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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (18811)	12/28/2011 1:57:01 PM
From: Cautious_Optimist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Plutocracy is too many syllables for FoxNews viewers and Tea Party herds, unfortunately. Or for Ayn Rand, Objectivism. As is also true for this forum's topic, understanding the Scientific Method. Not having a clue what is happening to THEM, so emotionally manipulated by the right wing media and internet machine, they focus on more firearms and ammo, something that feels like power. And so it goes, in the early 21st century, the same long term path from the late 20th century.

To: koan who wrote (18811)	12/28/2011 6:00:25 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"Today the Republican party is owned totally by the rich and turning this country into a plutocracy." Don't democrat families average a higher income than Republicans? And are there not at least as many democrats as Republicans? Just wondering. Not my country.

To: koan who wrote (18811)	12/28/2011 6:31:25 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

The Modern Library is of course a book seller/club. Apparently, readers enjoy Ulysses by James Joyce as well as Somerset Maugham and Faulkner. modernlibrary.com ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand______________________________ THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand______________________________ BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee 1984 by George Orwell ANTHEM by Ayn Rand_____________________________________ WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand________________________________ MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard ULYSSES by James Joyce CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald DUNE by Frank Herbert THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding SHANE by Jack Schaefer TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM by Nevil Shute A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving THE STAND by Stephen King THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN by John Fowles BELOVED by Toni Morrison THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov MOONHEART by Charles de Lint ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING by Charles de Lint ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad YARROW by Charles de Lint AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft ONE LONELY NIGHT by Mickey Spillane MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles de Lint TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy TRADER by Charles de Lint

To: koan who wrote (18811)	12/28/2011 6:52:19 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69300

amazon.com This review is from: Ayn Rand - A Sense of Life (DVD) Yes, Koan. Your opinion on what others think about Ayn Rand must be culled from a very select audience! Her popularity runs higher than all other authors. That is not something you can simply ignore as having no cause, eh! ;-) Ayn Rand may be the person about whom the most stupid things have been written, except for the whole class of people about whom only stupid things can be written. Numerous commentators have improvized themselves experts on her thought and proceeded to demolish it in what they were probably convinced was a very clever way. Numerous others, while proclaiming to be her genuine admirers, have tried to make her a virtual monster by blowing some aspects of her life and personality out of proportion, and projecting on her all sorts of morbid fantasies. Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, on the other hand, maybe the most perceptive concise presentation of Rand's life and works ever made (and as no full-length treatment is available as yet, this is high praise indeed.) First, it is a first-rate documentary, rivalling with Ken Burns's widely acclaimed works. It is perfect in its structure, roughly following Ayn Rand's life and seamlessly integrating the more philosophical discussions with the biographical material. It is rich in period detail and source materials, from manuscripts and photos to period films, extracts from movie adaptations or theatrical productions of Rand's works, and highlights from her few TV appearances. And it abounds in perceptive interviews with individuals who knew Rand personally and who, for the most part, devoted their careers to studying her philosophy: mostly PhD's like John Ridpath, Harry Binswanger, Michael Berliner or, last but not least, Leonard Peikoff. But if Ken Burns had done a documentary on Rand, he would certainly have gotten the ideas wrong, as when he tried to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson's theory of individual rights in his biography of the Founding Father, and the whole sense of life of the work would have been totally off, with actors reading lines from Rand's writings in melancholy tones, as if they were about to drown themselves. So what Michael Paxton has accomplished is a miracle: he has combined the know-how of a Ken Burns with a flawless understanding of Objectivism and of Rand herself. All the fundamentals of her philosophy are presented, and I could not spot a single misrepresentation of them. All the stages of Rand's life are included, down to the small details which a less consciencious biographer might have missed, but which reveal so much about what she was as a person, such as her fondness for what she called her "tiddlywink music"-light-hearted popular music of the early twentieth century. The documentary even made me cry twice: when the actress impersonating Kay Gonda, in a short extract from Rand's 1934 play Ideal, said: "I can't forget the man on the rock" (whom we should all thank Rand for reminding us of); and when Rand testified for the HUAC and described the conditions she had experienced in Soviet Russia under Lenin. I had just watched a documentary on the 200,000 abandoned orphans who live off the streets in North Korea, and the whole families imprisoned and brutalized in concentration camps by the Communist government, and as Rand's words connected with the images I had seen, I understood what she was fighting against with what Leonard Peikoff called the concreteness of a truck speeding towards me. Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life also reveals surprising facets of Rand's life and personality. An atheist, she met her future husband on the set of De Mille's The King of Kings, where she worked as an extra, chanting hosannas to Jesus; and she "felt a benevolent inevitability that they would meet again". An arch-egoist, she admonished herself in her diary: "No thought whatever about yourself, only about your work." And an admirer of America's wealth and glamour, she found Los Angeles "overcrowded, vulgar, cheap and sad." Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life is perhaps the best place to start for anyone who wants to know more about this "American born on Russian soil" who may well have been the greatest woman who ever lived. For further biographical information, this film can be supplemented by David Harriman's edition of Rand's Journals, and Michael Berliner's edition of her Letters.