen Stuttle

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Nor did Barbara tell me off, as I think Michael reported on some thread or other.

This is BS.

I never reported anything of the sort.

And if it did happen somewhere else, this is the first I ever heard of it.

But isn't it odd that Stuttle would say this?

Michael

EDIT: As to animus, I never said anything about what Stuttle feels toward Barbara. A really vain person does not need to like or dislike someone to attack that person. She merely needs to feed the beast within.

With respect to behavior, I do know that if nobody stands up when Stuttle rambles on, she always ends up on the attack against Barbara, insinuating that Barbara was less then honest in The Passion of Ayn Rand and outright embracing some of the sliming Valliant and Perigo constantly try in their different manners.

(Echoing somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind): Oh... my my... I do so depart from the highbrow euphemisms... how unthinking of me... "dishonest" is such a vulgar term... when one is to agree with Valliant and Perigo, let's call Barbara's motives "novelizing," shall we?

Oh ho ho... That's rich... that's rich... I bet Stuttle can come up with a dozen other enlightened genteelisms for lying...

I want to follow this post up since things are becoming clearer and clearer every day. I'm not doing this for Stuttle, though. I'm doing it for the reader so he or she can see things without the smokescreens and come to his or her own conclusions.

In fact, I don't expect to persuade Stuttle of anything. She has long been committed to the journey to the dark place where her vanity leads her--i.e. right into the arms of the Valliant-Perigo crowd, seeing that they are the only audience left for her that goes "Ooh" and "Aah" when she writes.

But the anti-Branden (especially anti-Barbara) stuff is starting to sound like low-eschelon SLOPPERS. Check this gem out (which was posted today):

... I think it isn't so much what the Brandens wrote which is the "tragedy" but Heller's follow-up biography, which people are taking as "objective." Heller pretty much accepted Barbara Branden's viewpoint without cavil, and added some touches.

Tragedy?

Tragedy to whom? Valliant? Perigo? Stuttle?

You know, Stuttle could write a book and make a stand--on the same level as Anne--against her so-called "tragedy." You know, make the world better if she believes that the tragedy is to Rand's memory or whatever. But we all know she won't. She needs a controlled audience, not the free market's audience. (Imagine if she lays an egg! That's scary...)

Stuttle's tragedy might sound like an attack on Anne Heller, but it isn't at root. Read it again. The tragedy to Stuttle is that people think Barbara's nonobjective twaddle (oh dear, I mean "novelization"), as channeled by Anne, is objective.

And people think Stuttle ain't gunning for Barbara?

After all, she said she ain't...

But read deeper. Take this to the premise. To Stuttle, the theme of PARC--that the Brandens are the source and reason other authors are sliming Rand--is true. She can't help but notice that Anne wrote a book that is wildly successful in terms of literature about Ayn Rand. Thus Anne is spreading the Branden smears and the public is eating it up. Thus the Brandens, Barbara especially, are the source of all evil.

Heh.

Pretty soon I expect Stuttle to claim that Objectivism did not advance in the world because of the Brandens. Then the conversion will be almost complete. Although, to be fair, in her post she threw in Greenspan for good measure.

Also tragic at this time is Greenspan's traitorous putting the blame on Rand. Just what everyone who hates the free market wanted to hear and many who don't understand the free market are being misled by.

Traitorous?

Putting the blame on Rand?

Heh.

Whether Greenspan is seen in terms of betrayal by some people or not, that is not the point. A word like "traitorous" is totally foreign to Stuttle's normal writing style. And Greenspan "blaming Rand" for anything is a wild stretch, even to his critics. SLOP is definitely getting to Stuttle.

But I don't believe Greenspan is her real target. Not at all. Come to think of it, Stuttle's vanity might lead her right into the arms of the ARI fundamentalists if they give her the right kind of audience. So bashing Greenspan in a fundy manner like she did is a pretty good thing to have on record. You know... Just in case...

btw - Notice that Perigo is posting, almost daily, new threads with quotes from PARC. The last one, called KASS PARC Quote of the Day: A Life-Long Litany of Lies is short. The PARC quote is two paragraphs long and contains 115 words. "Dishonest/dishonesty" is mentioned 4 times and variations of "lie" 6 times. In other words, in Valliant talking about the Brandens, almost 10% of the words are variations on "dishonest" and "lie."

In the Internet marketing world, that's considered keyword stuffing--a technique used by spammers.

Well... moving on... you might want to notice the view count on those PARC quote threads while you're at it. Nobody's reading them. But Stuttle is. From the same post as above (which she addressed to Objectivist Liar and Hater Lindsay Perigo):

PS: I'm very much enjoying your posts.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

I think "PS: I'm very much enjoying your posts" was actually addressed to a newbie at SOLOP, one Doug Bandler.

But Mr. Bandler uses nearly the same language that Mr. Perigo would to express the same sentiments as Mr. Perigo would.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

Correct. I should have checked the title she referenced, "Vicious Hit Piece." That sounds so much like Perigo I automatically assumed it was.

Well... maybe not completely like Perigo... There's no fuck or shit or kass or babs or other indications of Total Passion for the Total Sewer in that title.

Michael

[Jonathan]

But the anti-Branden (especially anti-Barbara) stuff is starting to sound like low-eschelon SLOPPERS. Check this gem out (which was posted today):

... I think it isn't so much what the Brandens wrote which is the "tragedy" but Heller's follow-up biography, which people are taking as "objective." Heller pretty much accepted Barbara Branden's viewpoint without cavil, and added some touches.

Tragedy?

I just reread the idiotic Slate article, and I think it's silly for people to blame the "tragedy" of it on anything that Barbara or Anne Heller wrote. Johann "Hari Potter" Hari's strongest criticisms, as well as his most hostile smears, were based on what Rand herself had written, or what Hari idiotically misunderstood or misrepresented her to have written. If Rand's critics have been given "ammunition" by anyone, it's Rand who gave them nukes compared to the incidental BBs or .22 shells that others may have provided here and there.

J

[Robert Campbell]

Not to mention that Lindsay Perigo and his flunkies somehow think I gave aid and encouragement to the author of that genuinely idiotic article.

Robert Campbell

Alpha Bête Noire

[Rich Engle]

...

Younkins had any hope of receiving favorable marks from the ARIans.

Idea: Ring-kissing. Or worse. Nummy!

[jeffrey smith]

Well... maybe not completely like Perigo... There's no fuck or shit or kass or babs or other indications of Total Passion for the Total Sewer in that title.

Michael

Wait a minute! Total Passion for the Total Sewer... Perigo's favorite nom de insult for you is Michael Sewer...

Does this mean that Perigo's rage at you rests on a simple case of unrequited lust for you?

Adds another dimension to the intrigue here.

Jeffrey S.

If it isn't obvious by now--I long ago stopped reading this thread for anything other than its entertainment value.

[Rich Engle]

Perigo's favorite nom de insult for you is Michael Sewer...

Yeah. The usual stunning creative writing skills. The reason for him not to quit his day job.

The frightening (or as he would no doubt choose, toned up to a petulant frenzy, "positively frightful") part of it is that it way looks like his faculty, such as it is, appears to be rapidly deteriorating. I bring this up only because I was thinking about subtractive editing and it led me to consider how his style is so 19th century, so affected--it has about as much edge left on it as a 1st generation Ginsu<tm> knife that you picked up at a church sale. Let's just say it does NOT go through tomatoes with a single stroke.

I'm so thinking about this great air-conducting cartoon I saw one time...ah, to be young again.

rde

Sniff The Baton

Edited March 25, 2010 by Rich Engle

[Ellen Stuttle]

From the same post as above (which she addressed to Objectivist Liar and Hater Lindsay Perigo):

PS: I'm very much enjoying your posts.

Wrong. It's addressed to Doug Bandler, a recent new poster there.

The rest of your post is of course your fancifying. That statement is straightforward factual error.

Ellen