HYPOCRISY OF THE LEFT’S PHILOSOPHER-THUGS March 24, 2010
On the heels of news yesterday from famously boring, overly-polite Canada, that those who didn’t want anyone to hear Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottowa had surrounded the venue wielding rocks and sticks, providing the cowardly institution with an excuse to cancel the event — it churlishly accused Coulter of provoking the violence — we hear even more threats this morning against the spirit of the First Amendment.
Former Colorado Governor Roy Romer was one of the most comically incompetent chief executives this state — with its a long, dismal history of comically incompetent chief executives — ever endured. Now he informs us that Rush Limbaugh is on too many radio stations, that he, poor Roy, can’t find anything else to listen to (apparently he’s never heard of FM), and it frightens him — implying that (A) his fear constitutes some kind of claim against the rights of others, and (B) that perhaps there ought to be a legal limit on the number of radio stations a program or personality can be on.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the abject and humiliating failure of the left wing’s pathetic Air America, which forced blithering idiot Al Franken to seek the last refuge of a moral and intellectual bankrupt, i.e., running for and stealing a seat in the United States Senate. It reminds me of that section in _Atlas Shrugged_ where author Ayn Rand has leftist politicians imposing a limit, for the sake of “fairness”, on the number or length of books any one author will be allowed to publish.
Or maybe that was _The Fountainhead_.
At the same time, we see that James Cameron, who used to be a capable enough director of action-adventure movies (avoid his preachy, anti-human “director’s cut” of _The Abyss_, though, and his spectacular — and spectacularly stupid — _Avatar_) has been railing against Glenn Beck because of that radio host’s position — the same as yours and mine — on global warming. It makes me wonder if these guys ever listen to the news, especially about the University of East Anglia’s now-infamous data-faking Climate Research Unit, or of similar scandals associated with this pseudoscientific claptrap elsewhere, including NASA.
Maybe he has a lot of money invested in carbon offsets.
Although I hate to admit it, I’m basically an old guy, and I remember clearly that liberals used to take pride in their insistence on free speech, no matter what, and a Voltairean willingness “to defend to the death your right to say it”, whatever “it” happens to be. My two favorite professors in college were like that. The ACLU’s unpopular but correct defense of the Nazis’ right to stage a march through the largely Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois in the late 1970s is probably the best example of that kind of faithfulness to principle, but there have been many more.
However now, when the speech comes from a Rush Limbaugh, a Glenn Beck, or an Ann Coulter, we discover that those who cravenly swapped the word “liberal” for “progressive” (having sullied the former word beyond redemption) are less interested in free speech than they are in “responsible” speech.
Thus another great American tradition perishes, sacrificed to the iron agenda of collectivism.
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- Author :Administrator
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My crystal ball predicts a lot of traffic on this one!
I am so very glad to not be the only person that found _Avatar_ repulsive.
Do you mean Colorado got someone worse than Richard Lamm? (That will show you when I last lived there…)
“spectacular — and spectacularly stupid — _Avatar_”
Heh — that sums it up perfectly…
If I had the mindset that I was a cell in the great diseased organism called ‘Canada’ I’d be embarrassed by the whole Coulter debacle. It’s a very telling symptom of the ignorant, thinly veiled barbarism rife in this country, and getting worse. Fortunately, I can take comfort in the notion that I am an American born 100 miles too far north, and a hundred years too late ["We hold these truths to be self-evident..."].
It would be nice to think that this episode is so nakedly wrongheaded and perverse that even the stupidest liberal/PC dupe would start to see that there is something wrong with their premises…but I doubt it.
“Responsible Speech” is a fancy phrase for toeing the party line. Anything you say that agrees with what I say is “Responsible speech” and anything you say that doesn’t is clearly “irresponsible”.
Like the /Cheney’s of the World who cannot imagine that they may be the one’s being waterboarded or forced to listen to Nancy Pelosi’s speeches at a hundred decibels, these clowns cannot imagine being out of power and hving their words declared “irresponsible speech”.
Back when the Inquisitors knew that in their hearts heretics and heathens knew that the Catholic Church doctrine they were pushing was the truth and were just being perverse. Apparently our so called progressives are practitioners of this stick up their ass self righteous attitude.
BTW and off topic, TR had the Square Deal, Harry Truman had the Fair Deal, and BO’s presidency will go down in the books as the Big Fucking Deal. Thank you Joe Biden.
Dick Lamm was (and remains today) a cuckoo, the perfect mirror image of the equally nutty Newt Gingrich. They should do a show together — except that nobody could tell them apart. Their whole schtick is to make very scientific, futuristic plans for the carefully controlled lives of others. In Lamm’s case, he also makes plans for the deaths of others.
Our present governor, Democrat Bill Ritter, is embroiled in a lovely growing scandal involving letting certain illegal aliens off with a fine for “agricultural trespass” when he was the Denver DA, so they could continue to sell drugs in mass quantities. One naturally wonders what considerations changed hands.
Where Ritter went wrong, was that he tried to get his little lawyer girlfriend Stephanie Villafuerte into a federal prosecutor’s job, but a number of politicians (and his wife) caught on — Jeff Sessions among them. The nomination was withdrawn, she’s in the wind, and Ritter has announced he won’t be running for governor next time.
Previous to Ritter we had another Bill, Bill Owen, an anti-gun Republican who resorted to escaping out of the back door of whatever venue he was addressing when the Tyranny Response Team confronted him. We called him “Back Door Bill”. Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to the TRT. It seems to have gone away — or perhaps become the Tea Parties.
One of the Republican candidates is promising to empanel a grand jury to sort this all out. Could be a lot of fun.
For the benefit of those who don’t know, David Anderson is a friend of very long standing (I didn’t want to say he’s my old, old, old friend, especially since he’s younger than I am) from Calgary. My girls still talk about the way he piped me in (with real bagpipes) when I gave my “default keynote address” to the national Libertarian Party in Salt Lake City in 1993.
Dave, I have privately sworn never to forget the country I spent my boyhood in. When I’ve done as much as I personally can for the United States, I mean to turn my attention to Canada. My memories of growing up in Newfoundland are extremely pleasant and precious to me and it would be ingracious simply to abandon it to the bloodsuckers and cannibals of the left.
David, did you attend one of the Liberty Round Conclaves back in the second half of the 90s and early this millennium? Your name seems to ring a bell from that context. I know we had a fair number of attendees from the Great White North, including one lad whose name I can’t recall at the very first one from Yellowknife (a town I usually refer to as Amarillo Cuchillo, as the first time I became aware of the town’s existence when I read Fritz Leiber’s extremely entertaining novel _A Spectre is Haunting Texas_ [which is a loose sequel to his short piece, "The Beat Cluster", probably my favorite of all his work -- he wrote great fantasy, but even greater science fiction]).
That’s “Liberty Round Table” conclaves. A dis-organisation founded by Don Lobo Tiggre and Sunni Maravillosa. I can’t proofread my own text worth a damn. Those conclaves were where I got my first practice making chili for gatherings larger than a nookyular family. (Hey, even Carter pronounced it that way, and he was a nuclear engineer in his Navy days)
Heinlein and others have commented on how thin the veneer of civilization is. It requires a deliberate effort to maintain civilization, including a value on civilized behavior.
Too many people take civilization for granted and assume that because they enjoy its benefits they are civilized. This is hogwash, of course, I enjoy the benefits of the power plants that provide electricity for my house, I know damnall about keeping them running,
Theoretically universities are supposed to push this goal. That the one Coulter was speaking at allowed a stick and rock wielding mob to silence her and then blames her for the nob’s behavior tells me that at least at that particular institution people have stopped working at being civilized, which means they have stopped being civilized. Not just the mobs, but the administration.
Well, collectivists(of what ever type) will be collectivists… What else can one expect from such thoughtless, willfully ignorant types? I’ve always been fascinated(in a morbidly curious fashion) about what idiocy “Kill’em all” Coulter, or other such are going to say next. Its usually quite entertaining. The incident in Canada simply demonstrates that the collectivists on the “left” are just as nutty and dangerous as those on the “right”. But seriously, the university administrations decision was predictable. If there had been an “incident”, no doubt their insurance rates would have gone up, and there would have been any number of “investigations” from what they laughingly call their government. So they took the “responsible” and safe approach. I disagree with it, but I’m not the timid type that typically gets into that type of position.
This is an old story, really. I remember the disgraceful way that college administrations folded in the face of leftist thuggery in the 1960s.
“Responsible speech.”
Kinda reminds me of something Heinlein wrote:
“What we have is a ‘managed democracy,’ and a managed democracy is a truly wonderful thing . . . if you happen to be one of the ‘managers.’ And the greatest asset of a managed democracy is a free press; provided that ‘free’ is defined as ‘responsible’ and the managers get to decide what is ‘irresponsible.’”
Guilty pleasure confession time.
Back in November/December of 1979 some students at UTEP decided they would hold a demonstration expressing solidarity with the Iranian “students” who had seized the American Embassy in Tehran and taken the staff hostage.
They were nearly lynched by the rest of the student body. The campus security cops had to use tear gas to save the pro Iranian protesters. One of their leaders commented that the rest of the students at UTEP were animals.
I guess the Pro-Iranians’ rights were violated. I’m proud of the guys who violated their rights. Back in 1979 it didn’t look that way. I remember what one of the Anti-Iranian leaders said though, “They had their say, now we are having ours.”
Bless me freedom lovers for I have sinned. That said I have to ask, did the students at the University of Ottawa give Ms. Coulter her say before they started shouting?
BTW the University of Ottawa warned Ms. Coulter to not violate Canada’s hate speech laws. Strange how I’ve never heard of anti American ranters in Canada (or elsewhere) get busted for making hate speeches. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get slammed, of course. the US has a lot to make up for and a lot of act cleaning up to do. I am saying sometimes it seems sometimes that those who take the cheap shots at the US are awful quick to hide from reciprocation behind “responsible speech” laws.
Avatar was not only repulsive but ripped off (a habit of Cameron’s).
Anybody by chance familiar with Poul Anderson’s novelette “Call Me Joe” (first published in 1957, and repeatedly re-published since, including incorporation in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology)?
James Cameron has made a really good living on the work of the innovative SF writers who’d originated the stuff he steals.
I remember Anderson’s story very well.
I also remember stories by Clifford Simak about the “bridge on Jupiter” — one was called “Why Call Them Back from Heaven?” — in which remote-controlled synthetic (but biological) surrogates were used to explore environments hostile to human life. As I recall there was one in which a cripple, who was the remote controller, found himself a strong and healthy centaur in his Jovian life and refused to return to his miserable human existence.
There isn’t anything you can do about this, Richard. Often — as in the famous case of David Gerrold unconsciously ripping off Heinlein’s Martian flatcats to create tribbles — it’s accidental. Some of my readers think some of the technology in _Star Trek_ came from my works, and others say the whole show _Sliders_ was taken from me. I don’t know (I certainly didn’t originate the idea of alternative history, Jack Williamson did) I’m too close to the matter, and I don’t want to come off like Harlan Ellison, always whimpering and demanding credit for things he had nothing to do with.
As far as I know, I’m the only writer currently using personal weapons that project recoilless kinetic energy in his stories (the Martyn trilogy and _The WarDove_) but that’s what I’m seeing now in the hands of the “Observers” on _Fringe_. It’s really wonderfully done, too, but I would never accuse the producers of my favorite TV show of consciously ripping me off. I think the idea first occurred in the newspaper comic strip _Buck Rogers_ back in the early part of the 20th century.
Face it: James Cameron is just another left wing Hollywood squirrel-head, not unlike Steven Spielberg and many others, who make big movies and believe that qualifies them in all other areas. It’s annoying, but there’s nothing you can do about it, either. You wouldn’t want to live in a country where you could.
As Heinlein said to David Gerrold (paraphrased) “Why apologize, there is no such thing as an original idea, they’ve all been used before!” In my opinion, it is HOW you present the idea that matters. As to _Avatar_, haven’t seen it, and won’t until it is on cable.
Neil, Simak’s story was NOT about remote-controlled biologicals. Terrestrial life (the story is told from the perspective of the human protagonist and his dog, and the “bridge on Jupiter” short was incorporated in Simak’s “fix-up” novel _City_) was physically converted into an artificial form of Jovian life.
I bumped into Simak at the first Noreascon when I tried to bid on a painting based on his _Way Station_ that the con committee was looking to purchase as a gift for their GoH - Simak - and had a chance to speak with him at some length. Nice guy.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m more proximally familiar with his stuff than you might be. In “Desertion” (the “bridge on Jupiter” story, first published in 1944), both the protagonist and his dog were impaired by nothing more than age, and contrary to Wikipedia, the biological conversion was NOT “one-way”.
No “remote controller.”
As for what writers can do when they get ripped off, think not of David Gerrold’s “The Trouble With Tribbles” and Heinlein’s “flat cats” in _The Rolling Stones_ (where Gerrold was conscientious enough to contact Heinlein before the show’s broadcast, and was fortunate that the old fella was such a gentleman about the matter) think instead about what A.E. van Vogt did when Ridley Scott raped away his _Voyage of the Space Beagle_ stories to make _Alien_….
(I remember watching that movie and thinking: “Hey, this was a great idea in - what was it? - 1947?”)
…and how Harlan Ellison (gotta love Harlan, politics notwithstanding) to James Cameron himself when the bastich tried to cover his tracks from a _Starlog_ interview where he ADMITTED having gotten the main premise from “a couple of old _Outer Limits_ episodes” (BOTH of which Harlan had written).
In each case, the studios settled out of court for six-figure amounts.
And you mention Steven Speilberg? That guy is FAMOUS for his dozens of acts of plagiarism he’s perpetrated over the decades. Offhand, I can’t think of a single one of his hit movies that hasn’t been the result of his conscious and deliberate screwing-unto-death of the originators of the ideas they’re based upon.
[...] Liberal Bitches L. Neil Smith at Random HYPOCRISY OF THE LEFT’S PHILOSOPHER-THUGS HYPOCRISY OF THE LEFT’S PHILOSOPHER-THUGS March 24, 2010 On the heels of news yesterday from [...]
On the other side of the coin Heinlein has yet to get a fair shake.
The Starship Trooper film Triliogy has totally reversed the point Heinlein was trying to make, thought it does serve as a cautionary tale about the militarization and drift into fascism of society during prolonged war. Cameron turned down the commission to make it claiming he’d covered the ground in Aliens (right, chure buddy) which is how Vorhees got it. What was done to The Puppet Masters was unconscionable. tim Minear had to drop, or at least put of making The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Somebody somewhere has to get one of his stories right!
Al, on Heinlein’s stories, what I’d most like to see would be one of his Scribners’ juveniles done properly.
Just for the hell of it, which one of those do you think would make the best movie?
No fair naming _Space Cadet_, which got done in the ’50s as the _Tom Corbett_ series.
“The Rolling Stones”, “Red Planet”, or “Tunnel in the Sky” would be my choices. But they better not use the censored version of “RP”, though.
I have a special fondness for Citizen of the Galaxy.
Same here, but not for a movie.
Maybe mini series. Book looks at four distinct cultures, includes combat, coming of age, court fighting and all sorts of goodies.
Try Between Planets then
I was going to stay out of this, but it’s irresistable. I want to see _Double Star_ as a movie. Or _Farmer in the Sky_, which has the perfect dramatic structure. Or _Glory Road_, just, well, it’s _Glory Road_.
Face it: the Old Man simply wrote swell books, and at a time (unlike today) when there were enough people around to appreciate them.
Neil, when Gerrold apologized to Heinlein, RAH admitted he’d gotten the idea from Ellis Parker Butler’s (hilarious) short story “Pigs is Pigs”. Disney’s people did a fair adaptation of the story in 1954 .
As for adapting Heinlein, the movie I’d really like to see is _Beyond This Horizon_, but practically every bit of that story is 100% unacceptable to either the liberal majority or the conservative minority in Hollyweird (a town I used to know the bus routes through quite well, commuting from West LA to the Valley, couple of bars and a strip joint I was partial to while waiting for the next bus, and I once pissed on Reagan’s star on the Walk of Fame [I'm pretty sure the oscar Statuette of Limitations makes me free from being arrested after a quarter of a century and surveillance cameras weren't yet common]); the few libertarian types hardly get a vote.
Sure, I’d love to see a proper adaptation of _The Puppet Masters_ (preferably the version H.L. Gold didn’t edit), but it couldn’t be shown in most (99%) of the theaters in the US. The leading cast in the movie that was made was great, but of course the script and direction sucked.
The less said about Fox’s animated pseudo-adaptation of _Red Planet_ the better. It was turned into a Green-Weenie propaganda piece (and some call Fox “right-wing”).
_Tunnel in the Sky_, not a fucking chance. Nor _Citizen of the Galaxy_. Both stories imply that socialist utopia doesn’t last forever.
I saw “Starship Troopers” and gagged. Are the direct-to-video sequels worth watching? The cartoon did a better job with the technology, and since it was for kids, political and moral philosophy weren’t covered (can’t have the little bastards actually learning anything between the breaks for cereal and toy commercials). But Johnny Rico played by a blond guy pretty much killed it from the first scene in the movie, and the idea of the bugs puking asteroids at Earth instead of using technology sank it. Verhoeven’s assumption that any culture that restricted the vote was National Socialist was just the sewage on the compost cake.
Turning novels into movies is rarely a good idea, anyway. Movies are too short. Note that when James Blish adapted the Star Trek stories into text, be was generally able to fit six to eight episodes in short story form into a Bantam (not generally known for thick books, I think _A Canticle for Liebowitz_ and _Alas, Babylon_ were about as thick as they got before the 80s except when a _real_ bestseller was involved, slice-of-life stuff) paperback. Yes, 45 minutes on screen is a short story. It might be better looking at Heinlein’s shorter works for conversion to movie form. _Stranger in a Strange Land_, even in the shorter version, would easily have to be an at least ten-hour miniseries that couldn’t be shown on US television (especially not the last third, but enough early on). Look at the liberties Jackson took with “The Lord of the Rings”. A lot of the best bits left out (especially “Scouring Shire”, which I suspect was Tolkien’s intended top point to the story). Should have been at least six movies (which would have still left out most of the detail, but would have better followed the dramatic breaks JRRT wrote). But dramatic breaks are for serials, no longer part of the movie business, and they can’t be too intense on TV, because next week’s episode might be preempted by a baseball game already in progress and headed for a 12th inning. (Yes, Neil, US baseball is incredibly boring, I haven’t watched a game in over 40 years since when BS Troop 707 was dragged out to watch the Dodgers vs the Astros — the NAC version sounds a lot better, would look a shitload better if I could get there).
So, let’s look at some of the shorter works/
“Let There Be Light” — individuals vs corporate interests. Somebody would say it was plagiarism.
“Coventry” — the defendant given a choice between confinement with therapy and something else? “but therapy must be mandatory!”.
“Misfit” — those kids in dangerous places without adequate OSHA oversight. Almost as bad as I’m told Basic training used to be (’twas wimped out by my time at Lackland in ‘74), except for the lack of gravity and atmosphere and the lack of OSHA overseers who would have insisted that gravity and atmosphere be immediately provided.
I don’t want to think about what modern liberals would do to “A Bathroom of Her Own” or “Our Fair City”, since those stories overlap territory they claim as their own. I have no children, but the image is a prepube naked daughter, the rapist naked from waste down with a knife at her throat saying “this will make it feel better”.
Hell, even the short stuff won’t pass the correctness guidelines without being left raped and dead. (I by-god-don’t-want-to-imagine what Hollywood would do to the Puddin’ stories).
Enjoying Heinlein will always require literacy. Maybe this makes me an elitist. I used to be a serious elitist about computers but I’m no longer at my peak. I still won’t use anything from Microsoft (except a few early BASIC interpreters in ancient ROMs, mostly in decades-old Radio Shack machines down in the basement) except under duress. (We use that here Microsoft shit, you better use it too, even if you think what you like works better and it exchanges seamlessly with our crap).
This is much too long. Maybe I ought to actually edit it into something Ken can use. Most of this has been stream-of-thought (not a form I liked even in high school) with scrolling up for spelling and grammar, I assume I missed a lot. Editing and expansion (maybe reduction, some spots) might make it an article. I’m busy most of this weekend, but I’ll see what I can screw up. Don’t nobody publish this version.
By the way, if I turn this screed into an article, I might have to quote from others (this blog software doesn’t quote, I’ll have to grab whole messages and extract). If anybody whose material is referred to in the previous message wants a mention (Google will tell you that I’m not a great or greatly respected writer, though a recipe of mine was quoted in the blog of one of my favorite computer security experts, search for “New Jersey Squid Chowder”), tells me, else all is anonymous [1] to anonymous [n].
In my younger days, I planned for my obituary to have the words “missing and presumed”. Lately I’ve come to assume that the words will be “shot while resisting”. Either way, I’ll be feeling no pain and won’t have to put up with the lawyers.
Saw the TV version of “Jerry Was a Man” a couple of years back. Human protagonist shown as a bit of a dunderhead and story was a bit darker and more than a bit more anti military than RAH’s original or than the Master (in sense of one who sets example for ‘prentices) would have liked.
Surprised they haven’t done “Revolt in 2100″ with the Prophet shown as a cross between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
Second direct to video ST waste, third does serve as cautionary tale about keeping fascists out of power and the dangers of Gestapo/SS type organization.
By changing Juan Rico from a Filipino to an Argentine Voorhees excused turning him blond. Make more palatable to a less multiracial mix than in the original ST I guess.
BTW and totally off this stream and closer to last, just saw literature on Rossi Circuit Judge, which is a rifle version of Taurus Judge series. Only in .45LC and .410. Guess if you like Judge revolvers makes good companion piece. Every cat his own rat. (OK, I want a Judge. would rather get an FNH or CZ75 in .40 liberty, but would not sneer at Judge, especially if can get Walther teeny tiny .40 as back up/hold out companion piece. My creditors laugh and sneer as I write this wish list.)
Regarding Starship Troopers (the movie) I’ve heard that Verhoeven made it the way he did to see if he could get people to cheer for the wrong side — which is why the earthies were portrayed as living in a (pretty-much) totalitarian dictatorship.
Over all however, I think it was funny — and something of a rip-off of a comic book series.
Think about it:
The main character was in love with the brunette, the brunette was in love with the rich “preppy” guy, the blonde was in love with the main character, and the main character had a kind of dopey friend.
Change the names to Archie, Veronica, Reggie, Betty, and Jughead. . . .
Neil, any script for _Double Star_ would be assumed to be a rip-off of “Dave”. Authors steal from similar sources, but whichever is in the public eye last is assumed to be first. The Dumas original (and I think the rather older stories Dumas stole from) ain’t even mentioned, that’s just old shit. (How many people do you know who actually read _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ and the sequels? I read the Classics Comics versions, read the abridged versions in the school library, read the unabridged versions from the town library, did two years in high school French to be able to manage the tenses and such to read the originals, which got me through a lot of Dumas’ work, with the help of a LaRousse) (the LaRousse doesn’t help much with the gascon terms, which I assume were as much part of the local pop-speak as rap-crap is to us — we know it, don’t use it in writing).
I can’t speak the Frog language much aside from a polite or extremely impolite greeting, the only French I can verbalize I learned from my grandmother in New Hampshire (well, the extremely impolite greeting I officially learned from my late father-in-law, but it was a big line during his OSS days and again 30 years later [voulez vous couchez avec moi] in the Disco days and Gram didn’t teach me that ) (or the Spanish I learned in L.A. as a kid, or the Polish I learned from my high school girlfriend’s father or from my Berliner roommate at Georgia Tech, due to bunk-bed life] when I drop a brick on my foot or have a shell-casing burn my cheek). (Gram was a nurse in New Hampshire for fifty-some years, had a lot of Kaybecker patients, nurses learn to cuss from their patients and if we’re lucky, the grandkid is willing to learn the language when a bit of oil splashes out when she’s making donuts).
I can say hello, goodbye in a lot of languages. With most people, I prefer it to be that quick, especially the goodbye part, until my restaurant is going. I owe it to nurses (especially when they were related to me) for my early education in cussing, (and since then I’ve been married to a couple of them) but my few dealings with nurses who weren’t related to me either way taught me how to _really_ use those words, as they didn’t have the least amount of sympathy and I’ve never had an insurance plan that tips), plus a few other teachers in my life so I could tell folks to ….. and it doesn’t help when you’re on their turf.
Ken, don’t publish this or the previous yet. Not for this week. I gotta figure how this insane stream of conciousness is hooked up. Since I actually _did_ sleep for at least ten minutes after the previous bit, read fresh mail (nobody around here gives a fuck what fans of the old Radio Shack Color Computer line are doing, but I was part of that community before I was in the LP, and out of the LP I’ll be there long after, and I can work better as an individual than as part of a group that turned to shit to promote libertarianism (well, anarchism, in the smart kids, at least a quarter of whom will be agents-provocateur [you've dealt with that]) and work with a crowd some of whose members some of whom have been pissed off for a couple decades that DC became practically a Redmond satrapy (or vice versa), and you find it hard to know who’s on which side. I think I lost a closing paren back there. Anybody what needs one, it’s yours.
The hour has become late. So late that I dozed off for a couple of hours later in the middle of typing this and read the number in the corner or the screen wrong. I’d better be off to bed, or the feet will be so swole up I can’t do the various duties a “day of rest” requires, like a couple of hours at several supermarkets and other stores. (Yes, saturday is normally my day of rest — I’m not jewish, but I work at a dead-end job, and sunday I do the chores so I can live through the next week, like shopping and preparing stuff for the week’s meals — that stuff doesn’t get accidentally into the fridge in convenient portions the way Rachel Ray implies when she pulls it out during her shows, 30-minute meals take a few hours of preparation). (La Esposa committed me to driving our tenant over to do his shopping this afternoon. I don’t recall that being part of the rental agreement, but She Must Be Obeyed or I’ll never hear the end of it).
Always thought Dave was rip off of Double Star. Both struck me as Prisoner of Zenda/ The Mad King reimaginings (to use Hollywood’s catchphrase).
So in more or less order we get Man in the Iron Mask, The Prince and the Pauper, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Mad King, Double Star, Royal Flash, and Dave.
Good plot hook, much better than low tech savages beating high tech opponents. Besides, Dave had left wing bias, why can’t libertarian or even conservatives get their at bats?
Apropos of absolutely nothing above, has anybody come across this past week’s worth of _Doonesbury_, in which the eponymous character and his daughter spend six days in a Starbucks bitching about all the other patrons openly carrying life-preservers into the establishment?
By the bye, my choice for a Heinlein juvenile to turn into a movie would definitely be _Have Space Suit Will Travel_.
I’ve always like Kip and Peewee, and I’d like to visit a future in which Oscar is the kind of thing a gadget-crazy teenager can get as surplus in a soap contest.
Yes, I read “Doonesbury” every day. This weeks’ was hilarious, since it presumably takes place in Mass-A-Two-Suss. Now here in Arizona, such a thing happens all the time.
“Red Planet” is (mostly) my favorite Heinlein juvie, being the first one I read I think, back in 7th grade when I finally went to a school that actually had a real library — I was delirious with delight for a long time after my first visit.
I gave up on Doonesbury years ago. That dipshit’s take on America is so slanted that even when I agree with him, I can’t stand the slant. My 12 yr old son is currently on “Starman Jones”, he’s read “Red Planet”, “Rocketship Galileo”, and “The Rolling Stones”. When he’s done with ALL the juvies, I’ll ask him HIS opinion as to the best Heinlein Juvie. MY favorite is whichever one is in my hand at the moment, but the un-cut “Red Planet”, or “Tunnel In The Sky”, or maybe “Citizen of the Galaxy, and then there’s “Podkayne of Mars”, oh wait, can’t forget “Starbeast” and “Between Planets”, or mavbe “Rocketship Galileo”, then again, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” is great, oh well, you get the point. there is no such thing as a ad Heinlein, juvie or not (except for “Variable Star”, which isn’t really a Heinlein, anyway.)
Neale, you’re the guy I’d never offer a glom at a Whitman’s Sampler.
Except now that I’m on a diet, and could really use the help keeping my carbohydrates intake to a minimum.
What part of “pick one” is it that you don’t get, damn you?
While we’re at it, how about that detective story of his, “They Do It With Mirrors” as well? For HBO or Showtime, of course, as an “R” rating is a death sentence for commercial movies and MSM teevee.
Ken, your account of how you hit your first real library in 7th grade struck a memory of my own encounter - in 9th grade - with a school library that wasn’t just a small bookshelf at the front of the classroom with nothing much I really wanted to read.
That’s where I came across _Have Space Suit-Will Travel_ for the first time, after having been steered to a paperback of _The Day After Tomorrow_ (_Sixth Column_) in a used book store.
Hm. I wonder how many people read Heinlein’s adult stuff BEFORE coming to his juveniles, just as I read _The Screwtape Letters_ and the books of the Space Trilogy before I ever encountered C.S. Lewis’ Narnia novels?
Anybody care to comment on the book or short fiction with which their Heinlein virginity got deflowered?
I believe I may have mentioned that it was _Tunnel in the Sky_ (which started my lifelong habit of carrying two knives at all times) or _Door into Summer_. _Starman Jones_ was in there, somewhere, too. In the end, I think my favorite of the Old Man’s books is either _Door into Summer_ or _Double Star_.
And you guys who’ve been comparing the latter to various things like _Dave_ or _A Tale of Two Cities_ are dead wrong. The story is not about politics, at all. It’s about overcoming bigotry.
And winning the redhead, which is equally important.
Only two knives?
Overcoming bigotry only one issue. The ins and outs of parliamentary politics, political wheeling and dealing in general, and the protagonist growing up are also in there. Heinlein’s stuff is a multicourse meal.
Hows about Magic Inc given modern taste for supernatural.
think it was the Rolling Stones that sealed my fate, but it could have been The Star Beast. Space Cadet was Second or third. hey at the time I was dealing with a major comic book jones and an Andre Norton addiction. Talk about someone who tore into bigotry.
I would love to see a movie version of “If This Goes On—” and since the Bad Guys are evil fundamentalists, you might even get Hollyweird to do it. Of course, I’ve always said that movies and teevee are art-by-committee—and we all know that a camel’s a horse designed by a committee, don’t we? *grin*
The current Doonesbury storyline irritates me excessively. I wish Uncle Duke was the hero—he may be a crook, but I like him a lot better than anybody except that hawt Vietnamese girl Mike Doonesbury managed to convince to marry him. But then, I do like East Asian women a lot.
My father gave me a copy of “Waldo and Magic Inc.” at about 8 years old. Within a month, I’d burned through “Spacesuit”, “Glory Road”, “Starbeast” “Nazi’s and Garands on the Moon”, Rolling Stones”, and “Red Planet”. I’ve been an addict ever since. To this day, the only Heinlein I have only read Cover to cover only once is “Stranger”. I’ve tried for years to read it, and never succeeded. A couple of months ago, after writing an article in praise of Heinlein, friends bullied me into finishing it. I STILL agree with Zebbie’s assessment of it in “Nuber of the Beast” (It’s amazing what some people will do for money). I doubtr I’ll read it again.
Rich- I did pick Just one, “MY favorite is whichever one is in my hand at the moment, “. As to the Whitman’s Sampler, I’ll be happy to help you avoid the calories. Send it here.
The first RAH novel I read was “Farnham’s Freehold”. I was 13 YO at the time,(1967), and mom had told me I couldn’t read it. So I read it on the sly the first chance I got. (Mom was a LOT like Grace Farnham). About 3 months after that I ran into “Have Space Suit will Travel” at the school library. HSSwT was probably the most influential book I had read as a teen, It taught me that I was responsible for my own education, NOT the goobermint. By my freshman year in high school, I had the literacy level of a college junior, mainly due to the influence of that book.
Ken - On _Have Spacesuit_, Kip’s freshman year conversation with his father:
“What’s a dangling participle?”
I didn’t answer. He went on, “Why did Van Buren fail of re-election? How do you extract the cube root of eighty-seven?”
Van Buren had been a president; that was all I remembered. But I could answer the other one. “If you want a cube root, you look in a table in the back of the book.”
Dad sighed. “Kip, do you think that table was brought down from on high by an archangel?” He shook his head sadly. “It’s my fault, not yours. I should have looked into this years ago-but I had assumed, simply because you liked to read and were quick at figures and clever with your hands, that you were getting an education.”
“You think I’m not?”
“I know you are not. Son, Centerville High is a delightful place, well equipped, smoothly administered, beautifully kept. Not a ‘blackboard jungle,’ oh, no!-I think you kids love the place. You should. But this-” Dad slapped the curriculum chart angrily. “Twaddle! Beetle tracking! Occupational therapy for morons!”
I didn’t know what to say. Dad sat and brooded. At last he said, “The law declares that you must attend school until you are eighteen or have graduated from high school.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The school you are in is a waste of time. The toughest course we can pick won’t stretch your mind. But it’s either this school, or send you away.”
I said, “Doesn’t that cost a lot of money?”
He ignored my question. “I don’t favor boarding schools, a teen-ager belongs with his family. Oh, a tough prep school back east can drill you so that you can enter Stanford, or Yale, or any of the best-but you can pick up false standards, too-nutty ideas about money and social position and the right tailor. It took me years to get rid of ones I acquired that way. Your mother and I did not pick a small town for your boyhood unpurposefully. So you’ll stay in Centerville High.”
I looked relieved.
“Nevertheless you intend to go to college. Do you intend to become a professional man? Or will you look for snap courses in more elaborate ways to make bayberry candles? Son, your life is yours, to do with as you wish. But if you have any thought of going to a good university and studying anything of importance, then we must consider how to make best use of your next three years.”
“Why, gosh, Dad, of course I want to go to a good—”
“See me when you’ve thought it over. Good night.”
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A helluva thing to read when you’re a freshman in high school yourself. For the next seven years of my life, people used to wonder why I threw myself on the “tough” courses like a Marine on a hand grenade, even when doing so as a pre-med major in college meant that I wouldn’t get the high cumulative average everybody said you needed to get into med school.
Beat the daylights out of the MCATs, though, and med school wound up being - academically - EASIER than college had been. Just about none of that “squishy subjects” liberal arts crap to trip you up.
I met Heinlein very briefly in an autograph line at MidAmeriCon in ‘76. I was in scrubs as I was part of the con committee’s medical response bunch, and had been on call the night preceding. Unshaven, kinda bleary-eyed, I remember telling him that he was a big part of why I’d gotten into medical school, and I think he looked rather pleased.
Not that he hadn’t heard something like that from thousands of other young people before.
As for why _Farnham’s Freehold_ is not a favorite among married women familiar with the novel, I suspect that they prefer to pretend that the kinds of marriages depicted in the first part of that book don’t really happen.
An adolescent male, reading Hugh Farnham’s story, would come into the wedded state with no illusions whatsoever - and the sense that if nothing else, a man’s HONOR requires loyalty to the choices he makes, and thus consequence in the processes of making those decisions.
Rich- HSSwT is one of the three reasons we home school. My kids ALL read at much higher than grade level requirements, have the manners of kids from the fifties (other than sir or maam to parents), aren’t afraid to speak their minds, OR listen to reasons that whatever hare-brained theory their friends from Scouts or one of their other groups came up with. They all can strip a 1911Al and a Garand, can slaughter an animal, build a smoker from scratch, they are learning more math and science than I have (I keep trying to keep up, but it doesn’t seem to work!).
As to “Farnham’s Freehold”, well I was lucky enough to start out with Barbara, and never had a Grace, but if I had, I would have stuck with my obligations until SHE chose to end it. Hugh taught me how to make ersatz plastique (it does wonders on 6″ oaks, as I can attest from my high school days), to stockpile ammo, and many other things. It is high on my re-read list, but DEFINITELY not on my juvie list!
R.D., I read C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy well before I encountered the Narnia series, as the local branch of the L.A. County library had those, not the other. I’d already encountered Heinlein. No way I can recall which one I read first after almost half a century. I was just going through the juvenile fiction shelves looking for science fiction in alphabetical order during the summer between 2nd and 3rd grades. (I’d found what I liked). It was in 3rd grade that I discovered mathematics (I’d damn near flunked arithmetic for two years) but Mrs. Reilly let me take a look behind the screen at what it built up to. I’d already been reading at what was called “6th grade level” before, by the end of that year I was reading anything. (The librarians got tired of sending me home with notes asking Mom’s permission to read a book from the adult shelves, Mom got tired of signing the notes since she had my illiterate and rock-stupid sisters to deal with, and if I was at the library or reading a book, I was no bother, so she sent a note that basically said “let the little jackass read whatever the fuck he wants to”, and from then on my fate was sealed). I read everything by Heinlein that library (or the next two closest branches) had before I was 11, and that includes _Stranger in a Strange Land_, the cut version of _The Puppet Masters_ and _Glory Road_. (I didn’t understand some of the bits until a few years later when rereading brought on some real AHA! moments). But with my carte blanche, I also read a ton of other stuff that my “peers” had no grasp of. Like just about the entire sets of the Time-Life Science and Nature series’ (the volume on Mathematics set my course for the rest of my school years).
I read Wells, Verne, E.E. Smith from the “adult” section interspersed with Norton, Silverberg from the juvenile section. (Having access to the adult section didn’t stop me from going the rest of the way through the alphabet of science fiction on the kids’ side).
That started back during the school year that included that little incident at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
Every time I enter a public library I haven’t been in before, I immediately check the juvenile (and “young adult”) shelves for Heinlein books (that often gets me followed, since guys with as much greying hair and beard as I carry must only be there for nefarious purposes [I make Aqualung look like an executive, except that I'm generally recently bathed]). Haven’t seen one in well over two decades from California to New Jersey to Montana. Few if any in the adult section.
Work at public school. Salvaged Heinlein juveniles being retired from school library to my class library.
Kids I work with are greatest. Even gangsters polite. Most fun is getting out of way of kids trying to learn instead of waiting to get taught. fun is getting preppies, fronchis (don’t ask), geeks, jocks, goths, punks, witches, Christians, rich, poor, anglophones, hispanophones, foreign students from Fort Bliss, and some really colorful types in one place.
There’s an old saying to the effect that “the REAL ‘golden age’ of science fiction is twelve.”
If you’re not hip-deep in SF by the time you’re twelve, you’re doomed to live your entire life as a friggin’ mundane, and therefore to hell with you.
Going back to original topic it is amazing how often the liberal left deliberately refuses to hear what one is saying, and more importantly since I’ve gone the rounds with people over this, admit that they may not be hearing what you are trying to say. The willful refusal to see Starship Troopers as anything other than a fascist militarist screed rather than the embracing of personal responsibility is one example. The insistence on their part that Roark’s refusal to let his vision be corrupted represents some kind of tyrannical imposition of his will on others in Fountainhead is another.
There is no difference between shouting someone else down and deliberately distorting messages,as is done to Henlein and Rand.
I just love the shower scene in the original movie where the black girl says the reason she joined gthe army is “I just want to have a baby!”. What a crock of shit- I’ll have to re-read the book tomorrow to be sure, but I think the figure was something like 80% of people weren’t voting citizens. If 80% of your populace isn’t breeding, how do you manage to grow and prosper?? How do you fight an interstellar war?? Thank whatever deity that doesn’t exist that Henlein didn’t see the pile of crap that Nazi bastard made of his book CELEBRATING FREEDOM AND SACRIFICE, not praising fascism and authoritarianism.
Neale - I just kinda loved the shower scene for its own self.
What was that line of Neil’s from _The Probability Broach_?
“Forget ‘redeeming social value’ — dirty pictures are _fun._ When I die, they can scatter my ashes over a nudist colony.”
You dirty old man!! But I agree!
As much as I hate to admit it, perhaps given the events of the early Twentyfirst Century at this time we need Veerhooven’s distorted vision of Starship Troopers, especially the third movie (which went direct to video and TNT) as a warning against a totalitarian war state more than we need Heinlein’s message “celebrating freedom and sacrifice.”
That said, it would be nice to see ST remade right, the way SciFi Channel remade Dune.
Al- since we are headed towards that totalitarian war state, you may just get your wish!
What’s this headed stuff? When my pessimism kicks in I feel like we are game on a hunting preserve. Most of us don’t get harvested but every now and then. ….
What worries me is that this generation’s g’g”g’g'g’g'great grandchildren will be free range cattle, and theirs feedlot cattle.
Here’s hoping our bloodlines stay wild or at least go feral.
As an eternal optimist, I tend to believe that “There will be war!” and we (the good guys) will win it if it gets any worse, and that we are more likely to wake up and fire the assholes, starting in November, taking back our country without bloodshed. However, I had a bumper sticker on my car (in 1983) that said “Make love, not war, but be prepared for both” and another that said “Peace through superior firepower”, both of which I tend to follow. Needless to say, being married, I don’t pack a rubber in my wallet, but otherwise, I think I’m doing quite fine!
Sadly, going back to original point let us consider the most human tasting animal, the pig. When one starts squealing that they are in a slaughter house a bunch of others start squealing as loudly as possible thinking that they going to get to eat bacon, not be eaten as bacon.
Peope who shout down their political opponents are setting themselves up to become long pig.
I tend to just make bacon! But I get your point, Al.
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Al, regarding the cinematic _Dune_ movie, you’ve made me recall critic Darrel Schweitzer’s comment at a convention panel to the effect that the film appeared to show the conflict between House Atreides and House Harkonnen as an interstellar war between competing schools of interior decoration.
Never been able to get that impression out of my mind, and I can’t even re-read the bloody novel without thinking of it.
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When one considers the quality of the source material, the talent of the actors, and the talent of the director in volved, it is clear that the mid Eighties version of Dune is a nominee for “platonic ideal of screwing the pooch. The only known cure is to watch the Scifi Channel version.
It pains me greatly to say so, but I disagree vehemently with you gents about the first _Dune_ movie. Understand that the ideal length of fiction to make a movie from is a short story. Starting with a massive tome like _Dune_ is a hell of a challenge. Raphaela de Laurentiis did an heroic job.
The casting was perfect. That snippy remark about interior decoration is something that shouldn’t be passed on by anyone with both an X and a Y chromosome in place.
Understand that the original movie was nine hours long and got cut down to “theatrical” length, which weakened it immensely. There have been several re-releases over the years, each one longer and each one better. The one narrated by Frank Herbert (uncredited) instead of Virginia Madsen, and featuring the drowning of a worm is the best so far.
I am intimately familiar with the highly sucky Sci-Fi Channel version of both _Dune_ and _Children of Dune_, which have their merits, but the casting is perfectly horrible. The guy who plays Paul is a pouty little bitch.Think Bruce McGill as Stilgar in the first version versus the squinty little runt they chose for the second one? Think Sean Young at her most beautiful as Chani versus the ugly duckling in the second version. Think Francesca Annis as Jessica versus Betty Bland — although Alice Krige played Jessica in _Children_, and that was cool.
Finally, _neither_ of these productions got ornithopters right. The only ones who did that were the Hildebrands.
And that’s the truth. Thbthbthbthb.
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Neil, I’ve seen three versions of the de Laurentiis film of _Dune_, but never the one with Frank Herbert’s narration. I don’t know where the hell to find it. I tend strongly to agree with you that the longer the version found, the better it tends to be. I’d like to get my hands on the whole nine-hour megillah, if I could.
Hm. My own recollection of seeing the movie in theatrical release was that when Linda Hunt presented to Lady Jessica saying “I am the Shadout Mapes,” there were gasps of recognition from several places in the audience (including mine), and then the character effectively disappeared, showing up again only when Paul preserves her from getting killed by the hunter-seeker and in the corridor when Duke Leto comes across her death-rattling on the floor. BIG disappointment.
The other part of the film I thought they got horribly wrong (apart from the ornithopters) was with regard to the stillsuits. Leaving the head bare? Wearing ‘em without robes or cloaks, like half-assed wetsuits? Sheesh.
As for Darrell Schweitzer’s “schools of interior design” crack, you’ve got to think about the art direction in the de Laurentiis movie, the ways in which the scenes set on Giedi Prime (House Harkonnen) differ from those on Caladan (House Atreides), the lighting, the furnishings, the interiors and exteriors, the modes of dress and even the hairstyles.
The *stylistic* differences are blatantly designed to convey greatly differing impressions of the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, and I’ve got to credit Schweitzer with a perceptive - if in retrospect pretty obvious - appreciation of what de Laurentiis was trying to do.
I’m also a bit irritated at the ways in which the perfidious Baron Harkonnen was portrayed in the de Laurentiis film. Frank Herbert made the fat bastid a far more menacing and hateful character than has ever been shown in any of the movies, and that edge is badly lost. In de Laurentiis’ version, he comes across as an electively pustulent freak with a kill fetish (where the hell did _that_ come from?) instead of being a flaming pedophile who likes his little boys sedated for ease of access, and instead of being a small-for-his-age young teen-aged kid at the outset of the story (and therefore a potential target for his unknown-to-him grandfather’s predatory sexual attentions), Paul Atreides is a man full-grown.
As I recall when reading the novel back in ‘66, a big part of the draw in the early part of the book was the “Jim Hawkins” effect of the much-too-young Paul Atreides being obliged to take over responsibility for his mother’s survival in the wake of the Harkonnen/Sardukar attack, including getting himself through a Fremen death duel in which he winds up with his opponent’s woman and sons as spoils thereof.
Heady stuff for a reader fresh out of the Heinlein juveniles, I’ll tell ya.
You’re right that short stories make better theatrical movies than do novels, though I’ve read that the absolute best short fiction works for film adaptation tend to be novelettes (defined by SFWA as having a word count between 7,500 and 18,000).
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Richard, do you have “official” lengths for all the other forms? Rex May wants me to invent something he calls a “novelito” and I kind of like the idea, myself.
FWIW, all the planets had different styles, as you would expect them to, just as a Chinese temple looks different from a basilica and they both look different from a mosque. I can close my eyes and see the differing architecture of Caladan, Giedi Prime, Arrakis, and the Emperor’s planet Kaitan. I think they did a good job.
I will go see anything Linda Hunt’s in. She’s the only reason I watch NCIS Junior.
And btw, Jose Ferrer was a much better Emperor than Giancarlo Giannini — although I liked Irulan better in the Sci-Fi series. Madsen was kind of wooden, regrettably.
By pointing out what went wrong with the Eighties Dune, bad cutting by the studio, you’ve told me who “screwed the pooch,” and how. Again, I’ve always wondered why, given the talent involved, this version of Dune had the problems it did. The Scifi version did in fact involve less talented workers, but was at least edited by someone who bothered to read the book and was actually trying to get it right, as opposed to getting it downto an acceptable time say.
BTW it is interesting to not that the studio pulled support for The Puppet Masters in the mddle of production and that the producer and director had to finish the movie with this lack of money, support services, etc.. You can actually tell which parts were filmed with and without proper studio support.
Getting away from SF topics kinda sorta, if you’ve seen movie SOB you’ll know problem faced by producers/directors once studios start playing with movies on cutting table. Ayn Rand had to really keep after studios not to butcher the Fountainhead on her.
Have commented elsewhere on movies and even hymns getting bowlderized. the number KTLA did on Fiddler on the Roof comes to mind. This is a form of shouting down that i find inexcusable.
The comment made by the UTEP student back when comes to mind, “They had their say, now we’re having ours.” Okay, so he was justifying a violent counterdemonstation, but the point is correct. One side speaks its piece, the other side(s) bring up counter arguments, the refuted are allowed to reply, all this preferably in a polite and respectful manner.
Hey, kids, this showed up today in the Repairman Jack forum. Do note the date on the article. It’s fun, though.
http://www.locusmag.com/2010/April1st_AtlasSequel.html
One point that people seemed to have missed in ‘Avatar’: regardless about the blather of human beings having killed their own planet, the point still remains in that movie that human being had space travel, and the Navii did not. Nor did the Navii seem likely to develope it. Unless the trees on Navii suddenly start flying at relativistic speeds, in 4 billion years, there will likely still be human beings, but not Navii, as they won’t be able to escape the heat death of their own sun.
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Neil, regarding the official SFWA definitions of various fiction lengths, go to http://www.sfwa.org/archive/awards/faq.htm#6 for the entry on this subject.
I’ll recap it here:
>>> Short Story - 7,499 words or fewer
>>> Novelette - 7,500 to 17,499 words
>>> Novella - 17,500 to 39,999 words
>>> Novel - 40,000 words or more
I assume that you’re not a member of the association despite your hellacious qualifications for active status, and probably for much the same reason that I am not a member of the AMA.
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Ann, we can’t even reach our moon. (I’ve met five of the Twelve). When the Sun expands, our descendants will be huddling in caves, if the government leaves them any.
Unless a Singularity happens. That’s what I’m hoping for.
In an exercise of free speech i must refer to a discussion in an earlier thread re whether one should stop to gather one’s breeches on the way to a fight.
Consider Amanda Peete in The Whole Nine Yards.
The unnconscionable suppression of her effective use of clothing (none at all) to win a gun fight and help her lover in a second on nonpremium tv is reckless waste of an effective teaching scene in a movie.
Fun and practical scenes!!
A lot of specialists argue that mortgage loans help a lot of people to live the way they want, because they can feel free to buy needed stuff. Moreover, different banks give secured loan for different classes of people.
I gotta say, though, I was really disappointed at how she looked naked. Never cared much for flapjacks. more the pomegranate type.
Or canteloupe.
I did not say this
I was not here.
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Ann Morgan writes about _Avatar_ and gives me to think about the humans seeking a resource on the home planet of the Navii.
Are the Hollywood clowns so totally mundane that they don’t have any grasp of simple technological fact?
Let’s say you have a civilization sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar COMMERCIAL travel. They can afford to haul raw materials over cosmic distances, and they find a star system where a particular mineral resource is present in commercially valuable quantity.
If it’s gonna be on the surface of a planet in that star system, it’s going to be all to hellangone over the rest of the system, meaning it’s going to be possible to find it in the various planetesimals floating around in microgravity, and in those locations it’s going to be a HELLUVA lot easier to exploit.
Just as once we get out of this bloody gravity well called “Earth,” kiss the world’s metal markets as well as the various energy oligopolies good-bye.
What can be found on the High Frontier is a helluva lot more than just zero-gee sex.
For this reason, why again is it that the evil, bad, horribly nasty human beings in that stupid movie HAD to go down and mingle with the Navii in the first place?
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Because humans are the ultimate bad guys to liberals. Just as liberals can’t keep their hands off our wallets, and conservatives can’t keep their religions off our backs, humans can’t keep their hands off ANYTHING owned by another! (not that I agree with them, but they themselves are proof that many humans ARE that way!) Not having seen the movie, and really having little interest in it until it costs $2 or less to show it to the whole family, I can’t speculate on any other reasons, Rich.
Al- not having even HEARD of the Whole Nine Yards OR Amanda Peete, I can’t respond to that one. Sorry. Was it worth renting or whatever??? (if she’s a flapjack or a cantalope, machts nicht, since my PREFERENCE is larger, but as Manny says in TMIHM, there are no ugly woman, just lots of variations) That admirable sentiment said, Nancy Pelosi IS one ugly bitch. But it took many surgeries to get that look perfect! she is the Borg Queen gone ugly.
Dude, Whole 9 Yards is incredibly funny movie. Even if Ms. Peete does nothing for you in BD suit you will appreciate how settles take pants to a gunfight issue.
Must rent or catch on uncensored cable/satellite station.
Like I say example of how censorship suppresses valuable info of educational nature, in this case gunfight tactics.
Al, I am male, she is female and naked. Therefore, she WILL do SOMETHING for me. I’ll watch it soon (schedules permitting).
BTW, stop saying mean thigs about the Borg Queen! She has not done enough evil to desrve comparison to NP.
Al- note that I said “Borg Queen GONE UGLY” meaning too many surgeries with no redeeming social or esthetic values. The BQ liked Data, therefore, she wasn’t all bad.
Ann.. once the Navii start trading with us they get all the tech that’s fit to buy. If their tree tech has a market then they can trade for interstellar drives.
Neale, that’s what torrents are for.
Actually, Amanda Peet’s tactics reminded me of something Modesty Blaise used to do, called “The Nailer.” When she had to keep a few enemies off-guard for those few critical seconds, she would strip to the waist and walk in on them unexpectedly. While they were gauping, either she or her partner Willie Garvin would take them out.
RE male reactions: Let us never forget Mary’s technique for IDing the hagridden in Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.
DAMN, Al, I had forgotten that one, kinda works the opposite of the “shock’em then kill’em” tactic i favor, but it sure worked!
Eric- Who is Modesty Blaise, and where do I find her? It sounds like a good read.
Re gunfighting in general: It is worth noting that when Wild Bill Hickok and Wes Harding shared the streets of Dodge they were extremely courteous to eachother. In Tombstone Arizona the only member of the Cowboys whom people did not like was Ike Clanton. He apparently was quite rude and had a habit of running off at the mouth and making threats. It was his success in getting the Earps and Doc Holliday to take his threats against them that triggered the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He survived while other better liked men died.
Most descriptions of the gun fighters indicates that the majority were courteous men at least when dealing with fellow pros, aware that they had to back up their words with force. Most of the descriptions of them behaving as bullies almost always lead to evidence of bluffs to control non pistoleros.
“An armed society is a polite society.” Armed men dealing with other armed men (and women) are notably courteous. It is slaves, who have nothing but bluff and the threat of riot to back their words, and masters who do not expect to face effective resistance who behave rudely and bully others.
The students who blocked Ann Coulter from talking in Ottawa probably imagine themselves among the latter group,
Correction to above/Wild Bill and Wes Hardin did not share the streets of Dodge, they shared the streets of Abilene.
Also please note that courtesy is a way of telling people you are not about to initiate an acto f aggression against them. The collapse of courtesy means that we are constantly challenging (and being challenged) people to fight.
This of course leads to repressive (mis)use of force by the authorities and enslavement.
Neale, Modesty Blaise was in an English comic strip way back the fuck when. There was a movie based on the strip. She at least once that I recall used the sight of her chest to “shock and awe” the lesser bad guys to get in to the big bad guy’s hideout. (My memory is vague, I lost the compilation during the breakup of my first marriage, my ex-co-husband might have it, but the chicklet he married next probably tossed it). There may have been more recent compilations of the strip, I’ve been out of the field for a few decades.
Modesty Blaise was in a long-running British comic strip (with occasional *gasp* NUDITY, so it wasn’t run much in the US) as well as a good series of novels by the comic strip’s creator, Peter O’Donnell. There are compilations of the strips available here and there, and AFAIK most of the novels are available either in-print or from Abebooks.
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Mention of a British comic strip in which “occasional *gasp* NUDITY” had appeared - thereby rendering it impossible to “run much in the US - gives one to think about computer graphics programs which have achieved great sophistication in the almost photographic-quality production of images that enable all sorts of fantasies to be indulged.
And I ain’t talking *Avatar* here.
One of the standard lines I’ve read about the phony “left-right spectrum” is that the authoritarians on the dexter side are more interested in limiting peoples’ liberties with regard to so-called “social” freedoms (the ability to read, write, and otherwise depict one’s ideas, the ability to comport oneself in private and in public as suits one’s peculiar limerant inclinations, the ability to worship - or NOT worship - as suits one’s vision of the supernatural, etc.) while the sinister types want a choke-chain on the societal atom’s economic freedoms, and to thieve from the private citizen whatever pittance he’s allowed to earn by dint of such activities in truck and barter as he’s permitted.
Both the the righties and the lefties take exception to naughty pictures (and even occasionally join hands in a censoring “kumbaya moment” over written stuff) on the grounds that photographic and cinematographic materials necessarily involve real live human beings, and when criminalized sexual behavior is presented, the creation of these materials requires that real pudenda be approximated (or otherwise stimulated) in a real place at a real time, and thus these visual materials are evidentiary of a real crime.
How it becomes a real crime to reproduce, sell or give away, purchase or otherwise receive, possess, or view such evidence of a real crime I leave to the explanation of others. In many decades as a military history buff I have viewed starkly explicit photographs of criminal actions on the part of government officers, and for some of these crimes a tiny number of these officers - mostly German and Japanese - have gone to the hangman’s noose.
These photographs evidentiary of crimes far more horrible than what are considered to be “morals” offenses by someone like Bill Clinton (who apparently sees nothing sexual in the act of irrumation per se) are NOT criminal to print and publish in history books.
Today, graphic imaging software that can be run on existing home computers (and Babbage alone knows what’s coming in the near future as processing technology continues to increase capabilities while reducing costs) enables people with very little knowledge of programming to produce both still and motion outputs depicting anything and everything they damn’ well please, including the sorts of photo re-touching once the province of only the most highly-skilled government “black propaganda” deception artists.
Right now, the government-dominating left and the government-aspiring right both seem firmly to hold that it should be criminal to possess photographs of sexual activities which are *malum prohibitum* because making those photographs involves a violation of the rights of some or all of the participants in these actions, and the acquisition or retention of these photographs constitute a continuing violation of those participants’ rights even though the photographs might have been taken so many years ago that not only have statutory limitations run their course but the participants themselves have died of old age.
Either that or such possession is hard evidence of some sort of criminal intention on the part of the possessors, and that itself is sufficient reason for such people to be subjected to criminal sanctions, without regard to any real-world actions which had violated any other person’s rights to life, to liberty, or to property.
Can you say “ThoughtCrime”?
Now we get to computer graphic imaging (CGI) software capable of translating even the artistically inept individual’s perverted fantasies of whips and chains and melted butter into gleaming three-dimensional representations of strange activities between busty females in Girl Scout uniforms and gibbering fluorescent green goblins with phallic appendages so gargantuan that blood transfusions are required to enable erections.
None of this could possibly be real, and while the “Once a philosopher” rule might enable an encounter with such an image to evoke arousal in the loins of even the most utterly orthosexual individual, just what the hell might be truly criminal about the creation, dissemination, or possession of such a JPG or GIF?
Okay, so we saw in those Modesty Blaise comic strips the sketching of “occasional *gasp* NUDITY” rendering them impossible to lay before the great mass of the American pee-pul.
Not a photograph, but rather a cartoon.
So what’s likely to happen as CGI technology continues its inexorable advance and we have the 21st Century equivalents of cartoons - far more realistic-looking, their contents going beyond the spectacular imaginings even of those Tijuana comic book artists long lauded for their depictions of Popeye and Olive Oyl in activities which defied not only the laws of Arkansas but also the laws of physics - being produced in the basements of sexually frustrated adolescents all over the planet, and distributed by those wonderful new media of the Internet, which “fairness doctrine” legislation has about as much real chance of choking off as Prohibition had of making these United States a nation of tee-totalers?
See how this ties in with “The Hypocrisy of the Left’s Philosopher-Thugs”?
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Extremely good argument, Richard. I have long thought that the day will come when we can see Orson Wells as Nero Wolfe and Cary Grant as Archie Goodwin and not be able to tell that it’s a cartoon.
Of course that means we can see Ava Gardner doing a dozen impossible things before breakfast, too. On a trapeze, with a birdcage and a saxophone.
The females in my life have recently acquired the whole “RockBand” game setup and are pursuing it furiously. What’s interesting to me is that you can tailor the performers to an astonishing degree. They each have “avatars” (there’s another perfectly good word in danger of being ruined). My wife’s, a drummer, not only looks like her, but is very sexy.
You can see where some folks think this might be going if you catch the Bruce Willis movie _Surrogates_, panned by professional simpletons unable to take in the film’s high concept. Sometimes I think critics should be required to get a license to write about science fiction. But, as usual, I digress.
El Neil wrote:
[Sometimes I think critics should be required to get a license to write about science fiction.]
Actually, they should be required to learn to read before they start writing.
I dunno what’s happened to this software, but both here and over in the response pages for the comics, the interface is really fucked up.
El Neil wrote:
[They each have “avatars” (there’s another perfectly good word in danger of being ruined). My wife’s, a drummer, not only looks like her, but is very sexy.]
If the avatar looks remotely like Cathy, it’s sexy. Don’t tell me about Ryllie’s avatar — it was difficult (but not impossible, I may be a perv but I have self control) to keep my hands off of her a dozen or so years ago when she ate my chili at Estes Park and there was a recent picture posted over in the Repairman Jack forum so I know she’s grown up some. As I mentioned way back when, it’s a good thing she got her looks from Cathy. (Not that you’re unattractive by some standards, but those standards aren’t the ones I use).
Re Critics and reading: Read Heinlein’s comments in Number of the Beast.
The deliberate misunderwtanding applied by critics and people w/political agendas (agendae? eh.) to various authors’ work is amazing. Got stuck watching Disney Channel (!!!) show in which point is made one should not let committee mess with (and therefor mess up ) one’s work. Undoubtedly some of same people will complain of Ayn Rand pushing antisocial egotism in Fountainhead when Rourke won’t let committee mess with his design.
This consistent pattern of you’re wrong even when you agree with us that partisans of various philosophies engage in, especially to justify censoring political speech amazes me.
Neil- flog yourself with wet spaghetti!! Requiring a license for ANYTHING is immoral, you know that! What is wrong with you? You must not have been feeling well that day, that’s all I can figure. I will say that when a critic pans a book or movie I am far more likely to read/watch it.
Ward- you and my father would both get along well. He finds Ryllie and Cathy both to be wonderfull, sexy ladies. While I like’em both, Neil can attest that my ideal woman is, shall we say, nowhere near as petite as the Smith ladies. Annette is 5′9, 165, and strong as an ox (and MUCH better looking). Whereas I can put Cathy on my back, tuck Ryllie under one arm, and hike to the top of a fourteener (or could, the last time I saw them, back in ‘04, before the stroke). Sweet, wonderful, and sexy, but not to my preference. Although, as Manuel Garcia O’Kelly-Davis said “Is no such thing as ugly woman” (of course, creatures like Pelosi and Clinton ain’t human), so if I were single and so were they, I’d invite the senior Smith woman to, well….. (NOT Rhylla, sorry, but I met her a week after her birth, it would be too weird.)
OOOOKAYY, this is getting a little weird here. I think I’ll just go away for now.
Neale, any of the three women I’ve been married to (and I intend to remarry Mike Moslow’s widow after she’s had a year and a day to mourn and I don’t plan to divorce La Esposa — our original set-up lo those many years ago was a polyandry, I’m now self-confident enough to give polygyny a shot) outweigh the combination of Cathy and Rylla.
Yes, I fully agree with the words the Master spoke through the mouths of Manuel Davis and Scar Gordon on the subject of female beauty. The one thing I’ll miss when I leave New Jersey is Gunnison Beach — the sole clothing-optional facility up in New Hampshire is depressingly christian. If my restaurant actually makes a profit, I’ll see if I can find a few acres and set up a place that’s less hostile to non-believers.
Christian nudists? are you saying Christian nudists? The lt. commander would be proud as he predicted same in Number of the Beast.
I.e. petite women, my 2 daughters between them weigh less than i do (come in at 210 lb.). Eldest is about 5′2″, youngest about 4′11″.
Wife petite also, splits difference in height.
Then again I was 5′7″ at full height, shrunk down to 5′5″ due to shrinkage from age.
Petite for other just right for me.
@al greaser dwarves rule! lol
Shrinkage from age is much better than shrinkage from the cold!
Well, I’m 6-ft 3-in, wear a size 12 shoe. Then it became a size 13 shoe, then a 14. Wonder if I’m up to a 15 now? Height shrinks, shoe size lengthens? WTF?
Freakin’ Sir Isaac and his freakin’ apple. Compresses cartilage and causes weight bearing structures to spread!!
@Ken Growth hormone does that and everyone produces some throughout their lives. Hands, feet, jaws, cartilage (nose and ears) keeps growing, slowly, in adults.
So we have to put up with gravity and growth hormones. Rats. Lets not forget middle age spread. Seeing as normal life span in my families seems to be into late eighties early nineties, call that late youth spread!
By the way, is it just my kin and in laws or are people aging slower as well as living longer anymore?Not talking dye, makeup, botox etc. but actually aging slower (undyed hair takes longer to go white, able to participate in sports longer, hit menopause later, etc. etc.)
If so, how much is due to medtech, how much to genetics?
Don’t bother asking, Al. Obama will put a stop to it as quick as possible. I’ve heard it is due to more fertilizers allowing plants to return to a more complete mineral content, therefore enabling us to be healthier longer. I don’t know if it’s true, but fertilizers are evil pollutants AND ingredients for insurgent IEDs, so expect to see the regulated out of existance soon. That way the peasants will be properly stooped (halfway to the obsequious bow we should give our masters), AND lacking in gumption to oppose them.
A month and some from now, I will reach the record for longevity in the line that carries my Y chromosome. (I personally chose not to pass it on). Yes, many of my ancestors died of Black Lung (mining in Wales plus side effect of leaving Wales and going on to do what you knew best across the ocean, in West Virginia and Pennsylvania); the last two generations (who weren’t in the mines) died of side-effects from alcoholism — a major reason I chose not to breed (yeah, I’m a drunk, imagine how much of a surprise it was when I figured that out — two ex-wives and the current already had it figured) — it’s not proved heredity is certain, but why should I put a kid even if I was an ancestor)at risk? There’s also the arthritis, diabetes, the heart and kidney problems and a few other things from Mom’s side — might be inconvenient to me if I outlive my father, but I won’t willingly inflict shit like that on offspring. Even though I don’t like kids, even in pornography.
the reason I’m asking ties into how much more intolerable tyranny is if you have to survive it for a century instead of a generation or two.
Keeping the med tech part and not regretting it are two reasons to struggle to gain and preserve liberty.
Ward, you’re over-rating the importance of your Y chromosome. Lots of “male” characteristics (such as baldness ands behavioral traits) can be inherited from either side. Anyway, I wouldn’t let what is basically just a macro-molecule rule my life.
Robert, it’s not just the one chromosome (though it gives me an excuse). I actually don’t like children in general. (Some children in specific I love, yeah, El Neil’s daughter, Don Lobo Tigre’s kids, Greg Tivnan’s kids, hell, I can even tolerate one of my grand-nephews). But there isn’t a kid in this New Jersey town I wouldn’t rather use as a speed-bump (I don’t, because La Esposa used to be a nurse at Rahway Prison, I don’t wanna go there). Dad and grand-Dad were crappy fathers, I was never willing to take the risk of hurting a kid. I’m not a patient man and I can barely imagine what I’d have done to a nosy little snot like I was before I taught myself to read.
It is worth noting that many negative “male characteristics” are in fact masked recessives carried on the X (female) chromosome. Since the Y chromosome doesn’t carry the masking dominant such things as hemophilia, baldness, other “problems,” get expressed.
I was raised told that male baldness came from the mother’s side. I have a nephew (currently serving in Iraq) whose bald spot was the size of my spread hand before he was 25. His mother is my sister and there has been no baldness in the family (tracking the female line) for at least four prior generations.
Me, I may be growing bald eventually. The hair from my head barely reaches my shoulder blades, my beard won’t grow past my nipples. But due to the poor track record of men in my line even reaching their 50s the statistics are iffy.
I was speaking of male pattern baldness, not the weird stuff.
Ward, certainly hitting children is wrong for any reason, so if you can’t control yourself then maybe you’re right not to have any. Then again, patience is a learned trait: try being a computer helpdesk person or a business owner (with dickhead customers calling from time to time) and then tell me you can’t learn patience.
Robert- Hitting children for any reason is NOT wrong. Beatingthem is, but a good spanking is occasionally necessary. It is the lack of parental discipline (adult delinquency per Colonel Dubois’ definition) that is leading DIRECTLY towards the decline and fall of America. Without a little discipline while still animals (under 5-6) a child will never learn self-discipline. Now,some kids do not require discipline often, or learn it without an occasional whack on the ass, but most (especially boys) need an attitude adjustment.
Ever since the Boogie Man came out on international TV and scared my elder daughter into near perfect behavior until she turned 18 and was no longer mine to raise I have had zero problems with either of my kids (elder daughter now 32). Am thus not able to give advice on how to discipline kids as method difficult (more like all but impossible) to duplicate.
Come from part of world where legal attitude is “Just don’t break bones or draw blood.” Actually not that simplistic but…
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Ward, I grew through my hairline early in the third decade of life, and inasmuch as ALL grown men on both sides of my extensive Italian family show precisely the same hair pattern, it neither surprised nor upset me. I only have to look at my scalp when I shave in the morning, and if nobody else likes the look of it….
Well, it’s not as if I ever gave a damn, right?
I still like the old joke, though. Frontal pattern baldness indicates high levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex, where abstract thinking takes place. Frontal baldness is the sign of a great thinker.
Coronal baldness develops because of high limbic activity, the roots dying off because the centers of sensual function - especially sex - are in high use.
And if you’ve got both frontal and coronal baldness (the way I do), it’s because you just THINK you’re sexy.
Anent little kids, I rather like ‘em, but not in large numbers. I note among my own offspring as well as grandchildren that there seems to be a geometric rather than an arithmetic progression in rowdiness. One kid yields x noise and potential for misbehavior. Two kids do not yield 2 times x in terms of noxious outputs but rather x squared, and so on.
Hm. Not unlike dealing with drunken frat boys in the Emergency Department. I keep telling my daughter that her nine-year-old son could pledge for Tau Kappa Epsilon tomorrow. Probably hold his liquor better’n most pledges, too.
I gave up spanking kids very early on. The occasional hand-swat is advisable when they’re pre-verbal (negative conditioning to prevent death or maiming), but the minute they can understand what I say, I expect ‘em to behave like human beings.
I’ll give ‘em reasons, and I’ll do it in detail if they request it, but I do it so damned freely that they know not to question something if their purpose in questioning is to get out of compliance. There is ALWAYS a good reason - never “Because I say so!” - in everything I direct them to do.
I don’t think I’ve ever ordered a kid to do something (or not do something) just for my own convenience. One of the reasons I really don’t have a problem with my grandchildren, and my wife and our kids invariably butt heads with the little vermin.
Why is it that parents and even grandparents tend to see kids - especially in the first decade of life - as physical and moral extensions of their own grown-up persons, anyway? They’re not, of course. It’s the old “under carefully controlled conditions…” line.
The organism in question is gonna do just goddam well what it pleases. The only thing you can do with a child is engage its mental faculties early and often, and be prepared for misadventures.
Rather like having medical students follow you around.
I also keep my expectations low, and try to praise whatever comes along that’s praiseworthy, even if the kid didn’t deliberately set out to seek my favor. The little buggers get hammered every waking minute for doing this or not doing that, and their parents wonder why the munchkins habitually tune them out by the time they’re three years old.
Gawd. Biological reproductive capacity does NOT automatically come with common sense.
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It is mankind’s misfortune that the product Common Sense in a Can only exists in the fevered imagination of a psychotic few. I could use a couple of cases to dwt met though the average day. On a really good day that is.
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Anyone who has ever had to clean a public restroom (run a medical practice as a solo practitioner and that job will fall to you no matter how many flunkies you might hire) has much experience to convince that there is NO common sense in the can.
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okay, so how did get me through the day become dwt met through the day?
Good one R.D.!
@ R. D. Bartucci
“The occasional hand-swat is advisable when they’re pre-verbal (negative conditioning to prevent death or maiming) ”
Not really. If they are at risk such as standing on a table then just pick them up. Sufficient restraint is not hitting.
I must point out that to my knowledge my eldest daughter’s first involvement w/ punitive force was when she slapped her aunt for spilling a soda. My kid was about one at the time. slap was more of symbolic gesture, but still…
Restraint means you’re always there to keep kid from doing dumb thing. Low force hand swat warns kid this gets you hurt, don’t do it!!
Robert- reading “Starship Troopers” by Robert A Heinlein might get you to see my point. If not, it’s still a great read. But I’ll still have to opt for the occasional ass swat for a child. The quickest re-inforcement of behavior is negative. Hell, I got a couple of doozies from my father in my life, and I can still, to this day, tell you EXACTLY what I’d done wrong, exactly why I got punished, and still agree with the punishment.
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I dislike clouting little kids because I’ve seen ‘em emulate the practice (witness the girl who “…slapped her aunt for spilling a soda” above).
Though it brings me to mind of an episode with my oldest granddaughter (now 19) who, at the age of three, wanted me to take her out into the back yard to play.
“I can’t right now, kid.”
“Poppi, I want to go outside.”
“Not just this minute.”
Stern look. “One…two….”
Oh, damn. Favorite “do it or else” litany used by her mom and both her grandmothers.
What could I do? Out in the back yard we went.
She didn’t know how cute she was. She sure as hell wasn’t trying to be cute. She was SERIOUS. This was how her world dealt with her, ergo….
Children seem to me to demonstrate the damnedest sense of what’s equable, what’s balanced, what’s fair and lawful. They muddle things up a great deal of the time, but their INTENTION is always to maintain consistency. They’ve got a nose for precedent like a jurist, and you’d best be bloody careful about whatever precedents you set.
Even with a three-year-old.
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You mean like my daughter, she “arrested” her brother, cuffed his hands behind him (plastic cuffs) and shot him in the back of the head! She was 4 at the time! Turned out, my sons played “Bad Cop”after my eldest read them a scene from a book he wasn’t supposedto share till the boys were a little older. Monkey see, Monkey do!!
Nickie had never experienced interpersonal violence before she slapped her aunt. Maybe saw on TV? Or “instinctive behavior”?
All I know is she learned her manners from raising cats as much as from people.
Shoots down my trust in intrinsic kindness and pacifism of humans. Mind you same kid grew up to become physician and has resume to date that sounds like excessive daddy boasting.
Still, am convinced she was just doing what “came natural” invested lots of effort to make sure she grew up into nice person.
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Neale, with that bullet to the back of the head bit, your daughter sounds less like your average American government thug and more like NKVD at frolic in the Katyn Forest.
Er, you aren’t planning to buy her a Tokarev any time soon, are you?
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Robert, most of my adult life has been spent in tech support and system administration. Yes, I can be patient. This last several years I’m a clerk.It doesn’t pay as well, but there’s a lot less liver damage.
No, but I have one, Rich.
??? ????? ?? ??????????!!!!!…
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I also first encountered Heinlein in seventh grade - Red Planet. I’ve been reading and collecting RAH ever since.
Re “his fear constitutes some kind of claim against the rights of others” — that’s how they do it in Holland. Somali immigrant and then-member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali was evicted from her apartment on the grounds that she was a target of terrorists (true) and this caused other residents in that apartment building to be afraid for their lives (plausible) and therefore she had to be kicked out.
A court agreed.
Need I mention that this is one of the many countries where self-defense is illegal?