Ayn Rand and Chess

<LaurenceGlazier>

Thank you so much for sharing this bit of rare footage!

Garry Cooper - what an outstanding choice!!

And the construction site that appears near the end is exactly and every bit as I imagined it when reading the book. 

So no rape - but a compelling story of love and passion between two extremely powerful personalities. That's what I remembered as well. 

How do you laugh at Rand's notion of personal integrity--unless you have none yourself. She has heavily influenced my life with my integrity being a cornerstone of my existence. And to all the spineless wimps out therewho think that they have a right to not be offended, I laugh in your face. The stupidity of the masses offends me.

I will only point out that, despite what you may think about her life, books or ideas, probably she has far more readers than all those "prestigious philosophers"

I could also start an interesting discussion about how overrated some philosophers are, but I don't feel like being lynched today.

<GMBongholio> I must confess that the only thing I ever read from Rand was "The Fountainhead". 

Nevertheless, this very thread contains a letter from her, that I also never saw. You can't deny that she's making some good points in that letter :-)

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I'm now reading the rest of your post. My remarks:

1) I read Nietsche translated into Hebrew at age 19 - so I can't really comment on his German. I also read Rand in the Hebrew translation (The Fountainhead, which you actually praise). While I can't comment on her English in that book either - I can say that her writing style is typical of some American writers of the period - and Hemingway comes to mind. 

That lean, dry, almost journalistic way of writing, almost "reporting", letting the reader experience the feelings inherent in the story rather than pushing feelings on him...

Very informative, extremely concise (even though the book is long), with a single page occasionally containing several major shifts in the plot. You get a feeling that every sentence is there for a reason, and nothing is just "atmosphere" or "description" without a clear purpose. 

3) I had no idea that English was not Rand's native language!

4) I personally found Nietsche to be fresh and amusing, not particularly profound, sometimes a bit like a teenager with his obvious provocations (and mind you, I was one when I read him...) - and very often totally off (as you mention too). The poor thing died of Syphilis (I think) at age fifty-something, after being ill for many years.

Probably he wasn't an overwhelming success with women either (Syphilis seems to suggest that, ahem...). Mysoginic attitudes only get you so far (couldn't resist making this comment either). 

5) I find your English to be excellent, and I find you totally capable of having discussions and expressing yourself very well. English isn't my native tongue either...

6) Regarding your very last comment about Nietsche - I must confess that I'm very surprised. I certainly didn't read EVERYTHING he wrote, and probably there's more to know about him than I do. 

Funny, as from here it seems that it is conservatives, Trump foremost among them, who have too thin a skin to handle any sort of criticism of their ideas, and must instead resort to highly slanted news networks as their own personal safe spaces (or, in Putin's case, state-controlled media), and attack any who would disagree with them as the "Lugenpresse", or "professional protesters", rather than dialogue with them.

It's ironic that Ayn Rand would despise most of her followers.

Here is a nice little article about what kind of "person" Ayn Rand was and the type of people who admire her. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2009/11/how_ayn_rand_became_an_american_icon.html

I can tell you Ayn Rand's english is far superior to most native American collegiate graduates' abilities in the U.S.  Yes, her style in Atlas Shrugged and other prose of hers that I've read is not dynamic; her sentence structure is rather mundane.  Yet, her use of words and ability to articulate a theme throughout a paragraph without being overly redundant is what propels the reader to continue on.  She does get to the point, sometimes slower than most people nowadays would like---but, she gets there.  You can see this in her letter above.

Hemingway's Gatsby was far more laborious a read for me than Atlas Shrugged.  And, I got nothing from it other than a ✔ in my list of novels read.

"The Hunchback of Noter-Dame" by  Victor Hugo is another laborious read...

 F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote THE GREAT GATSBY not Hemingway.

My mistake. Fitzgerald's Gatsby. Thank you.

It's a straw man to say anyone believes they couldn't ...but "numerous" is rather relative.  Roughly a quarter of women in the U.S. do/will report/share being sexually assaulted at least once in their lives.  A quarter of men in the U.S. would be how many?  And how many false accusation cases against men are you going to be able to dig up...a dozen?  Maybe 1 in a thousand?  Maybe 1 in ten thousand?

Completely different magnitude of problem, and not comparable in any reasonable sense.

There is even an opinion that EVERY woman was sexually harrassed / assaulted at least (and probably much more than) once in her life. 

Men sitting too close, touching them in public places, or public transportation... making untoward comments. 

Some women avoid public transport for that reason!

In some countries, public transport is separate for men and for women by law, for that exact reason. 

Men generally don't know this and don't suspect this - it's generally pretty invisible to them, except when the perpetrator is being really obvious. 

I don't think that it's an "invented" problem. It's there and people do need to talk about it and denounce it. 

And false accusations also exist - and I would like to see the person making them get the sanction that their victim would get if the accusation were factual. 

I read her first but cannot recall when that was. The above letters seem to me to be paraphrases albeit well intentioned paraphrases. Anyone have a date for the first article she wrote?

The "Woke" simply  look at the size of an Ayn Rand novel and say, "TL;DR!"

❤Ayn Rand

A most excellent post.  Makes me love Chess even more.  I think I may focus still more now while playing Chess.  More aware of the safe and controlled confines of game I'm playing.  I so many times can get distracted just for a microsecond when I let my thoughts from the real world run through my mind.  I idea to not just understand I'm playing a game of Chess, but that I can fully indulge my minds concentration by fully believing in the fact that I am in a safe protected world with concrete rules I can trust.  This will be a good mind set to help focus on what i'm doing.