May 26, 2006
OK, JK...
Here's what you can make into my "bio:"
Real Identity: I am a 41-year old teacher – high school math, physics, and logic – and dance instructor, with a B.S. in Mathematics, a B.A. in Philosophy, and an unofficial minor in Physics. I am an advocate of Objectivism, the first philosophy in the history of mankind to get the theory of concepts right and to be fully objective – all thanks to the achievement of Ayn Rand. I have two cats and a horse, who get treated extremely well. They get hugs and kisses – and they owe their good treatment to Rand’s identification that life is about living, about achieving positives, not about “achieving” the zero or avoiding punishment…which point many people do not get…
I take my nom de blog because of Cyrano’s line: “To fight - or write. [But] Never to make a line I have not heard, In my own heart.”
The line is part of a speech on the part of Cyrano (Brian Hooker’s translation):
To sing, to laugh, to dream,To walk in my own way and be alone,/Free, with an eye to see things as they are,
A voice that means manhood - to cock my hat/Where I choose - At a word, a Yes, a No,
To fight - or write. To travel any road/Under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt
If fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne -/Never to make a line I have not heard
In my own heart; yet, with all modesty/To say: "My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them/In one garden you may call your own."
So when I win some triumph, by some chance,/Render no share to Caeser.
In a word, I am too proud to be a parasite./And if my nature wants the germ that grows
Towering to heaven like a mountain pine,/Or like the oak sheltering multitudes.
I stand not high it may be – but alone!
Here is Barry Kornhauser’s translation of a part of that whole:
To dream, to laugh, to sing,/to let my heart take wing,Free! - with an eye open to see all things as they are!
To fight—to write—to follow the moon or any star
that I choose/win or lose...
On Blogging: As reason is man's means of survival and only means of cognition, ideas are man's most important tools. It is important to speak and to write, in order to stand up for what is right and good. As Aristotle said in the Rhetoric: “it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”
What’s more, if it were not for the Internet and bloggers, we would be very misinformed about current events: the Paris Riots, the Mohammed Cartoons, Islam, CAIR, Envirowackism. That’s a sad thought…
On Politics: Because I believe each person is an end in himself/herself, not a means to be used by someone else, by King, by God, by society, or by the environment; because I believe each person is self-sovereign and rational (by nature, if not by practice) – I am an advocate for the only moral social system, the only system consistent with human nature: capitalism. Recommended: Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand.