[brilliant snooty English butler]A telephone call for you, sir. It is Mr Darwin's Driving School, sir.[/brilliant snooty English butler]
Ta much, dear Anneliese
... She was born on February 2, three weeks after the failed revolution of 1905. Her parents were Jewish. They lived in St. Petersburg, a city long governed by hatred of the Jews. By 1914 its register of anti-Semitic restrictions ran to nearly 1,000 pages, including one statute limiting Jews to no more than 2 percent of the population. They named her Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum.
When she was 4 or 5 she asked her mother if she could have a blouse like the one her cousins wore. Her mother said no. She asked for a cup of tea like the one being served to the grown-ups. Again her mother said no. She wondered why she couldn't have what she wanted.* Someday, she vowed, she would. In later life, Rand would make much of this experience. Heller does too: "The elaborate and controversial philosophical system she went on to create in her forties and fifties was, at its heart, an answer to this question and a memorialization of this project."
The story, as told, is pure Rand. There's the focus on a single incident as portent or precipitant of dramatic fate. There's the elevation of childhood commonplace to grand philosophy. What child, after all, hasn't bridled at being denied what she wants? Though Rand seems to have taken youthful selfishness to its outermost limits—as a child she disliked Robin Hood; as a teenager she watched her family nearly starve while she treated herself to the theater—her solipsism was neither so rare nor so precious as to warrant more than the usual amount of adolescent self-absorption. There is, finally, the inadvertent revelation that one's worldview constitutes little more than a case of arrested development. "It is not that chewing gum undermines metaphysics," Max Horkheimer once wrote about mass culture, "but that it is metaphysics—this is what must be made clear." Rand made it very, very clear.
But the anecdote suggests something additionally distinctive about Rand. Not her opinions or tastes, which were middlebrow and conventional. Rand claimed Victor Hugo as her primary inspiration in matters of fiction; Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac was another touchstone. She deemed Rachmaninoff superior to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. She was offended by a reviewer's admittedly foolish comparison of The Fountainhead to The Magic Mountain. Mann, Rand thought, was the inferior author, as was Solzhenitsyn. ...
...what truly distinguished Rand was her ability to translate her sense of self into reality, to will her imagined identity into material fact. Not by being great but by persuading others, even shrewd biographers, that she was great. Heller, for example, repeatedly praises Rand's "original, razor sharp mind" and "lightning-quick logic," making one wonder if she's read any of Rand's work. She claims that Rand was able "to write more persuasively from a male point of view than any female writer since George Eliot." Does Heller really believe that Roark or Galt is more credible or persuasive than Lawrence Selden or Newland Archer? Or little James Ramsay, who seems to have acquired more psychic depth in his six years than any of Rand's protagonists, male or female, demonstrate throughout their entire lives? ...
...Rather than remake the world in the image of paradise, she looked for paradise in an image of the world. Political transformation wasn't necessary. Transubstantiation was enough. Say a few words, wave your hands and the ideal is real, the metaphor material. An idealist of the most primitive sort, Rand took a century of socialist dichotomies and flattened them. Small wonder so many have accused her of intolerance: when heaven and earth are pressed so closely together, where is there room for dissent?
Far from needing explanation, Rand's success explains itself. Rand worked in that quintessential American proving ground—alongside the likes of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Glenn Beck—where garbage achieves gravitas and bullshit gets blessed. There she learned that dreams don't come true. They are true. Turn your metaphysics into chewing gum, and your chewing gum is metaphysics. A is A.
*No wonder it was such a damn selfish, illogical c***.
When she was 4 or 5 she asked her mother if she could have a blouse like the one her cousins wore. Her mother said no. She asked for a cup of tea like the one being served to the grown-ups. Again her mother said no. She wondered why she couldn't have what she wanted.* Someday, she vowed, she would. In later life, Rand would make much of this experience. Heller does too: "The elaborate and controversial philosophical system she went on to create in her forties and fifties was, at its heart, an answer to this question and a memorialization of this project."
The story, as told, is pure Rand. There's the focus on a single incident as portent or precipitant of dramatic fate. There's the elevation of childhood commonplace to grand philosophy. What child, after all, hasn't bridled at being denied what she wants? Though Rand seems to have taken youthful selfishness to its outermost limits—as a child she disliked Robin Hood; as a teenager she watched her family nearly starve while she treated herself to the theater—her solipsism was neither so rare nor so precious as to warrant more than the usual amount of adolescent self-absorption. There is, finally, the inadvertent revelation that one's worldview constitutes little more than a case of arrested development. "It is not that chewing gum undermines metaphysics," Max Horkheimer once wrote about mass culture, "but that it is metaphysics—this is what must be made clear." Rand made it very, very clear.
But the anecdote suggests something additionally distinctive about Rand. Not her opinions or tastes, which were middlebrow and conventional. Rand claimed Victor Hugo as her primary inspiration in matters of fiction; Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac was another touchstone. She deemed Rachmaninoff superior to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. She was offended by a reviewer's admittedly foolish comparison of The Fountainhead to The Magic Mountain. Mann, Rand thought, was the inferior author, as was Solzhenitsyn. ...
...what truly distinguished Rand was her ability to translate her sense of self into reality, to will her imagined identity into material fact. Not by being great but by persuading others, even shrewd biographers, that she was great. Heller, for example, repeatedly praises Rand's "original, razor sharp mind" and "lightning-quick logic," making one wonder if she's read any of Rand's work. She claims that Rand was able "to write more persuasively from a male point of view than any female writer since George Eliot." Does Heller really believe that Roark or Galt is more credible or persuasive than Lawrence Selden or Newland Archer? Or little James Ramsay, who seems to have acquired more psychic depth in his six years than any of Rand's protagonists, male or female, demonstrate throughout their entire lives? ...
...Rather than remake the world in the image of paradise, she looked for paradise in an image of the world. Political transformation wasn't necessary. Transubstantiation was enough. Say a few words, wave your hands and the ideal is real, the metaphor material. An idealist of the most primitive sort, Rand took a century of socialist dichotomies and flattened them. Small wonder so many have accused her of intolerance: when heaven and earth are pressed so closely together, where is there room for dissent?
Far from needing explanation, Rand's success explains itself. Rand worked in that quintessential American proving ground—alongside the likes of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Glenn Beck—where garbage achieves gravitas and bullshit gets blessed. There she learned that dreams don't come true. They are true. Turn your metaphysics into chewing gum, and your chewing gum is metaphysics. A is A.
*No wonder it was such a damn selfish, illogical c***.
... Police say that she was driving westbound on the Interstate 10 service road and “texting” when she drove through a red traffic light and smashed into the front end of the West I-10 Fire Department truck that was traveling southbound from SH 99. Two firefighters were treated for minor injuries and released. ...
Ta much, dear Anneliese
Ta much, dear Anneliese
As the federal and congressional probes continue into the causes of the Gulf oil rig explosion, new information is coming to light about the failure of a key device, the blowout preventer, to shut off the gushing well, which could have prevented the growing catastrophe.
And new questions are being raised about the testing of the preventers. At today's hearing before a House subcommittee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., revealed that the blowout preventer had a leak in a crucial hydraulic system and had failed a negative pressure test just hours before the April 20 explosion. And at a hearing in Louisiana on Tuesday, the government engineer who gave oil giant BP the final approval to drill admitted that he never asked for proof that the preventer worked.
In addition, an oil industry whistleblower told Huffington Post that BP had been aware for years that tests of blowout prevention devices were being falsified in Alaska. The devices are different from the ones involved in the Deepwater Horizon explosion but are also intended to prevent dangerous blowouts at drilling operations.
Mike Mason, who worked on oil rigs in Alaska for 18 years, says that he observed cheating on blowout preventer tests at least 100 times, including on many wells owned by BP.
As he describes it, the test involves a chart that shows whether the device will hold a certain amount of pressure for five minutes on each valve. (The test involves increasing the pressure from 250 pounds per square-inch (psi) to 5,000 psi.) "Sometimes, they would put their finger on the chart and slide it ahead -- so that it only recorded the pressure for 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes," he tells HuffPost.
Mason claims that a BP representative was usually present while subcontractors performed the tests. ...
Ta much, dear Zaxy
And new questions are being raised about the testing of the preventers. At today's hearing before a House subcommittee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., revealed that the blowout preventer had a leak in a crucial hydraulic system and had failed a negative pressure test just hours before the April 20 explosion. And at a hearing in Louisiana on Tuesday, the government engineer who gave oil giant BP the final approval to drill admitted that he never asked for proof that the preventer worked.
In addition, an oil industry whistleblower told Huffington Post that BP had been aware for years that tests of blowout prevention devices were being falsified in Alaska. The devices are different from the ones involved in the Deepwater Horizon explosion but are also intended to prevent dangerous blowouts at drilling operations.
Mike Mason, who worked on oil rigs in Alaska for 18 years, says that he observed cheating on blowout preventer tests at least 100 times, including on many wells owned by BP.
As he describes it, the test involves a chart that shows whether the device will hold a certain amount of pressure for five minutes on each valve. (The test involves increasing the pressure from 250 pounds per square-inch (psi) to 5,000 psi.) "Sometimes, they would put their finger on the chart and slide it ahead -- so that it only recorded the pressure for 30 seconds instead of 5 minutes," he tells HuffPost.
Mason claims that a BP representative was usually present while subcontractors performed the tests. ...
Ta much, dear Zaxy
Why Google Has Become Microsoft's Evil Twin
The backlash over Google Buzz reveals an even bigger problem: The people behind the people's search engine are deeply out of touch.
Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld
Feb 15, 2010
If you work at Google, your ears are surely burning right now. Google's introduction of its Buzz social media tool this week was possibly the most disastrous product debut in the company's 12-year history.
Almost immediately, Google Buzz got smacked around hard by the blogosphere and veteran journos for making it easy to access information -- like who you're in regular contact with -- that people may not have necessarily wanted the rest of the world to know.
What Google Buzz does is essentially mash up two similar but distinct services: Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is very open -- anyone can follow or send messages to anyone else -- but very limited in what people can find out about you. Facebook opens the kimono wider, but offers much more control over what strangers can see. If they don't have your OK, they can't see much (assuming you know how to use FB's privacy settings).
Google Buzz combined the openness of Twitter with the "whoo-hoo look at me!" aspects of Facebook. The result? A total face plant. ...
The backlash over Google Buzz reveals an even bigger problem: The people behind the people's search engine are deeply out of touch.
Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld
Feb 15, 2010
If you work at Google, your ears are surely burning right now. Google's introduction of its Buzz social media tool this week was possibly the most disastrous product debut in the company's 12-year history.
Almost immediately, Google Buzz got smacked around hard by the blogosphere and veteran journos for making it easy to access information -- like who you're in regular contact with -- that people may not have necessarily wanted the rest of the world to know.
What Google Buzz does is essentially mash up two similar but distinct services: Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is very open -- anyone can follow or send messages to anyone else -- but very limited in what people can find out about you. Facebook opens the kimono wider, but offers much more control over what strangers can see. If they don't have your OK, they can't see much (assuming you know how to use FB's privacy settings).
Google Buzz combined the openness of Twitter with the "whoo-hoo look at me!" aspects of Facebook. The result? A total face plant. ...
... Labour too has accused the Tories of repeatedly misusing statistics in their "broken Britain" campaign. The latest error comes a week after Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, was strongly rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority over his claims on violent crime.
Tony Kerridge, a spokesman for Marie Stopes International, said: "We have a serious enough problem without making it look as though more than half of young girls become pregnant. That is not doing our teenagers any favours. It is quite discouraging, and teenagers get a hard enough time as it is.
"You should check your figures before you go bandying not just inaccurate but woefully inaccurate statistics, and end up demonising a whole group of young people."
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the charity British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which provides contraception and abortion services, said: "The very fact that people can repeatedly get the facts on teenage pregnancy so wrong — ten times wrong — shows that their stereotyped expectations of young people are totally out of sync with reality."
Simon Blake, the director of Brook, which provides sexual health advice and contraception to young people, said that the public also tended to overestimate the rates of teenage pregnancy, although not by as much as the Tories.
“This is confusing for young people who may well think that teenage pregnancy is the norm and also fuels the myth that teenage pregnancy is escalating and nothing can be done," he said.
"In fact teenage pregnancy rates have reduced by 10.7 per cent since 1998, live births have decreased by more than 23 per cent, and there is some excellent work taking place across the country. We must continue to keep teenage pregnancy as a national and local priority.” ...
Tony Kerridge, a spokesman for Marie Stopes International, said: "We have a serious enough problem without making it look as though more than half of young girls become pregnant. That is not doing our teenagers any favours. It is quite discouraging, and teenagers get a hard enough time as it is.
"You should check your figures before you go bandying not just inaccurate but woefully inaccurate statistics, and end up demonising a whole group of young people."
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the charity British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which provides contraception and abortion services, said: "The very fact that people can repeatedly get the facts on teenage pregnancy so wrong — ten times wrong — shows that their stereotyped expectations of young people are totally out of sync with reality."
Simon Blake, the director of Brook, which provides sexual health advice and contraception to young people, said that the public also tended to overestimate the rates of teenage pregnancy, although not by as much as the Tories.
“This is confusing for young people who may well think that teenage pregnancy is the norm and also fuels the myth that teenage pregnancy is escalating and nothing can be done," he said.
"In fact teenage pregnancy rates have reduced by 10.7 per cent since 1998, live births have decreased by more than 23 per cent, and there is some excellent work taking place across the country. We must continue to keep teenage pregnancy as a national and local priority.” ...
"Delusions of grandeur" is the phrase for which you're searching.