16-year old Holden Anderson is kicked out of school, and wanders lonely in central New York during Christmas while contemplating his place in the world around him, unaware that he is The One, who is destined to destroy The Phony, the artificial world in which mankind has been trapped by hyperintelligent machines. His beloved sister is revealed to be an agent of the resistance, who has been protecting The One under the guidance of the rebel leader Antolini. Finally, Holden realizes his true self and fights the Phony under the alias "the Catcher".
#90: C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters makes a point of having his demon say that there is no music in hell. I absolutely believe him.
But... but... but...
'We'll win, of course,' he said.
'You don't want that,' said the demon.
'Why not, pray?'
'Listen,' said Crowley desperately. 'How many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean.'
Aziraphale looked taken aback.
'Well, I should think-'
'Two,' said Crowley. 'Elgar and Liszt. That's all. We've got the rest. Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot. Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?'
Aziraphale shut his eyes. 'All too easily,' he groaned.
#162: "I think she would have said that people should only have children if they truly wanted to, not for the goal of populating the next generation."
She might've, for all I know. My entire analysis is based only on (what I remember of) Atlas Shrugged, I won't pretend to be an expert. Having said that, it was my impression of Ayn Rand that if you truly want something unprofitable, then according to her you are Anti-Life, an enemy of the universe, and deserve death.
#141: "Anyone else ever noticed that Rand's heroes are so busy with their ultimate self-actualization that they don't have any children? Can't be the center of the universe when you have kids. The future argues against you.
Others have argued that this also makes Randism an evolutionary dead end."
Guess I'm one of those others then. It seems pretty obvious to me: children are not profitable. Nobody makes back what they invest in raising a child. Children don't pull their own weight, and Rand seemed to despise people that don't pull their own weight more than anything else in the world. Obviously a True Believer would never have children.
And since Objectivism apparently holds that every non-Objectivist is Anti-Life, an enemy of all good things in the universe, obviously the goal is for every living person to be a True Believer, and then mankind would die out in one lifetime.
All in all, I'd say Rand didn't quite think things through to their logical conclusion.
#90: I love that.
But yeah, Houseplants of Gor is a frighteningly accurate depiction of his style, and probably of far greater literary merit.
In spring of 2003, I was an uninterested, ignorant, completely apolitical (and in hindsight dangerously masochistic), but incredibly stubborn teenager.
I spent that summer reading Atlas Shrugged, first out of morbid curiosity of this book that I had never, ever heard anything good about, then as that wore away I continued to the end purely out of spite: I would not let the book beat me.
It gave me mental scars that I will carry with me until I die. And it turned me from that uninterested, ignorant, apolitical teenager into a dedicated life-long (so far) liberal.
Since Atlas Shrugged was by far the worst book I've ever finished*, I don't expect I will ever read anything else she wrote in my life.
Apart from actually having read the book, though, I don't have much experience with objectivists. I've never actually met one. I have friends who have, though, and from what I'm told they sound exactly like what I would expect from having read the book.
This story you show here also sounds exactly like what I would expect from them. Egad.
*: Not the worst book I've ever tried reading, however. That dubious honour belongs to Slavegirl of Gor (morbid curiosity, see above), which I quite simply could not bring myself to finish. By page fifteen I could literally feel myself dying inside.
Should I perhaps have put that in rot13, by the way? Fool of self made...
1fg: Nov'f qbhoyr qnpgly
2aq: Puevf l'f ivyynaryyr
3eq: Rguna'f fbaarg
4gu: Qropun'f unvxh
5gu: Oehpr Pbura(FcrnxreGbZnantref)'f yvzrevpx
^^
(probably got something wrong somewhere and making fool of self, but eh)
Polish writer writes book about murder, is charged with committing it:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2224874.ece
"Where reality ends and fiction begins in the stomach-turning novel Amok is the central task before the jury in Poland’s trial of the decade. Four years after he published his bloody bestseller, Krystian Bala has found himself on trial for the same torture and murder that he detailed in his novel."
/relurks
(note, that guy is Krystian B with a Y, not me)
Umm... Pardon my ignorance here, but can anyone tell me what, precisely, is a Hayek? Google has failed me (or perhaps it is I who have failed Google. The end result is the same).
#80: "A specific example of something I would have bought by now if it were of normal length is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which seems like the sort of thing I would like, but damn."
Whereas I, at least, think that if Jonathan Strange were of normal length, it would suck, by comparison if not on an absolute scale.
Come to think of it, perhaps I should find the time to reread it. I love long books.
Most likely you saw this the first time around:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJrIF7pHyO0
Seaman ship for love!
I thought it was longer though.
There is a story in Norse mythology where Thor, his servantboy and Loki are visiting the giants, and invited to perform in contests. Loki agrees to an eating-contest, and loses. The servantboy agrees to run in a race, and loses. Thor is invited first to quench his thirst in the giantking's horn, but try as he might he can't empty it in one go. Then he tries to lift the giantking's pet cat, but try as he might he can only get it to lift one leg, and all the giants laugh that he can't do what their own children do as a game. And finally, he's invited to wrestle, and since he hasn't done well so far they'll give him an easy opponent, a feeble old woman, but he can't wrestle her to the ground and is finally forced down on one knee.
When they leave, humiliated, their giant companion reveals that the giantking's castle was full of illusion. Loki had tried to eat faster than fire, the servantboy had tried to run faster than a thought, and Thor had tried first to drink the ocean in one gulp, then to lift the world-serpent, and finally to wrestle old age itself.
Probably not suitable to your purposes though, as it is revealed that Thor actually very nearly achieved each of these things, and the giants were more terrified of him after each contest.
Jim 33: I have to be very careful how I scroll, because it'll leap to the next page, or leap back to a previous page.
I'm quite sure there's a Thing that can be checked off that allows you to scroll normally between pages. I know I do. But since I've had it that way for years, I no longer remember where I found it, and can't immediately seem to relocate it...
#29: I seem to recall hearing something like that, yes. I've never tried it out myself, but in my experience, everything else in CoC is best dealt with with explosives, including giant amoebas (and that I did try myself. Very... VERY messy).
Didn't 'Star Trek' demonstrate how to deal with a Giant Amoeba? It's been long enough I don't remember exactly how they got out of that situation (and I do recall that 'out' was the correct term). Pity it probably isn't available now.
Call of Cthulhu has demonstrated, to my satisfaction at least, that a sufficient quantity of explosives will do the job quite well.
Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUvDdzBr5Fk&eurl=
I am however confused and would be extremely grateful if anyone could clarify my position
Allow me to take a stab at it:
Your position is thoroughly wrong.
There, clarified.
(cough) (returns to lurking)
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