caroljane

As we yawn towards our next federal election, knowing that as usual afterwards things will probably get a little bit better, we note that an unusual constitutional legal challenge has been made on behalf of my home province New Brunswick. I don't understnd it but it seems to be about not having a federal securities regulator, whatever that is. The reason is that New Brunwick did not join Canada of free will but was coerced by England under threats. Big news. Quebec hardly leapt into the arms of General Wolfe with glad cries. Prince Edward Island, the Cradle of Confederation, stoutly resisted joining Canada for six years. Newfoundland held out until 1949, and says with truth to this day that it was conned and subverted into Confederation. A nation is a strange animal when it has been created, not just grown from a common root. I think about the need for nations, and the usefulness of nations for their citizens. America, born of an ideal, maybe has outgrown its need to be a nation. Maybe its ideal would be better served by devolution into states or regions in mutual association. Belgium is doing fine without a national government. If regions can govern themselves and flourish, they remake history in an historical pattern we already know. But with today's sophistication, they could create new patterns, a new and peaceful revolution.

On this theme I wonder if anyone has read Richard Yates' "A Good School" (he wrote Revolutionary Road) or Beth Gutcheon's "Five Fortunes"== wonderful fictional renderings of the best of American private schools.

Further to Hemingway and the American Masculists...the best writers from this tradition mutated in the next generation into Philip Roth and John Updike, among others. My Roth faves are Letting Go (his most confessional novel on life and literature) and The Great American Novel (it was great). Updike's short stories were just unsurpassably acute, and his Rabbit really ran. To Roth I owe one of my favourite quotes, on looking at a cityscape cloaked overnight by sparkling snow: "Moral: don't be fooled by the weather. Beneath the lovely exteriors, life beats on."

I first read Nineteen Eighty-four in 8th grade, when I was, I guess, about 13 ( I believe I read The Fountainhead for the first time in that same semester). I've read both novels numerous times since then. Anthony Burgess is a great favorite of mine; I think he's one of the most accomplished prose writers (in our language) of the 20th Century. http://mises.org/daily/5089/Some-Further-Notes-on-Libertarian-Science-Fiction And, unbeknownst to most of the ignoramuses who comment on his work, Barry Lyndon is Stanley Kubrick's greatest film (and Kubrick was one of the top half dozen authentic geniuses among 20th Century film directors). JR eeI do agree with you here. I so remember the bewitchment of Barry Lyndon. It made me see that the moment lasts forever, and the life gallops past in a flash, and that everything we are is what we always only have in the end. Kubrick was indeed a genius.

Tony, I don't know anything about Neill. I do very much like the Montessori method, I know about it through friends and relatives who are Montessori teachers (and incidentally terrific parents). The only pedagocical theory I have learned is about adult language learning, about which there are a lot of competing theories, and mercifully I have forgotten most of them Let me take this space to respond to your last about the "self-made soul" about which I have been thinking, but not to much purpose. You posit and "essential/immortal soul" such as I and even Rand apparently think of, but also present a "secular soul" ,self-directed and rational. This strikes me as either semantics or a restatement of the model we agree on: the conscious feeds the subconscious with rational observations, and the subconscious processes them and helps produce rational thought. What I feel (and think) is that the essential self, the soul, is a whole of which the conscious mind is the expression but the smallest part. Whatever is in my subconscious mind, and whatever in my conscious mind that processes reality, are largely unknown to me in origin, and beyond the ability of my conscious mind to direct or control. Reality, life, the world, the universe, are greater not only than myself but greater than my capability of entirely understanding them, at any given moment. In many ways, I would always have been myself, before I was ever born. I'm sorry for this impressionistic answer, but you know I am no philosopher or debater. And it's a slow night here: everybody that can get there, is at the movies tonight. In honour of the opening of Atlas Shrugged, and you, I have purchased a bottle of Cape One Cabernet Sauvignon which is "a blend of wines from South Africa and Canada", not solely because it was on sale ($8.95, a steal!). It is delicious.

I wouldn't try to teach The Old Man and the Sea to 13-year-olds. It's not "age-appropriate," as they say. The main thing that needs teaching about the book centers around issues of literary style, and few people in that age range are even capable of understanding what is meant by "literary style," much less capable of taking an interest in it. I don't really think Hemingway is a good choice for that age group at all. It isn't just The Old Man and the Sea; it's his entire oeuvre. (Nor, of course, is the situation improved by giving the kids a teacher who has apparently missed the point of what Hemingway was doing, so that he finds Hemingway's work "boring" himself.) The Old Man and the Sea is the only Hemingway novel I ever read. I liked it but not enough to propel me into his other novels. Everytime I tried to go there I soon stopped with the realization his titles were better than what was inside--for me, that is. --Brant how do you forget 1984? Brant, I agree with your Hemingway experience. I read the Old Man and have forgotten most of it, The Sun Also Rises, Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I did not connect with them although I appreciated the writing - it seemed he was writing in an esoteric argot, understandable only to American men, and ultimately talking about things I did not really understand. (I read them all between ages 16-22, probably an excuse). 1984 I read at 17 in school and again at 21 at university. The shock of reality and connection was immediate both times. As an artist he goes beyond philosophy and politics. For ND, I read all of Anthony Burgess at around the same time period (I especially like the Malaysian trilogy) and kept up with him afterward, he is so underrated now. Ebert was sloppy and silly to so dismiss A Clockwork Orange. Lastly for whoever liked Barry Lyndon, I loved that movie, better than the book, and I liked the book a lot. Carol Orwell/Burgess/Thackeray fan

Uh--you're actually George Lucas? --Brant slow on the uptake Lol, no. I'm not George Lucas. The creature in my avatar, however, is a character in a George Lucas production. It must be Star Wars, a Wiki?

PDS, Awhile back I asked someone (I think it was Jerry Biggers) if he didn't feel like waiting for this movie was like getting engaged at 18 and married at 58. What is the most you can hope for? This leads me irresistibly to the other Event of the Decade, the royal wedding in two weeks. Over at the Royal Order of Sartorial Splendour we are worried (well, I am) that Waity Katie's need to do nothing wrong and meet public expectations will lead her to appear in a bridal gown that is classic, understated, "tasteful", and boring though unbelievably expensive. Especially that she will wear a boring tiara, the worst of which is the Cambridge Lovers Knot, horribly suitable and what if they make William the Duke of Cambridge. But I digress. Your reaction to the movie made me think a little of the eager, fit, hopeful groom who's pushing 60. You knew what you were getting, you know there's fabulous lingerie underneath, but somehow that isn't what you imagined coming down the aisle.

But other philosophers did not claim that they lived their philosophy in its every particular, or that they and their loved ones were the living embodiments of fictional heroes. Objectivists have been wrestling to explain/rationalize this for 40 years and counting.

I assumed that everyone had refrained out of respect. Obviously the entire structure is constructed of Rearden Metal, and liftoff is inevitable, sooner or later.

Adam, as you know my only-child experience was much like yours. Certainly I always was encouraged to feel special and individual. One difference, I am pretty sure that you did not have to wear Shirley Temple ringlets and long curls until the age of 10.Bobby pins in the head every night except Friday. Talk about visibility. If there had been a burqa handy I would often gladly have worn it. That one picture with me is the Shirley Temple outfit is not going to keep me out of the lodge I hope? Keep you out? Brothers McAloon and MacDonald have been praying for a step=dancing partner for the past 20 years!(Hope you're up on Don Messer - we don't go much fer the newfangled Riverdance)

Adam, as you know my only-child experience was much like yours. Certainly I always was encouraged to feel special and individual. One difference, I am pretty sure that you did not have to wear Shirley Temple ringlets and long curls until the age of 10.Bobby pins in the head every night except Friday. Talk about visibility. If there had been a burqa handy I would often gladly have worn it.

I've just watched a documentary about the travails of parents trying to get their toddlers accepted into private preschools in New York. These kids are two and three. The parents undertake campaigns as carefully organized and stragegized as Hill & Knowlton's selling of the first Gulf War, although for entirely benign purpose. One couple, "used to reaching the goals they aim for", actually moved out of New York when rejected by the top school they had targeted. Watching this made me think of two things. One I do not like to remember. It was a series of postings on another O-site from a father who was raising his son from the perspective that "he has 10,000 hours (or whatever) before he hits the ground running as an adult" and needs to be intensively coached educationally and morally to that end. The boy is eight, and has only had to be beaten once; the only beating-worthy offence is lying, and the beatings have always been rationally explained and understood by the child. The other is that I probably have always had low expectations for my own children. They have already surpassed them, when I wasn't even looking.

Adam, please, take a deep breath, I can't understand you when you're sobbing like that. Just whimper quietly --there, there, it'll be all right, you'll see. You like camping, right? Well it's a favourite, well, essential activity up there - just like what you're used to only, you know, colder. That's better...remember at the end of Stripes they sent John Larroquette to command the Arctic station? What they didn't show was that later on he really got to like it up there! He's a Brother now too --very down-to-tundra guy with everybody.And he's from Louisiana! And the National Post said on April 1 that the area will soon be the Canadian Riviera because of global warming. Like, soon. And a right-wing national newspaper is never wrong.

Adam, Urgent heads-up that you are now an associate member of the Sacred Igloo whether you want to be or not. My sources say they have decided you know too much about certain internal matters to be left loose. The caribou reference was the clincher. Very few people know about von Mises' secret summit with the Grand Shaman at the first PolarCon. Also they have found out that your father was a Mason,which made the paperwork easy. You don't even have to complete the Forty-Nine Tasks, only 23 of them. They realize you will probably elongate the Q&A session after the Rite, and pass out copies of Atlas Shrugged to the membership. Good luck with Grampa McAloon. You'll be getting your official notice from the Grand Shaman soon,not that I know anything about it. Hope you like bingo. Compassionately, Carol

Go Habs and Flyers tonight! If the Cup ends up in california this year I am moving to Tuktoyaktuk and becoming a hermit.

I see the man with the lighter as a statist/socialist type. He's the most successful at wooing the public. J And the lady waiting to be lit up would be....?

Ah but who's the guy with the lighter? Mr Right or Mr Right Now?

To Mr. Galt Howard, Roark III, Fronden and Rearden, and many others: Thank you for your constructive advice on how the "Best of the Week" should reflect the best in mankind and not just pointlessly sneer at those who are truly productive. The Committee agrees with you that productive activity is not to be sneered at. We admire it and it fascinates us. We could sit and watch it all day.

Shayne, So are we. The Committee is trying to give him a Lifetime Zinger Award but he persists in saying that his lifetime is not yet over. I know that together we can persuade him to accept the accolades he so justly deserves.

A Ewe! I knew it all along! A secret submissive Top, er, dominant bottom, fragrantly stereotype-breaking herbivore...oh, I give up.

If I were an American I would definitely vote for him. I used to have mandates myself and I can't say I loved them all but I sure enjoyed most of them.

Whoa, Phil, we do not think of you as barbarians of any geographic origin, to us you are all just "exotic." The Locked Door Ministry has taken your information request under consideration and will reply when it is good and ready.

I've just arrived at the passage where Oedipa sees this sign and has no idea what it represents. Genghis Cohen, premier expert on philately, will speculate on it soon enough. I've just started and know you won't spoil - just want to mention that I loved Philip Roth's baseball novel (forget the name) with the legendary pitcher Gil Gamesh.

Welcome!The best of the Objectivish sites just keeps getting better and we just keep getting more properly adulatory! This week we have the honour to present the first Lifetime Achievement Award - without further ado (we sincerely hope) Most Boring Perennial Topic Private Roads, Objectivism Online Best Moocher Diana Hsieh, Noodlefood. Anticipating an upsurge in readership of Atlas Shrugged, the lovely and innovative Dr Mrs Dr is cashing in by providing an annotated Guide to help new readers to read the book, and if they don't like it they don't have to pay. Sounds like a good deal to us. Best Esthetics Discussion A side of beef: Malevolent or not? ARCHN blog Best description of one O-site by another: Objectivist Living is a "Mad band of odd bods".-Solopassion Yesss! Right on. Stars and Stripes Patriotism Award: "I don't indulge in foreign bestiality. American sheep are good enough for a red-blooded American man." Adam Selene. Objectivist Living