Fragments

The Ideas that are still percolating, or images that are not enough to make a full post yet:



AYN RAND:

I have been thinking about doing a post on Ayn Rand recently, given her rising prominence in the Republican Party book list. And I still might, try for a piece about enlightened self interest and the limits therein, and I kind of already have in my piece about poverty. So we'll see. But nothing I can say sums it better than this, a quotation I saw in a piece I forgot but was inspired to copy and paste.

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its' unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."


HE STILL WOULDN'T LIKE YOU

I saw the strangest thing on the Skytrain home from CentalWorld the other day. I was standing and looked over to see a young Indian man who had the look and shakes of a meth head going through withdrawal, shaking as he sat there and staring at his hands from time to time. Very thin, kind of out of it.

He had a bag with him, which looked normal, messenger style. Except that I was drawn to a pin that he had put on it: A swastika. Yes, a swastika, on a white background, with a red circle around it. Now my first thought was 'Ok, he doesn't know, and just thinks it's the Buddhist peace symbol'. But then I thought 'No, those go the other direction, and how do you not know? The Nazis are hard to miss'.

The more I thought about it the more ridiculous it got, until I was staring at this guy saying in my head 'No matter how much crank you boys do, Hitler will never look at you and say "You know what, dark skinned person, you're alright. Let's bounce.' Just not gonna happen."

GOODBYES (FOR NOW)

Even though they drive me crazy and I cannot guarantee you they actually learned anything this year (and I'll be seeing a couple of them for summer school in a week), I was sad to see my kids leave today (last day of the school year).


Matt
Uji