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[lprkn]

Link.By author John Scalzi.

#3 is for A-CAP, all the way.

Merry Kwanzaa, ya'll

[Arachno-capitalist]

Mr.Scalzi knows Ayn Rand really well, they basically described her stuff perfectly. Especially if anyone has seen The Fountainhead movie.

[linnea]

Yeah, and the first one is for Nabu! See Wombat's sig for an explanation.

The Noam Chomsky one is for Pat.

[theinevitable]

yeah, um, I have been wondering what that phrase means for a few years at this point.
I won't ruin the suspense by looking it up, now.

My friend Karl has that exact picture of Chomsky "signed" hanging in his room. He won it in a chili-cook-off he had with his Historical/Comparative Linguistics class. It was the prize for best chili, you see.

also, the Ayn Rand one basically sums up what I imagine one of her books would be like.
Again, I won't spoil the magic by reading them.

"society of takers." It sounds like something I would hate so much that I wouldn't be able to pee.

[wombat]

Yeah, and the first one is for Nabu! See Wombat's sig for an explanation.

Oh right!

(I just had to post something to remember what my sig was...)

[Arachno-capitalist]

"society of takers." It sounds like something I would hate so much that I wouldn't be able to pee.

Ayn Rand hated the idea too. She advocated for people to make things, do things, produce things, rather than take things.

[theinevitable]

oh, no. I'm saying that someone would complain that we have a Society of Takers is not someone whose ideas I would probably enjoy very much. that phrase tells me most of what I feel I need to know.

to be fair, Chomsky's pat-style sociological ideas seem pretty silly too.

[lprkn]

I think that Rand and Chomsky are similar in the way that they tend to support their preconceived conclusions by snagging evidence for their theories out of the windstorm. There are millions of pieces of evidence that contradict them, but they fail to see them.

Doesn't really make them failures or anything (trying to avert sloppy makeouts), just makes them human and subject to the same failings that the rest of us are subject to.

[littlefallsmets]

Yeah, both extremes and... that is to say... all the extremes are kind of dependent upon creating their high castles in the clouds out of the ether and then cherry-pick a few chosen random bricks from their places up on high and... wedge them into holes in their candy-floss fantasies so that, when challenged, they can pick those found morsels out of the walls as "examples" of why their battlements are real.

Though I sometimes wander off into Chomsky (who I like to imagine as a hungry hungry hippo for some reason) territory, I try to ground myself in the firmament of mercy and what is humane in a shared and larger fashion. Oh, I still fly off the handle at times but it's good to have a touchstone beyond ideology, an umbrella value that I can check myself against and...

Not just get lost in doctoral-thesis cock-duels as so much of the far right and far left and far middle get into.

All this said, that picture of Rand looks like... a Notre Dame freshman back-up quarterback from 1935.

I ain't saying this as evidence toward me or agin me... some of my heroes are really weird lookin' fucks too but... damn.

I keep wondering where that floppy eared leather helmet is gonna be at.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Are there (m)any authors known for being physically attractive?

[jaydub]

Are there (m)any authors known for being physically attractive?

Well, there's Harlan Ellison

Or so he says.

[lprkn]

Probably why they write books.

[littlefallsmets]

I secretly believe that Judy Blume was kinda hot in her youth, though I've no evidence toward this. My biggest writing influences... Hunter Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Phil Dick... all strange looking gentlemen, definitely. Not exactly ugly, perhaps, in their youth but strange loooking all.

There are good looking writers out there but... generally... they're working through something else, too. Most people can get by through life off just being either (a) strong or (b) smart or (c) good-looking and... for most lives, you don't really need more than one of those to just get by through life, especially in a place like America.

To need so much success or to need to work through so much stuff that you need to be more than one of these things, than to just make a living off any one of those three things... something awful or fantastically weird probably happened to you or is happening inside you, to make you need to push beyond the life you can get off any one of those things.

If you're marked as beautiful when you're young, you work on that because that can make you a life.

The same with physical strength or intellect, you get shoved into a place and you run with it, probably by middle school at the latest.

Think about it: think about the people you know who are smart AND beautiful... most of them were probably working through some big bad thing, to get to that point or... were late bloomers into their beauty who'd already tracked into intellect before they ended up gorgeous or handsome in the last echo-burst of puberty.

I have a similar theory about work situations... there are three traits:

You can be creative, you can be prolific/efficient/very-hard-working, you can be a nice person.

Pick two. 99.9999999% of people are only able to handle two of those traits in their lives at most.

Rare are the people who are all three, for obvious reasons.

[lprkn]

Fortunately, I am smart, handsome, and hardworking.

Did you know that today is opposite day?

[jaydub]

I have a similar theory about work situations... there are three traits:

You can be creative, you can be prolific/efficient/very-hard-working, you can be a nice person.

Pick two.

That sort of reminds me of a sign I saw in a machinist's shop.  Something like:

I do three kinds of work: fast, good, and cheap.
You may pick any two.

If you want it good and cheap, it won't be fast.
If you want it cheap and fast, it won't be good.
And if you want it fast and good, it won't be cheap!