caroljane

It's probably why there is an "us".

I have no clue what a quintile is, maybe we don't have them in Canada. Enlarge search? Maybe they are descendants of Quintilius Varus - try the German forest.

This may be entirely irrelevant, but men have a protective instinct towards women moreso than to other men. Could there be a gender factor at all? If Rand had been Brand (or \Brant if he ever gets around to writing his tome!) would your personal reaction have been the same?

I think you have identified the epicentre of the tiny tempest. It is with our different attitudes as readers. All readers feel gratitude and often awe towards the authors who move them, and sometimes influence their lives profoundly. Yet some, like me, just do not feel much personal curiosity or interest about the person who wrote the books we love. We just want them to keep writing. It is the book itself, the work , and the characters created that we care about. Not very nice of us, I know. Because Rand's novels were so inseparable from her philosophy it would be impossible not to defend her, as a person and as an author, from any slights or misrepresentations, especially as she has received so many. And as a charismatic character herself, anyone knowing about her would retroactively speculate about what made her what she was. I know I do. You see her as young, struggling and vulnerable. I see her the same, yet the vulnerability was greatly to her own supercharged intelligence and emotions. The struggle was carried out alongside Frank, whose shoulders were broad, and while earning pretty well at day jobs. I think on balance that along with all the other things she was, she was a pretty tough cookie in those days, and I admire tough cookies, more than you can know.

It certainly is what you implied, in my perception. A defensive reaction against you took to be "stones cast" at what you value deeply. I didn't think about being noticed or challenged, usually I just write what occurs. Probably I should think more.

Bien dit, Brant. The past, up to last minute, is all we can know of humanity and ourselves.

We can only hope that all this blood will somehow, sometime water the Tree of Liberty.

I know it isn't a debate. It is a speech which you have now made three or four times. Are you practising for your retirement dinner? I never said or thought of you as "anti-social", that must be some other interchangeable nonexistent you are thinking of. The Economy and Society are, as peaceful you say rightly, not singular entities. They are semantic conveniences to denote complex plurals. In trying to comprehend the endless world outside myself, I have come to see myself as part of that plurality. You have removed yourself from it, with great profit and happiness. Good for you. It is truly admirable that you have made a vast fortune all by your ownself, in noncoercive value trades with other right-minded individuals. I do not begrudge you one penny of it. I will be looking up at the sky to see what falls from it unabettedly, and I fully trust that it will not be you.

Good lord Adam, this is a Respectable forum! Keep you unsavoury savoury devices in the privacy of your bedroom, please.

I said "inappropriate", and I was talking only of my personal reaction as a novel reader, which at the time was influenced by my own circumstances and psychology. I was not casting stones at Rand. In fact I too was moved at Wynand's standing up, and got somewhat back onto the stage and finished the book. Roark would have been just as much a hero if he had gone to jail. Probably I would have liked him more. I am surprised to see you, PDS, responding to someone's reaction to an artwork, a novel or movie or symphony or painting, with "Creating art takes genius and hard work - show me you can do better!"

and yet the circle with its polar opposites, is in fact not a perfect circle but a fat oval, with an incomparably beautiful Aurora Borealis.

Oh, and I apologize for mistaking you for a roofing contractor. There is another pseudonymous Doug I had been discussing here and I got mixed up. Though actually you two might have a lot in common.

It's "for whom" actually, strictly speaking. I corrected your grammar before, but I now think I was wrong. To "feel badly" means "to grope without being able to get hold of what you are aiming for." I think you used the phrase correctly.

Speaking of the "law's delay", I just remembered reading the Fountainhead and my reaction to the climactic courtroom scene. Coincidentally this was at the time I was considering whether to go for law school. In retrospect it was probably a time I should have realized I was not cut out to be an Objectivist. I found that scene inappropriately, irresistibly comic. I fell out of the novel's stage set and just saw puzzled jurors, a weary seen-it-all-now judge, and fidgety bailiffs looking at their watches. Maybe Aglialoro will consider doing a comedy next time. Fountainhead II: The State Appeals.

Oprah is hugely admirable in what she has accomplished, but in my limited viewings of her she is boring. Also I don't see why if she is gay she does not just say so. It didn't hurt |Ellen or Rosie.

And PS you would take that hockey stick out of my cold, dead hand.

I said, "there are others", I should have said "a few." Of course I do not see only the belligerence - surely you must realize that by now! As to for/against, I do know how integral that is in the philosophy. But even Stephen Boydstun has expressed doubt that the percept love demands an equal-opposite percept hate. (Mangling his analysis I am sure, but forget where he said it). And of course to struggle for what you love is usually about opposing others. But I personally do not subscribe to the theory that love is only real when counterbalanced by hate, or even that love and hate are exact opposites - or indeed, that everything must necessarily even have an exact opposite.

You are right, it was a comment of |Kyle's, I apologize for the misattribution. And I would never lay a hand on him either. I am anti-violence.

Hey, I get tired of these constant knocks on Mom's basement. My sons lived in my basement until they were driven out by the incessant floods and the empty fridge. Hope of the Leafs #43 lived under Mom and four sisters, and Puckbunnies International reports, or fantasizes, that he is no little weenie at all.

Sure. WHY? It was a tactic/method that we developed for students who had a rapid speech pattern,or, impairment which would get to a winded state and then have them immediately either read something,or, talk immediately. It involuntarily forces the person to slow down and essentially acts as a behavior modification because the throat muscles and laryngeal muscles begin to get a memory which will eventually become something that can become automatic. It works in a pretty high percentage of the cases we tried. I will mention it to him. Thanks! Btw |I did not mean to shout Why at you, it was accidental capslock. I just saw PDS latest comment and he (and you) will be amused to know that Doug Bandler is not even the real name of our favourite swingin bachelor. I mean really, if you are going to choose a nom de hide, would you choose Doug? I know some great Dougs, but still... He anonymizes because he fears, I can't imagine why, that if his employers knew what he was writing he would lose his job. Sounds pretty Peter Keating to me. The guy is crazy but not entirely stupid.

Did the Mormons use to dress up as grizzly bears?

Holy Arbaoth! I didn't know that. Jeez, I mean Moroni.

Or imagine if instead of a priest, Glenn Beck showed up with a group of militant atheists he had been interviewing on his show. The altercations, with Missourian Crazy Janet haranguing the brawlers about the postmodern significance of their actions, would have got so out of hand that that poor girl would still be trapped in her car.

Delusions of grandeur. Typical leftist tactic, talk nonsense until your opponent leaves the playing field out of boredom or disgust, then claim victory. Well, it's worked so far. Btw Mike, somewhere else you said I would beat you over the head with a hockey stick -- c'mon, you know I would never do that. Do you know how much replacing those things costs? They get broken enough in regular play - the hardness of your head would have me penniless in no time.