Mumbai Terrorist Attack

Hi again, Soloists! I am about to begin my new career in intellectual property as a patent examiner on Jan. 21. I'll be spending 8 months in USPTO's training academy learning patent law.

Robert Bidinotto has announced on his Blog http://bidinotto.journalspace.com/ that he is leaving TNI and TAS in a professional capacity.

It is often said that Objectivism has the best product, we just haven't found a way to sell it.

Midori is currently on a world tour and a must see if you live nearby. During my visit to Iowa to see a gravely ill uncle, my mother and I saw Midori in concert in Des Moines.

The Rungyong Hotel has been empty for the last two decades. Like the pyramids of Egypt, it is a stark reminder of the death worship of a slave state. At least the pyramids honored the dead.

My Family at the Florida Folk Festival 1974.

Jim

Bobby Fischer exemplified chess excellence to a generation of players and remains the standard to which all chessplayers repair.

Today the Nationalist Party won the parliamentary elections in Taiwan.

One of the greatest pleasures in life is to approach all men on equal footing with no guile or pretense, with no mind-reading or mind games and to exercise sincerity and fortitude in the face of strong opposition.

Jimmy Wales has shown what intransigence will do in the face of Chinese authorities. He refused to back down and allow the Chinese government to censor Wikipedia. A very few entries still remain blocked, but Wikipedia is back online in China.

Milton Friedman passed away today at 94 years of age. He will be missed.

Ahmadinejad officially claims Iran will be fully nuclear by February.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/14/iran.nuclear/index.html

Jim

There has been much talk of how to conduct the war in Iraq and the best strategy to deal with the terrorists. I think a little recent history is in order.

The following article indicates that over half of MBA students readily admit to cheating. This statisitc is amazing to me in the post-Enron, post-Bernie Ebbers world. Maybe I'm naive but this number is just ridiculous. It saddens me and concerns me that future managers are learning to circumvent the most basic ethics.

Just another reminder of what we're up against.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html

Given all of the talk about George Reisman and Edith Packer lately, Here 's the link to the e-mails documenting the ARI/Reisman split:

http://

For those who doubt that ARI intellectuals still require loyalty oaths, exhibit A is the HBL list for Serious Objectivists TM .

http://www.hblist.com

TOC just added Marty Lewinter onto the Summer Seminar Program to lecture on the Beauty and Cleverness in Mathematics. This is an awesome addition to the program. Marty wowed us last year with a history of mathematics and magical patterns in Fibinacci sequences and the seamless integration of his signature standup comedy. Marty is an amazing mathematician, so this should be a fun and informative talk. Best of all, Marty and I will no doubt play lots of fiddle and guitar in the Common Room like last year. It's gearing up to be a fun time.

Jim

Sometimes when we sojourn through the Objectivist world, it's easy to forget that Objectivism is a radical achievement by a genius who put no life before her own. You see internecine squabbles between people loyal to this group or that. You see people spend their lives worrying about others' peccadillos and personality faults. I shake my head sometimes because that is not the stuff of greatness.

One of the distinctive features of Rand was that she struck out on her own with unborrowed vision. Now we see the spectacle of people combing over every jot, tittle and comma she wrote while missing the main theme. We, too, can approach the world with unborrowed vision, our sight made clearer by the work of those who came before us but free to explore new vistas on our own.

Well I'm packing up my stuff and heading off to my new job in Arizona. Since my new job will require a lot of factory floor presence, it will probably be a matter of months before I have time to post again. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Linz for his tireless efforts at promoting an open, active Internet Objectivism that has reached out into cyberspace and gained new adherents.

Good luck to everyone in the meantime!

Jim

If one wants to find the best repository of Western Culture and Civilization in the Western Hemisphere, one need look no farther than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I am still reeling from impact of taking in rooms full of Rembrandt, Vanmeer, Renoir, Degas, Monet, Manet, Courbet, Seurat, Cezanne, Botticelli, Van Gogh Carravagio, Donatello and other great European painters. I was awestruck by a huge gallery of Rodin scuptures: Adam and Eve, one copy of the Thinker,and others.

The museum also contains a huge gallery of Roman and Greek marble statues, exquisite in form and perfectly executed.

My visit to the American Museum of Natural History isn Manhattan yesterday has reminded me of what a Promethean Hero Charles Darwin really was. He published his works in Victorian England which was going up against the state Anglican church. He not only published his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection, but acted as its ambassador, lobbying the British scientific establishment so much that he was able to completely sway the axis of scientific opinion in paleontology and antropology over the course of about 20 years.

Charles Darwin went from being ridiculed and lampooned to being interred at Westminster Abbey at his death, the ultimate sign of social respect and esteem for an Englishman.

Things are looking up . I've got my new job lined up in Chandler, AZ. I start March 13, WooHoo! The Phoenix area has two well established TOC-linked Objectivist Clubs.

What is the basis of love and friendship? Many Objectivists have maintained that shared intellectual values are paramount for a romantic relationship or friendship. I went through a stage myself where it was probably extremely important for me to surround myself with people who shared my intellectual values. I was still learning about my chosen values and who better to learn and develop with than those who shared my values and in many cases knew much more than I did?

After a while though, you realize you really limit yourself with the "shared intellectual values" criteria. In romantic relationships, I realized I wanted to be silly and playful when I came home from work and I wasn't too worried about projecting masculine strength. I already had the deep, multilayered intellectual and personal sharing of Objectivism, higher mathematics, chemical engineering, physics, chess, tennis, evolutionary psychology etc. with my younger brother so I didn't really need that in a romantic relationship.

Given the nature and tone of the debate going on in the Betraying a Heroine thread and the fact that I'm still only 110 pages into PARC (I'm surprised so far. Valliant's tone is quite reasonable and the material is well-sourced. It's been slow going as I attempt to track down the sources and clarify my own recollections of what I've read), I thought I'd offer up a mini-summary of the main points in Nathaniel Branden's Psychology of Romantic Love which I think is a terrific book.

One of my reasons for doing so is to highlight the stark contrast between his awful memoir and the terrific writings in psychology. My fear is that the negative reappraisal of Nathaniel Branden in the wake of PARC will keep many people from reading his books on psychology. That would be a huge mistake. In the Psychology of Romantic Love there is no mention of Rand, so she is not slandered in any way.

"All the problems of the world could be settled easily, if men were only willing to think.”

When Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler uttered these words he pointed a way to “on earth peace, good will toward men” that is ageless in its application to our individual problems.

For it is true that the man who really thinks, invariably thinks straight. His is the orderly, analytical, constructive process of thinking, and the inevitable result of such thinking is not only greater understanding and a keener, truer perspective, but also a spiritual accomplishment which makes for higher principles and finer character. Such a man is invariably fair in his judgment, liberal in his praise, constructive in his criticism and intelligent in his advice.