Posted on 02/28/2009 7:49:58 AM PST by Publius
bfltr
Ping! The thread has been posted.
Earlier threads:
Our First Freeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Theme
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Chain
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Top and the Bottom
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Immovable Movers
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Climax of the d’Anconias
FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Non-Commercial
Please put me on the ping list.
Who is John Galt?
But that mother of his......I was hoping he would just slap that putrid face of hers.
Thanks much. That’s the chapter I’m on right now. You’ve given me thinking points for when I get done in a few hours, sittin’ at the Juice & Java in Orem, Utah, sipping my morning cup, looking at Snowy Mt. Timpanogos rising to 12,000 Ft just six miles away, and reading.
Junk science and opinion leading to public policy with regard to Rearden Metal reminds me of all that has been done in the name of “saving the planet.”
#2 “I’ve hired you to do a job, not to do your best – whatever that is,“ says Dagny. Ben Nealy answers, “That’s an unpopular attitude, Miss Taggart...” What has happened to make quality unpopular?
I think this goes again to how we raise our children. “All you can do is your best.” “As long as you tried, that’s good enough.” To suggest to a child that his best isn’t good enough - it just isn’t done. We want to encourage them, but we don’t want them to feel bad if their effort falls short.
Maybe some children need this approach, and would give up too easily without it. But it’s the ones who do beat themselves up after a failure who are relentless in trying again and again until they get it right - and I would guess that these are the Dagnys and Hanks of the world.
We frown on perfectionism because of its negative side-effects, but without these driven individuals, where would our world be?
Ping to the book club!
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
CB
How high up the mountain is the cave?
Hanks mother has always infuriated me. Hank’s mother may only be a character in a novel, but, unfortunately, she has too many counterparts in real life.
You hit it out of the park! Now you can strut around the bases with pride.
She and that whole nest of vipers will get theirs in a later chapter. Pour yourself a tall one when that happens.
This is good, but we need to go deeper.
Have you ever held a job, usually in a union shop, where quality was discouraged because it showed everyone else up? How about a school where the students got that attitude from their fellows about not making everybody else look bad, and the principal and the teachers could not break through?
General Aviation is one of those things that Rand obviously never understood. She has her people flying hither and yond as if these plane were time machines. Back when she wrote the book Commercial Aviation was still largely driven by piston engines; and the sort of planes that folks like Reardon and Dagny might have been able to fly might fly 140 mph tops. I once flew in one of these from NJ to South Florida (and back). You have to make one or two fuel stops along the way and it takes a full day to make the one-way trip. It's a kicky thing to do, but it's not for people who are in a hurry. No one could make it from Colorado to NY without an overnight stop someplace. And I haven't even talked about weather yet!
ML/NJ
Unfortunately, you are too correct.
I finished the book yesterday! I can’t say anymore without giving anything away!!
The implication being that there were other things she didn't understand as well. She did know how to get people to buy her long, boring, and poorly written books, though.
Well, of course, I don't know what it looked like in 1957, but when I visited the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in Gaithersberg, MD, sometime in the early 80s, it reminded me of the Physics Building at Rensselaer Poly where I went to school (in the mid 60s). I was doing some early robotics work (for a capitalist) and it turns out we had competitors at NBS so we went to see what they were doing. (And here I thought that the NBS was supposed to be the keeper of the golden ruler!) My guess is that NASA, which didn't exist in 1957 but did come about soon after, has multiple installations which would make the NBS building I visited look like an elementary school science lab. The government now, at least, is infested with government employees doing "research." I don't know anything about the Dept of Agriculture.
ML/NJ
When something is as widely respected and referred to as ofter as Atlas Shrugged is, it pays to look in the mirror if you cannot find any virtue in it. There was a time when I might have applied the same adjectives as you have used to Wagner's opera and to The Ring in particular. I was smart enough to realize that the problem was not Wagner's but mine. I decided to work at liking and understanding these as best as I could, and now I am no longer an ignoramus.
ML/NJ
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