caroljane

If aspiring screenwriters want more ideas on how not to treat a lady, they need look no further than OL. Respectability is not Respected here, and nobody knows Who you Are.

(I felt like Clarence of George being pushed head first into a malmsey butt) Ba'al Chatzaf Bob, I know you are very literal and precise, so I am sure you want to correct this to "I felt like George of Clarence being pushed butt first into a malmsey head." Delicious with haggis!

There is emphatically no truth to the unsubstantiated rumours that there is a "toy boy" "sugar mama" relationship of any kind between anyone on this thread or on this forum that you have ever heard of. Furthermore everyone states on behalf of everyone that "toy boy" is a statement deeply derogatory to men and we repudiate it utterly.

Why didn't I think of that? A heavily pseudonymous and personally mysterious woman...yes, that could be...maybe in her 40s....oh, no....no..what have I done?

Tee-hee, silly me misspelling my favourite word. I need an intellectual mentor.

Brant, how witty! But you know, I cook better. You know you could anagram Brant Gaede into Bread something, what a clever code! Do you like long walks on the beach and All-in Epestemology Mud Wrestling? Me too!

Guilty as charged. I was reporting the impression that remained from her novels, many years after reading them, and I do not recall the happy marriages at all. I should have done the homework before addressing this topic, even superficially.(I did read all four novels, and should have said "novels" instead of "fiction".) I'll take your word that I am mistaken. As to her nonfiction, I remember that better and will double-check if I ever dare to comment again.

"His entire enculturation after the age of eight..." Adam, You can't really believe this foolishness, surely? You've been eight years old. You had a sense of identity and identification with a family, a father or father figure, a world around you. That had been forming sense birth. The Jesuits knew a thing or two about "enculturation", and I don't recall them saying, "Give me a boy after he is eight, and I will mould you a man." Obama has repeatedly said that the strongest influence on him was his mother, but I suppose he was just lying, as most of us do when we say that, but his purpose of course was more sinister. You have enough legitimate arguments in your arsenal. This tripe just makes you look like a Birther, or worse.

Will O'bama is a marxist... His father and grandfather hated the United States and white European Colonial powers. His entire enculturation.... Would that grandfather be the white one who brought him up, with the elite American high school Punahou setting the seal on his enculturation? What a sleeper agent, what a conspiracy!

It occurs to me that a seamless garment would not require a tailor or much of a designer. You would just put it on. Like I will my shirt when I get it.

How did you do it so fast?

That reminds me, where's my T shirt for being the 1000th member? Moreover I joined on New Years Eve! Auspicious--I feel a song coming on-- James Cagney is melding with my mind, at least I hope it's him and not Aristotle again-- "I'm an OL Canuck'stani Born on the first of July..."

What? And you're selling John Galt T-shirts????

whatever Well, if you're engaged in political activism, it might come in handy to know this stuff. I'm just saying. I already knew it. Thanks anyway. You're welcome.

I love alternate history fantasies. A top favourite is Len Deighton's best, SS-GB, set in a postwar England where Germany had succeeded in invading and conquering Britain in 1939. But it isn't as good as Patricia Findley's wonderful trilogy about the bloody but unbowed Elizabeth and Raleigh, when the Armada had not sunk. This set me to wondering, where would the Objectivist movement be now if nothing had ever happened between the Brandens and Rand beyond continued intellectual partnership, and Nathaniel had remained her intellectual heir?

whatever Well, if you're engaged in political activism, it might come in handy to know this stuff. I'm just saying.

Ted: Interesting. And I thing Engle is hilarious. I think he goes way beyond the pale at times, but if you do not reach for the stars...well you understand what I mean. Skating on the edge is risky. Some of your stuff is damn edgy also, and, damn funny. Adam Guys, funny is when somebody laughs. You know that humour is as individual as the People who are joking or laughing. Ive looked up rde and he is as Adam says, hilariously on the edge, he writes from his own perspective and comedic style, which (though he might deny this) is more cerebral and in an entirely different tradition from mine, if I have one. I tend to low comedy, though this being an intellectual site and all I have striven for higher, and stay primly within the edges.

Yes, it is. Maybe that is why it's so difficult for those who must tie everything to A is A.and must identify the significance of A flat or A sharp or minor or major. For the record I love Rachmaninov, nearly as much as I love Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. They are two thrillingly individual notes in the endless symphony that is Music.

Yeah. Much food for thought. The idea that there are robust correlations between ideology and personality can bear some useful fruit, as long as we don't overinterpret the findings as presented by Haidt et al. A lot of people seem to dismiss the very idea that adopting Objectivism or Libertarianism or Liberalism or Conservatism can have any relation to personality. I think this is because Objectivism is held by some to be the only proper result of reason, the only proper philosophy for man. In a perfect world, then, those who reject Objectivism reject reason itself, or have a kind of mental defect that prevents them from adopting the true philosophy. It sort of fits Rand's notions of a subhuman remnant who have not evolved a proper brain . . . even though this is a very pessimistic reading of her other notion, the human mind as tabula rasa. On the one hand, Haidt's findings support the subhuman, missing link notion. The mental defects of Liberals and Conservatives can be picked out of the findings and made to fit. On the other hand, Liberals can find different mental defects to explain that which they do not like in the stances of their political foes. The danger in overinterpretation is that the other becomes The Other, and studies like this a mere means of sorting into Good and Bad piles. Morksists and Right Thinkers. Rightists and The Elect. Dumbfucks and The Wise. Such crudities are par for the course in a game of 'Jane, you ignorant slut.' In addition, a lot of folks here seem intellectually lazy to the Nth. They don't read things from 'the opposition,' save to fork up confirming instances of perfidy or morksism or evul or whatever makes us feel smart and wise and above it all. Peikoff has that kind of attitude down to an art. Physics is fucked, science is fucked, transsexuals are fucked, liberals are fucked, Muslims are fucked, Warmistas are fucked, everything and everyone but me and my borg is fucked and USA is going down the drain to Fuckistan . . . you know that kind of attitude. We see the same kind of we are all fucked because of the other fucked fuckers stance in hardcore rants of all kinds, where it is hard to see the difference between Naomi Klein and Hardial Bains and the Canadian Free Press nutjob in terms of Everyone Who Doesn't Think Like Me Is Fucked In The Head. Beyond that, I don't see Haidt's researches to be of any but passing interest to Objectivish folk for the most part. The very idea of personality partially determining one's own political ideology is pretty much a non-starter. It undercuts the whole notion of individuality. Beyond that, reading this paper might underline a sense of being a permanent minority for Libertarians. Better to have hope that with enough argument and reasoning, the defective leftists and lunatic rightists can see the light, rather than despair that there will always be a psychological impediment for some folks to adopt the libertarian way . . . Thanks. This leads me off topic a bit to something I've observed in a very limited anecdotal way- that a main common characteristic of people who became and remained objectivists, is what I think of as the Central Injustice. This was a traumatic event or series of events in childhood or adolescence, a violation of rights so wounding that it could not be healed and needed to be explained. Different for each person, but perceived in much the same way. Before anyone reads this and starts yelling, I do know well that intelligent people with normal, happy upbringings have come to Ayn Rand through pure intellectual and philosphical attraction, and remained enchanted. I am only speaking of the few people I knew personally, or knew slightly, or knew about, probably fewer than 30. Well WSS, I see I was the first to do the very thing you were talking about, cherry-picking and extrapolating to fit my own experience, and which I myself was so lofty about. I understand that Haidt is very well-respected in his field and has been engaged in his line of research for ten years. The aim of the study is to help "build bridges" and encourage political rivals to recignize each other as moral equals. Some people never learn, as well I know.

Furthermore, tearooms and coffee houses were hotbeds of intellectual and political debate during the Enlightenment. Tea Parties are said to be their intellectual heirs.

XRay, be careful girlfriend! JNS could be the billionaire--he's a brilliant writer and could create an impenetrable alias!

Poor you, you feel the pain of the darts. Some of us are blessedly oblivious.

BS thread Post Number 5 today at 6:49 AM : Rich Engle Sorry but I don't get it about Rich Engle. Is this a Phil Coates type of thing? I've only been here a month remember. Would RE take exception to something on the list? I like him- he's a musician who goes to church! And what's weak about#8? If your only chance to talk philosophy is with your incarcerated cousin who spent 4 years in grade 12--it mightfrustrateyourintellectual fervour. Not that I'm touchy or anything. Just glad of the constructive criticism.