william.scherk

Update: It gets crazier. Former OL poster James Heaps Nelson says that Veitch reminds him of a hero in a Dick Francis novel. I almost understand those folks who take issue, narrowly, with the supposed media firestorm. They might wonder to themselves, 'Why does he have to lose his career and everything he worked hard for? Why is he now destroyed?' I sorta almost kinda understand why the question is raised. If somehow he managed to hush up his ex-partner, and concealed the crime, and paid her off, and they both are happy with that private outcome . . . is it just that he be hounded from the airwaves by media coverage? What I do not understand is how they would deal with his fall if his former partner had not become complicit in covering up the crime. In other words, if Veitch had been charged at the time of kicking his ex-partner . . . what would the reaction be to his losing his broadcasting job? I think the answer is obvious. Them who are outraged at the press now would not be surprised or particularly disgusted if Veitch had to stand down from his positions. Which leaves the question hanging: why did the ex-partner decide to become complicit in the cover-up? The most likely answer is that he put it to her: "If this comes out, I will be ruined!" So, it finally came out, and his sportscasting career is effectively ruined. Moral: don't kick your partner and put her in a wheelchair. Don't cover it up. There will be a price paid for preserving your 'private' crime. As for James Heaps-Nelson, yikes. His analogy has teeth.

I have been following along in that thread. The reason you were put into the playpen (if not banned) is that you disagreed with Mr Sniffy. Mr Sniffy knows everything there is to know about, well, everything that is worth knowing. When you challenge Mr Sniffy with a mild snark at his sniffiness and his preposterous rectitude, you become Evul. And Evul is one thing they don't stand for at OO. I may be entirely unjustified, but I feel (yes, feel, with a lightning fast spin of my subconscious valuation mechanism), that OO inculcates grandstanding puffery in its denizens. Sniffery and puffery, and a High Church rectitude. That is what they want, and that is what they get. A clutch of sniffy, pedantic overlords rules the roost, and all the little fresh chickens cluck in same format and the same peevish tone as the great sniffy feathered oldtimers. Kant was evul, bad art is evul, bad evul art is due to Kant, and if you can't see the truth in that, and if you can't see that you deserve the sniffery and puffery, then you too are Evul. (oddly enough, I PMed Jonathan before he turned clearly evul in the post he reproduces. I warned him that he was coming close to the margins of Evul: "I read threads like this just to see if how long it takes disagreement to become Evul.") Some corners of Randland are suffused with this 'I have seen the light, and you haven't, so here's the red button' attitude. They have learned it from the best of the clucky, sniffy, righteous and puffy exemplars, in a straight line back to Holy Writ. For example, the righteous disdain of a poster who declaimed on this thread about Courbet's and Millet's "absurdly high horizon line." Badly imitative of the Pontiff at his sniffy, righteous, pompously ignorant best. With this kind of peevish vainglory, Objectivishism will usher in a world of reason? No baluddy likely. -- of course, maybe I am wrong, maybe you crossed some invisible line of civility that the cluckers had scraped out in the chicken coop.

Seems I am incorrect. Style and grammar master Casey Fahy assures SOLO's remaining 17 readers that 'loadstone' is an acceptable variant of 'lodestone.'

I think you are right. I changed the phrase to read "Are the rampant and incorrigible infelicities of language the primary reason to critique PARC?" In my humble opinion, he is a crappy writer, with a lurching, lumbering, recursive style of argument -- and no ear for how awful his syntax and constructions actually sound. What he really needed for PARC was an editor. Consider the blurb from Editor-in-chief Robert Middlemiss on the back of PARC: how could anyone competent have let this phrase through the filter: "most certainly a loadstone of inspiration and guidance"? Probably a copy-editor 'improved' the correct word. Another clue that no one actually edited the book is that the end notes are labeled "Footnotes." I suspect that the procedure at Durban House was: receive document of text from author, send to typesetting.

This is the link for my image: http://www.marciadamon.com/rndz/buttonbar.jpg This is the image (The button to click is the one to the left of the 'mail' button.): The format is imageUrl.jpg

MSK notes a late-breaking Perigo rant about the Brandroids. Ho hum. Brandroids on the offensive to 'de-hero-ize.' Snore. Cultish equation of heroism with infallibility. Sigh. And here James Valliant, oh glory, on the ramparts, fighting the good fight, fight fight fight, taking on the scum scum scum. Snore. Historical justice is at stake. Cough. Well, today is July 4, 2008 and a lot of posts have been made on several threads, but there has been thundering silence from former Valliant supporters except for a peep or two on Siberia Passion itself from nobody important. Yes, for a well-read thread, there seems to be little action from Valliant supporters, besides William Puffery Nevin the ninth, eleven year-old Kasper the anti-Kommie (who has yet to read the book), and, well, I can't recall anything else except the more-manly-than-a-man Olivia, who called Brendan the c-word. So, Emperor Perigo the Paragon rails some more: thousands remain mute. Thousands. Thousands remain mute. Thousands! Yeargggh! Snore. What is so funny is that the imperial perigon believes that his readership is in the thousands. Without Prince Valliant hammering the well-hammered anvil, and without the scum from the sewer hammering him in return, SOLO's attractions would be reduced to the wombat Elijah Moonberry, and a few other lesser lights of New Zealand's intellectual underclass. I think the engaged (if not engaging) OACers and ARIans and former combatants have all fallen into a permanent snooze. There was a time when such folks as Mike Mazza, or Fred Weiss and Diana Mirtshay would hop in to do some work. Those days are gone. The departed have departed. Linz has red-buttoned some of the so-called cowards, and others have found regular columns and posts to be mostly tiresome screeds by semi-illiterates. The reason the thousands and thousands of cowards are not rushing up the ramparts to pour oil and rain vengeance on the evil scum? They aren't reading SOLO any longer. What Lindsay doesn't realize is that half his readership comes from the sewer dwellers. Can anyone parse this garbled mess of sentence? Who is leaving the good folk for dead?

Oh, boy! That is cool -- if you need any help in coding, let me know. I know PHP/MySQL and can assist if you fall down any holes. I like good chat rooms; they add a personal element to the proceedings of an Objectivish list, and encourage people to treat others as people, not mere disembodied evocations of mentality. I very much enjoyed some of my chat encounters on the original SOLOpassion chatter (later versions have just not caught on). If anyone is interested in reading some of my zany thoughts at the time, check here. I should mention that I invited James Valliant to a chat at SOLO. No thanks, he said.

I was struck by three things in Rand's response: the tone, the language, and the appeal to authority. First she agreed that the NBI audience might absorb the lecture unthinkingly, but she bristled at an implication that she and Branden wanted this. She then drew a picture of any such audience members as "evading, cowardly, 'social metaphysicians'" and "weaklings," and made no bones about her hurt at Hospers taking the weakling side. As if only cowardice and evasion could explain someone lapping up Branden's proclamations without a burp of independent thought. The tone was not particularly surprising. This is John Galt speaking, after all -- and Galt does not contend, argue or debate, he proclaims. The language was not particularly surprising, especially as I am now reading her journals: there is a ripe crop of disdainful language, dismissive language. What was somewhat surprising was how personally she took the criticism of the delivery: there appeared to be nothing whatever she or Branden would or could or should do differently in presenting. I was struck too by one line: that the lectures were open to those who read and accepted the primacy of Atlas Shrugged . . . as a minimum; NBI offers the lectures "only to those who have understood enough of Atlas Shrugged to agree with its essentials." (I wonder if this begs the question of how one would restrict the attendance . . . if you offer the lectures only to the best, how do you keep out the weaklings and cowards? Later, it seems, any weaklings and cowards would be dealt with as was the Hungarian gentleman: 'if you have read Atlas Shrugged, if you profess to be an admirer of mine, then you should know that Galt does not "strive," "debate," "argue," or "contend"' . . . 'If you wish to speak to me, first learn to remember to whom and about what you are speaking!') As Ellen points out, laying NBI's sins of cultishness solely at Branden's feet is contradicted by these excerpts. It is clear from the letter that "Nathan and I" were completely in accordance . . . if the weaklings and social metaphysicians arrived at a dogmatic certainty that everything Rand/Branden proclaimed was true, it was their own danged fault. How dare you, John, address these criticisms to me . . . who has done more than any human being alive in the history of life on earth to defy dogmatism. Don't add to my burden of misunderstanding and dismissal. I think, perhaps, Valliant apes this supreme self-confidence -- and the hurt.

I second the motion to include a chat function. It looks like the offerings by Invision are a bit pricey for their features (50+ bucks a year), but have looked into Flashchat and it seems reasonable at 5 bucks. If Kat and Michael pursue this, there is a two-step integration how-to on the invision list (no link to the particular post, scroll about halfway). Donovan, I note a funny exchange on the ObjectivistOnline list, where Thomas Miovas gives you a mild verbal spanking for apparently deviation from OO rules. This is one of the reasons I don't frequent that forum. Eventually some adept of correctitude will bring out the big hammer to shut off dissent or honest divergence of views . . . in this case, your steps away from Peikoffian orthodoxy deviated from Rule 1. Participants agree not use the website to spread ideas contrary to Objectivism. Examples include religion, communism, "moral tolerationism," and libertarianism. Honest questions about such subjects are permitted (emphasis added). I do like the chat function at OO, though!

I may be a cynic, but my first reaction to Kamhi's words above was bemusement. What possible effect on the art world will occur because of her (and Torres') opinions on art? She doesn't quite say in so many words that abstract art is not art, but that is the import . . . 'Stop making abstract "art"' -- or stop calling it "art." Rand said it's not art, so -It's Not Art.' Stomp stomp stomp. Or . . . in the article "What art is: the esthetic theory of Ayn Rand," Kamhi and Torres proclaim their role in restoring the world to sanity. Testifying that their critique is derived from the principles of Rand's philosophy, "principles that are rooted in a scientifically sound view of human nature," they announce that they will show that "the very concept of abstract art is invalid." This is all very fine and good and noble and wondrous and revolutionary and profound and so on . . . but what do they make of this? One can imagine and assert that the picture above (Jackson Pollock's Number 5) is not art. But then some benighted fool paid $140,000,000 to possess it.

He has now corrected his misquote in the redacted version of Mullah Rand -- "in order to avoid the controversy." [cross-posted with Michael's]

A quick query to list members who possess the Letters Journals of Ayn Rand. I have my own copy on order, but have had to rely upon Amazon's reader to 'search within' the text. Missing from the Amazon reader's purview on this book are preface material. I seem to recall that David Harriman did not reproduce an entire class of entries . . . if my memory is as good as Valliant's quoating, I may be wrong. So the query is: did Harriman set aside journal entries that featured Rand's personal notes on psychology? In other words, if she ever wrote a slam of Person A's 'psycho-epistemology' or other moral failings, has Harriman avoided reproducing them? The Objectivist Research Center merely notes that Harriman removed 'personal entries' from her 'working journals' . . . a subsidiary query would be -- were Rand's journals entirely 'working'-diaries? Did she, as with the 1968 entries in POARC on Branden, spend time puzzling out the morally-repugnant depths of folks in and near the Collective? It would be so interesting to see if she ever wrote anything about Hospers break, for example. I am wondering about this because it seems to me that Valliant did more or less the same thing -- excising all supposed redundancies and references to other people than TheBrandens. I further wonder just what kind of shape the journals were in once Harriman had finished with the 'working' journals . . . One more dumbass question: what will happen to all these materials once the Pontiff heads for Valhalla? -- does anyone suspect a deposition of all the archive material to a public facility . . . or is it likely that these materials will be locked in a cave under Mount Ari until the end of time?

I dunno that PARC is dead. I am dismayed that he would not correct his valliantquoat®. It is inexplicably stupid.

Re: Valliant's sloppy rejiggling of a supposed quote from John Hospers, and the difference between: A: Hospers said that he was merely being "challengingly exegetical if not openly critical of Rand" B: He must say things, if not openly critical, at least challengingly exegetical. Well, he has a new take on misquotation . . . Try to parse that one out, Ellen. I had no idea the man could be so intransigeant or obtuse. I commented on this clangingly wrong idea in the SOLO post Misquote, rinse, repeat, or "What misquote? I don't misquote"

Waaaaaah! Waaaaahhhh! Poor lamb, so "demonized and dehumanized"! All this "personal hostility" from those terrible "enemies" has hurt his feelings! This, from the man who wrote a whole book about how Nathaniel Branden has the "soul of a rapist." I want to leave our Hospers discussion there, with both James and I having said our pieces. Can you parse out, Daniel, what he means by 'such feelings'? I am hoping he means that he also feels sad about the Hospers break with Rand. I hope against hope that he does not mean I have hurt his feelings -- I may have to ask. -- with regard to some presumed civility I have breached in my last post, he finds nothing much more than that I called him 'sniffy.' Such vitriol.

What I would really like to be a part of, but it is probably too late, is "ugly trolls" -- JSV's appelation for those who challenged him at RichardDawkins.net -- Neil, Calopterix/Dragonfly, Ellen, Daniel Barnes, Robert . . . there were others collectivized under the epithets, but their arguments and stances were utterly ignored in his later commentary. I tweaked JSV's nose on SOLO for his 50 posts to the Dawkins thread, and for his sniffy and petulant reactions. I was trying to draw him out with some frank criticism and expected maybe some high-toned namecalling as with the trolls and worse and gangbangers, but all I got from James was "Dumb as a rock," "Ole Scherky," and "unexcelled vacuousness." Now he is referring to me as Cambell Junior, so maybe soon I will get inducted in the gang. -- a note to Michael: I don't like when Perigo refers to all OL denizens as squalid, leprous, pygmies . . . is 'bonehead' worth repeating and glossing? It's not that it mightn't be apt in an informal riposte, but that it doesn't really provide a lot of content in itself nor capture an essential failing in PARC. Maybe Mr McMisquote or Cite-bumbler or . . .

Yikes! -- thanks for pointing that out. I properly credited you and And Worse, Ellen Stuttle, in an addendum to my post at SOLO.

My closer reading and concordance checking with the Mullah Rand chapter/thread is revealing some sloppy quotation. In this instance, check the underlined excerpt above against what Valliant puts forward as Hospers' words: In a 1990 interview, Hospers said that he was merely being "challengingly exegetical if not openly critical of Rand," but he was still no more obliging than the Brandens had been about the content of that challenge.

Thanks! I hope you forgive me for referring to you earlier as Or Worse, Ellen Stuttle. I really appreciate the time and care you took to type out several items that I have quoted on SOLO. With regard to Valliant getting the chronology squashed, quelle surprise, as we Canuckistanis say . . . I am beginning to note a few dropped stitches and hurried patching in his quilt of denunciation of Thebrandens. His obsessive attention to Barbara's comment about "fire and the rack" might seem reasonable, if you accept his framing of the remark. But as I noted by checking concordance with PAR, he left off an itty-bitty introductory sentence in his quote. The context was 'social metaphysics' -- "it was her new theorizing in psychology." Valliant truncated the quote from PAR like this: "Base[d] on this one example, Mrs Branden would have us believe that psychology was a weapon which Rand used "as an Inquisitor might use fire and the rack." What is funny, in a sad way, is his 'correction' of a presumed mistake. Of course the Blumenthals broke with Rand. My comment as written was, "I must point out in advance that I don't have any opinion one way or the other on the justification for the Blumenthals' departure as Rand's friends."

Wow, Mikeee. There is a more than a hint of contempt and disdain for Virginia as a person in your intervention. Of what earthly use is adding that edge to your comments? Maybe Virginia is a lying, bullshitting fantasist whose self-deceptions will likely lead to death by thug. Maybe she's a strutting maniac of self-delusion regarding her self-defence abilities. Maybe not. Maybe you are an asshole.

Yes, and trained by other scientists in the philosophy of the discipline or subdisciplines in which the 'trainee' is found. I mean that yes, the great scientist/philosophers have imformed the episteme of science, and yes, great philosophers of science -- with influence in science, but not practicing scientists -- can inform the episteme. But there are no greater gate-keepers of the episteme of science than scientists themselves. The philosophy of science is the business of scientists. Anthropology is ruled by anthropologists, Chemistry is ruled by chemists. Any extra-disciplinary curb on the findings of science -- on philosophical grounds -- is fiercely resisted (as it should be, in my opinion). In this sense, Brant, it's easier to understand the objection to an idea that Philosophy rules Science -- as a disciplinary matter in academe and in the real working world of science, this just isn't so. Consider vaunted philosophers of science such as Bruno Latour or the many commentators ravaged in the pages of Higher Superstition (or spoofed by Sokal) -- they have zero effect on the work of the scientists under their scrutiny. Similarly, it could very well be (I heartily doubt it) that Peikoff and Harriman have it right: a presumed philosophy undergirding modern physics is corrupt . . . but it is humourous to consider that Peikoff or Harriman have any influence whatsoever on any scientific enterprise, or that they will have any effect whatsoever in fitting a proper and correct philosophical girdle on the practice of working physicists. So, no -- a reified Mother Philosophy is not an overseer of the actual practice of Science the Sons. The Sons are self-disciplined. Sure. I think Velikovsky, or Rupert Sheldrake, or Wilhelm Reich. But who were the guardians of the margins of science in these cases -- philosophers? If yes, then we need to identify them and thank them for their work . . . or acknowledge that the vast bulk of the 'philosophy of science/methodology of science' is the product of patient and recursive work interrogating reality by those at the rock face -- not checking over the shoulder for approbation of the Queen of Sciences who sits smiling and wise on her throne.

Leonard Peikoff's voice and delivery stand in the way of his message. He barks and hoots, in a form of peikoffic pentameter. La BLAH la la BLAH la BLAH la la la BLAH la BLAH. No way can I endure taped lectures from the barking Preston Manning. "What CAUSES the PROBLEM is the welfare STATE!!" Yes, Dr Barking-Hooter.

There are only a few topics that are beyond the pale here, or which inspire a generalized revulsion and rejection. One is the kind of argument made here, about 'the Jews.' Another type of argument that leads to moderation and/or banning are variants on 'black helicopters' and alien visitations or the type of conspiracy theory put forward in this thread.

You never know . . . after a spell at OO.net you may feel a wild and exultant freedom here. What kind of heck did you get into at OO?

This suggests that some act or omission on the Crosby's part led to the refused subscription. Do you have any idea what that act or omission was? If it's the first 'public' statement, this suggests an earlier private statement. Makes me wonder who would have heard the private statement, and who gave Elayne the instructions. In any case, how would they have got their hands on 'The Paper' -- was it in private distribution? Yikes. Hmmm. I would think of it as a 'letter to the editor' that the writers knew would never be published, but which they probably wanted read widely. I appreciate the ethical attempts you make to sustain the Crosbys' privacy, if they are still alive.