PhilO

"Given today's world, maybe this IS the best deal that could be hoped for." No. Far better could have, and should have, happened. Given that Ayn Rand was furious at King Vidor for changing ONE WORD of her screenplay for The Fountainhead, can anyone imagine what she'd think, feel, and say about the Atlas Shrugged movies to date? I wouldn't want to be within 10 miles of the blast radius of *that* reaction.

Happy Birthday, and many more to come!

"The most recent is a video made in 1993 to promote investment in the movie. That advertisement includes encouragement and support from Leonard Peikoff." Do you believe, at this point, that he supports the effort?

Happy Birthday, Betsy!

I think it's very unfortunate that Parts 1 and 2 were ever made. Abominations and completely unworthy of the name.

I recently listened to a presentation given at a conference on anti-aging by the doctor who runs this organization: www.int-imm-foundation.com as well as talked with him a bit later. His approach is to use what amounts to a form of blood dialysis to remove molecules that are copiously produced by cancer cells in order to defeat immune system attack. If it's to be believed, this has been very successful in a number of cases involving highly metastasized cancer that has no possible conventional treatment. This is logical since a functioning immune response is far more targeted and comprehensive than conventional chemotherapy. As would be expected, this doesn't work well if the immune system has been compromised. I post this strictly as something to investigate further - I don't yet have enough information to know how reliable are the claims.

Abaco, and others - I highly recommend this website as well: http://www.sovereignman.com. Practical advice on diversifying your values globally.

Abaco: New Zealand and Australia welcome new immigrants. They aren't perfect but in terms of societal health, I think those countries are far ahead of a rapidly disintegrating totalitarian America. Singapore is also appealing, with 1 in 6 being millionaires, a far healthier financial system, and as far as I can tell (as evidenced by the highest millionaire rate in the world including the U.S.) also not a society riddled with snarling socialists eager to vote in the likes of Zero (twice.)

Ron Abramowicz, who is now managing the Bill Bucko's Facebook account, posted this memorial to Bill on Facebook, and gave permission to repost it here. I thought that it might be of value to those who knew Bill or enjoyed his writings here. -------------------------------------------- Bill Bucko was very private about his personal life. Keep such matters or queries on your own page or website. This Facebook page will be kept intact as a memorial to Bill. Please add any thoughts of him, or photos, or quotes. Personal inquiries will continue to be answered. For those who offered their sympathies and thoughts privately; thank you! Bill didn't believe many tears would be shed after his passing: He was wrong. His books were his passion. Reading and writing were his favorite activity. Though there may be glitches, all his past writings will remain in publication in addition to new and republications in the near future. Bill was NEVER pretentious and he always had much patience for those willing to learn. He was never "William" or "Mr. Bucko". He was "Bill" to all (except his students, to whom he was "Mr. Bill"). Bill's writing career started very early in life. His talent resulted in scholarships to Purdue which allowed him to attain a Masters Degree in Philosophy. Part of that scholarship agreement was he was required to instruct. Bill refused to teach the bunk that was present in early 1970s college curricula. He decided an alternative to honoring his agreement was teaching young fresh open minds as a Montessori teacher for many years. He even published a booklet on how to instruct Montessori as an Objectivist. This was the happiest era of his life. He always spoke fondly of "his" children. His fight against tyranny was for the future of his kids. Bill kept EVERYTHING a child ever made for or wrote to him. His home had such drawings decorating every room. In addition, he scanned everything and kept it on his computer to constantly remind him of what he was fighting for and who he loved. Bill had an incredible gift of an eidetic memory. He could simply close his eyes, put all five fingertips of his right hand on his temple, and within moments recall events, sounds, smells, and even complete passages from books verbatim. It was uncanny and he was never wrong. His book writing and research collided in the '80s when he realized computers could help him with both. Combine that with his memory, organizational skills, a computer, and dozens of manuals, he became a self-taught Information Technician before the term IT became commonplace. He was valued as an employee for DuPont for many years and retired there. During his entire adult life, Bill's greatest purpose was promoting Ayn Rand's ideas; especially Atlas Shrugged. As mentioned above, Bill was unpretentious. He rarely spoke of his great finds which included the discovery of The Mysterious Valley. That find is documented in the wonderful Oscar-nominated film "Ayn Rand a sense of life". Buy the DVD, it is very uplifting. He also enveloped that discovery with the publication of all the original French books and periodicals Ayn Rand would have read as a child. Bill copied *all* of these in hi-def digital. His photo scans are incredible. It took him years to complete. If that was not enough, he also did French to English translations!!! Most friends of Bill's who only know him from the internet or Facebook never knew of his wickedly funny humor. Bill was always smiling (and usually humming a good tune). He had a witty comeback for everything. He had a profoundly positive sense of life. He loved music, ideas, writing, and being around happy people. Among his happiest pleasure (which included all his values) was attending the annual Michigan Renaissance Festival. Bill never told friends or acquaintances when he would be attending, if at all. Yet he always did! He would go incognito; you wouldn't have recognized him! He made his own costumes in 14th Century Italy by hand in authentic colors and fabric. He would bring a period guitar and sing his own songs inspired from his favorite era. His singing voice was very pleasant with beautiful poetic lyrics to boot. Keep posted here to hear tape copies of his songs. As mentioned above; all Bill's writings will be in (and stay in) publication soon. Until then, one of Bill's best writings is below (scroll waaay down), on this Facebook page from June 10, 2011, from Dr. Jack Kevorkian's funeral, which Bill attended. Bill's greatest living hero was Dr. Jack. Bill wrote many letters to the editor supporting him over the years. Most were printed locally even though it remains a worldly, philosophically important issue. After you read Bill's funeral notes below, immediately scroll back to the top here and view full-screen him with his large yellow sign. If it puts a lump in your throat, or a tear to your eye, he would have called you friend, and had your back.

I saw this unfortunate status from Bill Bucko's Facebook account today: Bill Bucko passed away of natural causes March 22, 2013. If you would like any other information concerning him, please send a private message.

"I have seen O’ists deride Europe’s monarchies and colonialism to no end, without being concerned of the question “What is America today”? Only now, after Obama-2012 they have admitted that something is wrong with America too – but that does not translate into taking correct path." I don't know who you're talking about, but the first Objectivist, Ayn Rand, wrote with extreme clarity and foresight about what's wrong with America - a little novel you might have heard about, Atlas Shrugged, published 56 years ago. In any case, if you want to publish a book, there's never been an easier, faster, or cheaper time in all of human history than right now: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin http://www.lulu.com/ etc. etc. Whether it will be read, or will be worth reading, will be up to you.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference is actually being an independent thinker vs. a second hander. An independent thinker can appreciate the practicality of some of what ARI has done/is doing such as the essay contests, because of a grasp of the importance of true ideas such as Objectivism (including necessarily as an integrated philosophy, not an ala carte buffet), while not approving of everything that they (or LP) do, such as injust treatment of John McCaskey and some other actions. Kelley and his cadre don't apparently have respect for an integrated philosophic system; it's more about second handed acceptance. So not only don't they do anything of value, their actions are an active disvalue. There's a certain overlap; there are clearly a number of people who support ARI out of second-handed reasons, and I'm surmising that these are the people most likely to "switch" to Kelley if they get upset over something. (Whereas some might find good reasons to distance themselves from ARI without wanting to "join" Kelley's crowd - which would include myself, although I support the good that ARI does.) Personally my loyalty is fundamentally to the truth - not to men. Remarkably, I used to know people who all but explicitly stated that their "loyalty" to Leonard Peikoff trumped truth and facts. I don't find such groupies to be a personal value. Fortunately, Facebook has made it much easier to differentiate between first-handed thinkers and the groupies.

Betsy - having a particular beef with Objectivism would be the only one on your list that I think *logically* necessarily leads to a contradiction if somebody considers themselves an Objectivist. I say this because of the "yet" in your post. I think that's the only fundamental common denominator of Kelley and his associates. Leonard Peikoff himself stated that he was "in a state of enmity with a number of the members of the board of ARI" (and in reality, quite a few other Objectivists), but I think he still considers himself associated with Objectivism ...

Where's the "waterness" in a gas comprised of separate hydrogen and oxygen molecules? Can you "see" it? Let's say you were in a tightly sealed container and an elemental analysis could be performed on the constituents of your body. Now let's say you died in that tightly sealed container and the elemental analysis performed 100 years later. There won't be a difference if it remains sealed. But there's surely a difference between life and death. It's more than merely the individual atoms. Materialism is *not* an adequate description of reality.

Central to this: location is a *relative* concept. It's meaningless to use the word without stating "a location of X *in relation to Y*". If you dropped two objects at the same time off a bridge, and neither of them accelerate at a different rate until hitting water/ground, their relative position will remain unchanged; what will change is each of their positions with respect to the bridge and other things on the earth, and in the universe (and has essentially been noted, those positions can be computed as a function of time using physical principles.) I might be mistaken but I think that's what Ruveyn was saying in a confusing way - not that the issue is travel near light speed but of stating a reference frame ala Einstein.