Okay, despite the resemblance, that’s not really a young Ayn Rand arguing with the Last Boy on Earth. And I reckon the real Rand would frown on enslaving people to steal their genes.
Still, this Jack Kirby character’s name was Arna. Ya gotta wonder ….
I’ve been out of town for a week and incommunibloggo; got back today (well, yesterday since it’s now after midnight).
1. I’m very sorry to learn that Ken Gregg has died. I never met him, but always enjoyed corresponding with him; in addition to his deep knowledge of and appreciation for the history of antistatist thought, he was unfailingly sensible and polite – traits not always encountered or encouraged in the world of blogs, listservs, and prickly libertarians. He will be missed.
2. I plan to reply to Walter’s piece when I get a chance. In the meantime, Michael Palmer asks in the comments section: “what has happened to all-left.net? It’s been replaced by stock spam. Could someone do something about that?” I have no idea what’s gone wrong, but I’ll look into it. Thanks for telling me! In the meantime, the page is still accessible at its “real” address: praxeology.net/all-left.htm.
3. A couple of LRC pieces worth noting: Max Raskin on the Boston Massacre and Bob Higgs on World War II.
4. Yahoo Movies grouses (conical hat tip to LRC) about the historical inaccuracy of the film 10,000 B.C., noting that “woolly mammoths were not, in fact, used to build pyramids” and in any case “there weren’t any pyramids in Egypt until 2,500 B.C or so.” Now I haven’t seen the film, but my impression, from what I’ve read and from the clips I’ve seen, was that the pyramid-builders in 10,000 B.C. aren’t supposed to be the Egyptians; they’re a pre-Egyptian civilisation. So that particular complaint seems to miss the mark.
With McCain promising a hundred years of occupation, Obama calling himself an “imperfect vessel,” and Clinton morphing eerily into Granny Goodness, surely Jack Kirby sums up the presidential election.
Click here for a 5-minute preview of Galactica’s upcoming Season 4.
Unless you’re one of those benighted souls who hasn’t seen Season 3 yet (I’m talking to you, P.!),in which case you should under no circumstances click the above link.
In other news, the second trailer for the new Get Smart movie is kinda fun. I especially liked Max’s argument to Siegfried for why he can’t be from CONTROL.
Several sketches of Disney characters, including this one of Pinocchio, are thought to have come from the pen of Adolf Hitler. No kidding. (Conical hat tip to LRC.)
Comparing Hitler’s version of Pinocchio with the original – is it my imagination, or has Hitler altered Pinocchio’s hairstyle to make it look more like … Hitler’s?
Pinocchio’s cap looks more like a traditional Tyrolean hat to me in Hitler’s version than in the original too – less floppy or something:
But I may really just be imagining that one. I feel more sure about the hairstyle, though.
Say, it’s a pity Hitler’s nose didn’t grow longer when he lied.
2017 Addendum:
It’s not surprising that a Wagnerian like Hitler would like Snow White, which shares a number of motifs with the Ring of the Nibelung, such as dwarves working in the mines, a maiden in an enchanted sleep waiting to be awakened by a handsome prince, and characters learning crucial information from helpful animals. (Plus, what Nazi could resist a story whose heroine’s defining feature is whiteness?)
Hitler’s self-identification with Pinocchio is interesting. Perhaps, like Pinocchio (or Ultron), he feels that in the past he’s been manipulated, like a puppet, by various hostile forces (the Western powers, the Jews) but now he’s asserting his independence and has “got no strings.” (Ironically, in the original “Got No Strings” song, Pinocchio is under the control of a representative of Italy (Hitler’s junior partner in real life) and is being courted by puppets from Holland, France, and Russia (all countries that Hitler would invade).
Philosophers get some namechecks in DC Comics this week. First, from Simon Dark #5 (author: Steve Niles):
– So, have you told your dad yet?
– Are you kidding? No way! He’d lock me up!
– I don’t believe that.
– Dad’s cool generally. But he’s a rationalist. You know, like Socrates, Kant? This stuff with Simon is waay out of his framework.
– Kant? How old are you again?
Next, android superhero Red Tornado’s musings in Justice League of America #18 (author Alan Burnett):
The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle did not believe in mind/body dualism. He ridiculed the entire concept, dismissively referring to it as “the ghost in the machine.” And yet, here is my mind, existing in a computer. And there is my body, broken spare parts spread out on a table, irreparable. I am that ghost.
Now I’m not sure why being a rationalist in the tradition of Socrates and Kant should be an obstacle to dealing with Simon Dark. It’s hard to imagine Socrates being phased by much of anything. As for Kant, if Simon were really outside the framework of reason, then he wouldn’t be an object of possible experience, right? I suspect Niles has too narrow a notion of what a ratuionalist’s framework can accommodate.
With regard to the Red Tornado’s predicament, I’m not sure that Ryle (who actually might well count as a dualist by today’s standards, though of course not a substance dualist) would have any problem with Red’s status as Burnett describes it – though Ryle might prefer to say that the computer is (now) Red’s body and that the spare parts on the table are not. (Ryle no doubt would put up some resistance, however, to sorcerer Zatanna’s telling Red, once a new body has been prepared for him: “The Brainiacs will transfer your program, but I have to cast a mystic spell that moves your soul.”)
When people hear that Ryle was against the “ghost in the machine” model of mind and body, they tend to assume that he wanted to eliminate the ghost, leaving only the machine. But Ryle rejects the machine as much as the ghost; he sees human beings as organic unities of mind and body, not as an accidental conjunction of an essentially mental thingy and an essentially mechanistic thingy, and he is as opposed to traditional materialism as to traditional dualism. Despite his sometimes behaviourist-sounding language (and his arguably veering a bit too close to behaviourism itself), Ryle is fundamentally much closer to Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, and the phenomenologists than to contemporary materialism – stressing the mutual inextricability of mind and body rather than the ontological or explanatory privileging of one over the other. (Dennett’s contemporary appropriation of Ryle is a confusion, methinks; Dennett and Ryle are not ultimately on the same side.) Ryle’s Concept of Mind, despite its flaws, is still well worth reading.
