My Archives: February 2005

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Mungo Bush

Please read Reuters' (UK) following "Oddly Enough" article first:
Bush once taken for "Scottish boy"
and consider the following words from a man "loopier than a rattlesnake in a hula-hoop" (Brad Spangler) quoted in it:
And I'm riding a bike, taking this one sheep, you know, from here to there and I said OK, fine, and a big tour bus stops. And they got off and a woman with a Texas accent said, 'look at the little Scottish boy.'
That supposedly was at age 14.

Now at close to 60 this reads:

And my chauffeur is riding a Cadillac, taking these many sheep, you know, from America to Iraq and I said OK, fine, and a big limo, a Rolls, stops. And another chauffeured man got off and with a British accent said, 'look at the big cute Texan boy.'

At that level it's only fair, as people might say, let's say, in Blair, E Nebraska, or Blairsville, central Pennsylvania, two towns of which the second, in 1960, had 4930 inhabitants, only one less than the former. Did he move east by any chance? Or maybe even much further east than even Iraq? And never returned. Killed like a sheep, if we look at the calendar...

~

PS: Now really, my innuendos above indicate that my intuitions are again not of that worst sort that needs a recall action like those car companies so often have to engage in. You must read this: Little Bo Creep and the Pulling of Wool by Eileen Smith. I discovered this link only a good hour after having posted "Mungo Bush", thanks to Brad who emailed it to me.

Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 10:12 AM GMT+1 [Link]

Friday, February 11, 2005

Catastrophes and Coffee

I am drinking coffee every second light-year, so it is not coffee that is ruining me, neither health nor purse. But my websites do. Both health and purse. Every time there is a catastrophe at home, and it is not my health, it is the computer. And I have to go to internet cafés, those virtual coffeehouses, sometimes the virtual one combined with a real one, and have to spend money there on access and Coke with coffeine and get to inhale as an extra the smoke of all those fervent surfers and the virtual (or not so!) "smoke" from their concurrent cellphone use. But otherwise it is a very pleasant international atmosphere with people well beyond average. Cosmopolitan individuals, a large percentage of students, with their often attractive bodies in one room, but their minds in any imaginable virtual place of that cybersphere.

Right now I am sitting in one of those temples, as the catastrophe has hit again, three days ago. At the very worst moment, of course. And I am working here only to code and upload the most urgent and important texts. As I am starting to get an headache from all that smoke, I'll make it short. You can read more in "The Exterritorial Imperative" blog at panarchism.info, where I had posted ahead of this.

The sensation you will discover there and your further musings on that discovery are very likely to make you think of two things mentioned in this blog: (a) the comment just preceding regarding Ayn Rand and Objectivism and my comment "Shame on you, Lindsay Perigo!!!!!!" a few entries earlier (b) Wendy McElroy's column of this week On Handcuffed and Felonious Children. With the advent of the legal revolution I am alluding to, peace and tolerance and individual choice will have done away with those conflicts and those never ending battles to impose one's own political truth upon all fellow men...

Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 07:37 PM GMT+1 [Link]

Wednesday, February 2, 2005

Ayn Rand

I after all did not want to miss the one hundredth anniversary today of her birth. As an homage to her, I would like to draw your kind attention to the essay

Ayn Rand at 100

co-editor Cathy Young has published on the Reason Online website. You should not miss it, as you hardly could read any better anniversary text about Ayn Rand than this essay by a columnist for the Boston Globe who, like Rand, came to America from the Soviet Union, she at the age of 17, Rand at the age of 21. There are a good number of links to other stories about Rand on that page, but I also recommend, on today's occasion, to read the shorter essay with the same title Ayn Rand at 100 by David Boaz published on the site of the Cato Institute.

I myself came for the first time into contact with the writings of Ayn Rand, when in 1965 I had founded The American Bookstore in Luxemburg, which was very much visited by American students, either tourists that Icelandic Airlines, then operating the first discount direct flight from the United States to Europe (my shop had ads in the flight magazine) and pouring several hundreds of those students a day into Luxemburg (at a time when the U.S. dollar still had an extremely favourable exchange rate for American tourists...), or, later, resident students of the American Miami University. The bookstore being well stocked, had of course also several titles by Ayn Rand, notably Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in paperback editions. I remember a couple of Ayn Rand fans who came in, touched the subject and tried to proselytize me. When they had gone, I took the books from the shelves, looked into them and happened to run into enough passages abhorrent to me (on gold for instance) that I put the books back to the shelves where they belonged. My present opinion is much more favourable, but has not changed completely. There is some balance between my positive and my negative attitude towards that grande dame and this balance will no doubt continue to change in the future. At least, I am working on it. After all, I sometimes enjoy the writings of Chris Matthew Sciabarra and an astonishingly large number of other Objectivist authors (rather the less orthodox ones, as you might have guessed...), but there are also, among Objectivists, the other ones, who can be a pain in the acronym!

~~~

As I am with the subject of great essays that deserve more than a recommendation: I happen to read two more today, that are just perfect:

~~~

Finally, I read the two latest columns added to my Op-Ed page:

You can decide how much they fit in.

Now I am going to see if anyone of the team of my new cooperative blog "CB's fireplace" has thought of posting something about Ayn Rand today. Probably not.

And last, but not least, I am going to start the indexing of my local search engine, so that it may be up-to-date for your further searches. And then I will go to bed. Good night, Objectivists!

Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:01 PM GMT+1 [Link]

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