Comment by electronslave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by electronslave | Hacker News Reader

The Brothers Karamazov. Awesome, if only for the casually violent Russian realism that I loved in Преступление и Наказание.

As far as learning goes, I'm chugging through the FARs and the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. I'm about to solo.

As far as computer tech stuff goes, I haven't picked up a book with hype (plus requisite clipart/bad drawings/abuse of color space) on the cover in years.

Edit: What's up with all the Ayn Rand? Misogyny, xenophobia and unvarnished greed aren't exactly admirable characteristics, and her books read like an apologist's how-to manual. My favorite example of a Rand fanboy now works (when last I checked) at a bowling alley in Santa Barbara, after loudly and memorably insisting that he didn't need liberal pansy friends like me, because he'd be the wealthiest tycoon alive.

Yeah.

I guess he has a stovepipe hat and a monocle now.

> What's up with all the Ayn Rand? Misogyny, xenophobia and unvarnished greed aren't exactly admirable characteristics

The big problem with Rand is that she's downright nasty to the other side. So people feel attacked and tune themselves out to her good ideas. Rand's anti-politicking, pro-individualism, pro-triumph, pro-innovation, pro-going against the grain, and so on. She rails against the very real, very nasty backroom deals that give privilege and blessing to companies who can work the political system at the expense of companies built by clueless-to-the-law engineers and scientists. She makes a heck of a lot of good points...

...but she's really nasty about it, incredibly unfriendly and unsympathetic to the motives of people who have other politics than hers. It makes it easy for people with other views to tune out everything she wrote, even though there's a lot of value in it.

Oops. I just thought it was an amusing anecdote, but this isn't a constructive direction.

It was an amusing anecdote that started with a harsh indictment of anyone who likes Ayn Rand's writing. Are you sure you didn't expect people to be offended at what you said? Are you, perhaps, being a little disingenuous here?

Ah, but if one aspires to an ego the size of Howard Roark's, he wouldn't be offended by anything whatsoever.

What does that have to do with liking Ayn Rand's writing?

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