- Taking toys to a new level of creepy. (Via RecoveringStatist.com)
- Dear scientists: please be careful when you edit those genes. A “bad” gene may also be a great and necessary gene.
- Kevin D. Williamson on the left’s silly obsession with people they wrongly believe to be obsessed with Ayn Rand. (Note: Contains one of the most hilarious and true remarks ever made about “professional libertarians.”)
- The fedgov finally has an estimate on how often police kill the rest of us. No surprise, it aligns with the (high) amateur estimates more than with earlier gov-guesses and evasions.
- Quick guide on how to treat hypothermia.
- Per California Joe in comments, here’s a novel that might be worth checking out. Been around a couple years, but new to me. And here’s its here’s its Amazon link. Don’t miss the note from the author listing all the reasons you should NOT read his book.
- The usage explain. In prain Engrish.
- The ugly Christmas sweater has gone upscale. Which brings no notable improvement.
Between Carol Deppe’s description of the “Flavr Savr” tomato, and my own plant breeding experiments, I have come to a new respect for the power of pleotropism. It truly terrifies me the number of genetic researchers who ignore it.
Williamson has been a guilty pleasure of mine for years. I can disagree with what he says while enjoying the hell out of the way he says it.
“Some people think of her novels as a kind of guilty adolescent enthusiasm now grown out-of-date, an intellectual mullet, a stage one goes through between the ages of 14 and 20. Some people use Atlas Shrugged as a totem — it had a moment at the cresting of the Tea Party phenomenon. But it is rare to meet actual adult human beings who organize their politics views (or, for pity’s sake, their lives) around Ayn Rand and her views.”
Yeah, kind of. I admit to reading every word* of her fiction at least once (*I think I even suffered through the whole Galt speech one time, just so I could say I had) but her essays are deadlier still and I can’t believe a thinking person’s interest in actual Objectivism could possibly survive an encounter with an actual Objectivist.
Genes are not like Lego blocks, and the whole structure is non-linear. The entire process remains shrouded in mystery, as revealed by the fact that several people have died from gene therapy.
Very ugly sweater. Yuk. $30,000. for it? I’m ALMOST ready to concede, just a tiny bit, that there is the small, lurking possibility that some people simply have too much money. Or not enough brain cells… or both.
Oh, and re the hypothermia post. It doesn’t include anything but the most dire possibility. Better to get detailed information on the prevention of hypothermia, as well as basic steps to rescue someone (or yourself) from it, failing prevention. Pretty good article on hypothermia, including prevention. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/basics/prevention/con-20020453
Good hypothermia prevention points in that article, ML. Thanks.
Other Than “Anthem” that I had to read in High School, I’ve never been able to get all the way through an Ann Rand book. I’ve had “Atlas Shrugged” on my kindle for well over two years and I’ve never even been able to start it. I sometime think my adversion to her is because it’s the cool thing, And I’ve never been much for herd thinking not matter what side it’s on.
“The fedgov finally has an estimate on how often police kill the rest of us”
Not sure the entire 11-1200 would fall into the “us” category. At least not the “us” I hang with. Maybe I’m in a highly privileged group, I dunno.
I agree, Bob. No doubt most of the people cops kill are pretty bad human beings. Surely some killings are “suicide by cop,” some are nasty gangbangers shooting back, violent crazies taking hostages, etc.
I meant “rest of us” only in the sense of non-cops. Even so, it’s pretty extraordinary, outside the world of television, that cops in the U.S. should need to kill 100 people a month. Two per state per month (though no doubt not evenly distributed). I’d like to know a lot more about the circumstances of those killings.
Good article, ML.
Couple of additions:
Get out of the wind.
Wear layers so you can shed them while working, and put them back on when resting. Add and subtract layers before starting rest or work.
Shivering is probably the only symptom you’ll recognize in yourself. Watch over each other.
It doesn’t have to be very cold for hypothermia to set in. I did a Christmas program at our outdoor little theater, wearing typical “Bethlehem chic” costumes. Friday night was fine, temperature in the low 70s. After a cold front, Saturday was in the mid 50s, with wind. By the end of the show we had kids shivering violently. We got them wrapped up, in cars, and off to the Whataburger for hot food.
Kevin Williamson trades in snark. The piece about Ayn Rand is typical. What he doesn’t know about her philosophy and life could fill a book. Instead of a thoughtful, insightful look at the reasons people have been attracted to her, he gives the usual flip crap about adolescent hero worship, her alleged godawful writing ability, and the very false disclaimer that conservatives haven’t been influenced by her.
I found Rand at age 17 after taking a 6 week Introduction to Philosophy class at the college I was to attend full time. From Plato to Bishop Berkeley, Nietzsche to Russell, it was a broad overview of western philosophical thought, condensed into a 2 hour, 5 day a week crash course. The professor was an admitted Existentialist with a PhD from the University of Chicago. He was a brilliant instructor, but despite his best efforts he couldn’t square the circle of the jumble of conflicting thought. One memorable exchange ended with me telling him that “no sane person could possibly believe that reality is a mere construct as Berkeley alleges.” By chance I picked up a copy of For The New Intellectual at a bookstore. Ayn Rand made sense. In a world of uncertainty, she offered a rational, uplifting counter to the dismal alternatives. The goofy philosophers were put in their place by her.
As to her writing ability, she had one major flaw – the lengthy speeches which are explicit recaps of the ideas already exposed through story and dialogue. This flaw is similar to Hugo’s historical essays interspersed through his novels, a flaw which Rand acknowledged. She was a great admirer of Hugo, and pays homage to him in Atlas Shrugged. The hobo who tells Dagny about the 20th Century Motor Company was derived from the old man who lived under a tree stump in Hugo’s novel of The Terror, Ninety Three. Rand has her most humble characters imbued with dignity, as did Hugo. As to the speeches, if she didn’t write any of the others, Francisco’s money speech would make the novel worth reading.
Williamson writes for a publication that is part neo-con, part religious social conservative, and all partisan Republican. Of course he would trash an atheist who hated Reagan and was pro-abortion. She had many personal flaws, but as a champion of capitalism, Enlightenment ideals – most especially reason, she is without equal.
The main problem with Atlas Shrugged, at least IMO, is that Rand tried to do much too much in one novel. She should have cut out the “Twentieth Century Motor Company” sub-subplot and made that into a novel; that would have got her point across without the long fustian speeches.
And for all her rep as a humorless individual, Rand had a deadly dry talent for satire; the parts about the current avant-garde art scene in The Fountainhead are dead on-target.
I just finished writing a comment about Atlas Shrugged, then pushed the wrong key, POOF….gone. Trust me, it was brilliant.
Short version: I reread Atlas this year (first time: teens, second time 30’s), and was fully engaged with the characters and the story in a way that I was not in my younger days. I was moved to tears by Reardon’s thought-soliloquy in which he expresses his deepest loneliness and pain, and I felt Dagny’s compassion for Cheryl. The villians were not two-dimensional cut out characters, they were accurate portrayals of the Elite villians who occupy Washington DC today. The dialogue of the villians, which I always thought was a bit stilted, turns out to be nearly word-for -word the way our elite actually talk and write….we know this from the leaked e-mails and the behind-the-scenes recorded speeches.
The heros were much more 3 dimensional than I had previously thought, with variations of temperment and intellectual consistency. Even flaws.
Rand’s verbal artistry is a bit choppier. Some word choice and sentence structure reminded me that English was not her first language. A good editor would have gone a long way toward smoothing out the lumps, not that Rand would have allowed it. She also had sustained passages of absolute brilliance worthy of any first rate writer. This is a subjective valuation, and I understand if some people deride her for her style. I liked it, mostly.
Rand’s critics, and her ardent admirers, generally don’t understand Atlas Shrugged. The criticism is usually as misinformed and offbase as the praise. I have spent much time correcting factual errors in their respective assessments, such as whether or not Ayn Rand was a Fascist or whether or not, in her world, needy people would be left to die in the streets. (No, not a Fascist, and yes, there would be charity. Both are clearly expounded upon in Atlas Shrugged.)
It’s been a relatively quiet year for Rand bashing, ever since John Oliver’s rant “How is Atlas Shrugged Still A Thing?” I expect it will pick up again. My only advice to 90% of the critics is that maybe they should actually read it. My advice to 90% of the fawning admirers who got it wrong that maybe they should read it again.
Darn. My comment ended up being long again.
IMHO there are a lot of conservatives who believe the only good book is the Good Book.
It’s not like the other side didn’t worship at the altar of works like Silent Spring, which contributed to a lot more problems than Rand’s stories.
Libertarians, OTOH, tend to disrespect our own pundits, as well as everyone else’s.
About all of Rand’s opinions that called to me was “enlightened self-interest”: Enough profit without gouging, such that I got come-back customers. 🙂 I’d get along okay with Roark; I’ve never been into group-think, either.
I read Atlas Shrugged in 1959. Back then, my main takeaway was that she never used one word where two-hundred would do. Later on I applauded her prescience as to the changes brought about by LBJ’s unGreat Society. Looking at today, “It ain’t got better with age,” as I heard a trucker say one time on the CB.
Prain Engrish? Christmas, 1954. South Korea. Local band playing/singing US Christmas carols.
“Jinger berra, jinger berra…” They tried.
Like with most literature, what one gets from Atlas Shrugged tends to be what one brings to it. If you bring a leftist world view, then you get cold and uncaring dog-eat-dog capitalism. If you bring a deep belief in religion, then you get godlessness run amok. Conservatives find too much libertarianism, liberals find too much conservatism, libertarians find too much judgmentalism. There is plenty in it for everyone to hate, and many people do.
But if the book is met on its own merits and the reader allows himself to ‘suspend disbelief’ (a necessary ingredient when reading any fiction), then the book speaks to many different issues that cannot be neatly pigeonholed as an ‘ism’ or an ‘ist.’
I reread Atlas earlier this year, and even though I am very familiar with the book, and much of the rest of Rand’s writings, I found that the novel was much better than I remembered. Perhaps I’m bringing to the book my life experience that allowed me to emotionally connect with Hank Reardon during one of his thought-soliloquies (I felt his loneliness and pain so deeply I teared up), to see the humanity in Dagny where I used to see only an ice queen, to be astounded at the words of modern day politicians coming out of the mouths of 60 year old characters in a piece of fiction. Almost every day I’d tell my wife about some passage that floored me. When I finished, I asked if she wanted to read the book, but she said there was no need…I’d already read her the best parts. For me, Atlas had improved with age.
I readily admit that Rand’s word choices and sentence structures sometimes struck me as odd or clunky, but I also contend that she wrote some of the most beautiful and powerful passages to be found in any novel, anywhere. She could have used a good editor, not to shorten the book (I didn’t want it to end), but to smooth out the lumps. She would never have allowed that.
I read Atlas Shrugged in high school first. Didn’t understand a lot of it, and didn’t much care for it, but I read it because my mother wanted me to do so. Read it again in college. Had been involved with the LP for a while then, and understood it quite well. Still can’t say I enjoyed it. Many years later, I tried to read it again and couldn’t hack more than the first chapter. See, in the meantime I became an editor, and it is a nightmare. One of these days I may get a chance to see the movies. Maybe they smoothed out some of the lumps. 🙂
Mama, if you didn’t like the book, I think you’ll hate the movies. I know I did. On the other hand, my dear wife said she liked them. To each their own.
I liked the IDEAS In the book – for the most part, just not the writing. LOL I have read thousands of other books on liberty and philosophy, and appreciate Rand’s version considerably, but it doesn’t make the book readable. As for movies, I have never even tried to watch many of them over my life because I am so deaf. Can’t understand what the actors are saying, usually (especially with background noise and “music”), and the new hearing aids don’t help a lot. If the movie conveys Rand’s philosophy, it would likely be better than the book. But I have the impression that movies are seldom an accurate reflection of whatever book inspired it… so probably won’t bother with those either. 🙂