Cox and Forkum have a tribute to honor the centenary of the birth of Ayn Rand.

Tonight, I celebrate by reading "Atlas Shrugged".

Who is John Galt?

I read a book on Objectivism once, the one by Leonard Peikoff. I liked the idea, because it was supposed to be logical. Fantastic!

Or so it was initially, but as I read it, it started making these jumps. Eventually I realised it was basically another religion.

It wasn't that it wasn't fairly logical, because it was *fairly*, it's just that it wasn't totally logical, and the gaps weren't backed up by hard data...

For a philosophy based on supposed individual greatness, why is it that most of the time when I meet an objectivist I have feeling they'd be swabbing the head on the "B" Arc?

"B" Ark, I mean.

That did not make it any clearer. What is "B" Ark?

I think Andrew is alluding to Noah's ark. I take it that the "A" Ark is for the great people. The "B" Ark (as far as I know, Noah had just one Ark, but as an atheist, I could be wrong about that) is for the not-so-great people. Andrew seems to be saying that Objectivists would be on the lowly "B" Ark, and, what's more, they would be the dregs of that lowly ship (since Objectivists would be "swabbing the head," which is nautical terminology for "cleaning the bathroom").

In other words, Andrew has posted an ad hominem attack on Objectivists. This, of course, signifies that Andrew is a true great thinker because until now, no one has thought to launch an ad hominem attack against Objectivists. Andrew's is the first. Not only is it a first-of-a-kind, but it is immensely clever, combining a biblical allusion to the Ark and nautical terminology. No doubt Andrew would be on the "A" Ark, probably navigating for old Noah himself.

No, *not* Noah's ark.

It's a silly reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In that story, one of the side-plots had the planet of Golgafrincham wanting to get rid of some of their population- telephone sanitisers and hairdressers and such like. So they started to build 3 arks, the first for the people who did stuff, the third for the great thinkers, shaker and movers, and in the 2nd- the 'B' ark everyone else.

But they sent the 2nd one off first; telling the occupants that they were being saved from some great catastrophe or other; and weren't they lucky to go first?

The stay-at-home Golgafrinchams were then wiped out by a dreadful disease contracted from dirty telephones.

The B-ark later colonised this small, unregarded yellow sun in the western spiral arm of the milky way...

Yes, it is important to remember that Golgafrincam was destroyed because of the loss of the people they sent on the B ark. Let that be a lesson ...

I would call objectivism a philosophy - "religion" is going a bit too far - and like any philosophy, some issues simply cannot be based on pure objective fact. Science can tell us how the universe works. It can't tell us how people should live.

Whatever one thinks about "Objectivists" as they exist today, we should acknowledge Rand's great accomplishment is creating a strong moral case for capitalism.

So much good in the world has come about because of capitalism. So many persons take for granted the vast wealth that exists today that wouldn't be here except for the efforts of people in a free enterprize economic system.

Rand publicly declared it a virtue to be economically selfish. She was right then, as she is now.

She would've been the first passenger on Virgin Galactic .... ;-)

Well, my _signed_ copy of "Atlas Shrugged" will take a ride on one of my ships fer sure, since I can't offer a ride to the great lady herself.

Rand is to Neocons what Marx is to Communists.

They both provided compelling but flawed, not to mention dangerous, views of how a society should operate.