Heinlein Reader’s Discussion Group
Saturday May 13,2000
‘Delilah And The Space Rigger’ and ‘Space Jockey’
You have just entered room “BPRAL22169 Chat66.”
KultsiKN has entered the room.
BPRAL22169: Worked that time.
Major oz has entered the room.
stephenveiss: Hello!
Merfilly8: Invited Sean in
dwrighsr: Hi everybody!
KultsiKN: Hello, all!
Merfilly8: hello all
Major oz: hi all
KultsiKN: Bill, no success 🙁
BPRAL22169: Excellent. I don’t know why I had trouble gettingyou in, David.
BPRAL22169: I was able to read your e-mail on the subject Kultsi. Thanks. I’ve been suggesting it’s time for a new computer for some time now. She’s ready to make the purchase, but has a lot of data to wade through.
KultsiKN: T’would be easiest to install the old disk and copy…
dwrighsr: Folks. I am going to be in and out. I have a number of things to attend to, but will be checking in periodically to save the log.
BPRAL22169: Shhh. She needs a new computer anyway.
BPRAL22169: Thanks for the heads up David.
siannon prime has entered the room.
Lenjazz has entered the room.
Merfilly8: The revolving door is David’s domain tonight 🙂
BPRAL22169: It’s a shared domain.
siannon prime: Hello! Why am I here? What are we talking about? (Stephen just dragged me in… 🙂
stephenveiss: Oi! Politely pulled, if you please 🙂
KultsiKN: Good old Stephen
Merfilly8: Delilah and the Space Rigger / Space Jockey, right?
Major oz: yo
BPRAL22169: That’s the announced Topic.
BPRAL22169: Space Jockey is the earlier of the two — 47; Delilah and the Space Rigger appeared in 1949
Merfilly8: Whether we discuss it or not remains to be seen 🙂
siannon prime: Oh wow, that lets me out. Can we get straight on to the male/female stuff from Thursday’s chat?
siannon prime: 🙂
Merfilly8: I sniff an IWFNE plot afoot 🙂
BPRAL22169: We’ve got some time before we need to dive into the topics. GA
siannon prime: I’m still reading the log … yes, I’m relating it all to IWFNE in the vain hope of writing something useful on it at some point
Merfilly8: While we’re foot loose in here, anyone heard from Pixelmeow?
BPRAL22169: Has everyone had a chance to read the log on David Wright’s site?
Merfilly8: yes
KultsiKN: Not yet.
BPRAL22169: Siannon’, were you aware there is a thread on afh now about Joan Eunice?
siannon prime: I liked Bill’s comment about hermetic hermaphroditism – seemed to fit with the line I was following on JE
dwrighsr: I’ve got this log business pretty well worked out. I should be able to have tonight’s log on by the end of the evening.
BPRAL22169: Briefly, we got onto the difference between men and women; I think some of the talk turned on “women control relationships; men control things” Deborah Tannen’s name came up several times.
siannon prime: Yes, Bill, it was what hauled me back to the ng when I was meant to be offline for my health
BPRAL22169: As did CamillePaglia’s
dwrighsr: Everybody send me their e-mail address and I’ll notify you when it’
dwrighsr: it’s done
Gaeltachta has entered the room.
BPRAL22169: David, I’ve got a copy of the complete list. Talk to me after the meeting.
BPRAL22169: Sean, howdy.
dwrighsr: Will do. I’ll be back in a while. have fun
Gaeltachta: Hi All
Gaeltachta: Sorry I’m Late. Got caught up on something else.
KultsiKN: Feeling blue, Sean?
BPRAL22169: The hermetic hermaphrodism comment came up when I was talking about Heinlein’s intense communitarian individualism. Male-female roles seen in the context of the Platonic/hermetic idea of the original soul split into male and female halves.
Merfilly8: ten demerits for tardiness, Mister Sean 🙂
Gaeltachta: Ha ha.
BPRAL22169: What was it you particularly wanted to talk about Siannon’?
siannon prime: Bill, follows on from my personal take on the novel that it combines male-female rather than setting them in opposition (dialectic opposition? not sure of the term)
siannon prime: Unlike eg Sail, which presents Maureen as diametrically opposed to the male characters
BPRAL22169: You can look at it as a late attempt to take the feminism of the 1900-1930 period to its ultimate — the complete rapprochement of the male and the female.
siannon prime: As in hermaphroditic character in oppositon to society?
BPRAL22169: I wouldn’t say opposition: for RAH the basic unit is the community; and a complete community is made up of a male (Will), female (Intellect) and theolder Wisdom figure, the arcanum.
BPRAL22169: Sorry to get so . . . arcane . . . here.
Merfilly8: Was that possibly why Jake was drug into the picture? For Wisdo,?
Merfilly8: Wisdom
siannon prime: So in IWFNE J and E combined would constitute wisdom – or did he bring in Jake to be the third part
BPRAL22169: He was JSBS’s legal and financial advisor
Major oz: ….eh, Bill ………”…it takes a village…..” ???
BPRAL22169: Yes, especially when the child IS the village . . . A completely different “take” on the ideas. No Clintonella here!
BPRAL22169: Or Clintonistas?
siannon prime: But will, intellect and wisdom are not necessarily gender based, surely
siannon prime: Who’s Clintonella??
BPRAL22169: I ran across an oddity in one ofthe hermetic-christian books: “the intellect is the female principle of the soul.”
BPRAL22169: Mrs. Clinton become Barbarella
siannon prime: I’m glad I didn’t mis-spell that 🙂
Merfilly8: If so I would see the female as will. If you count will as pure emotionally driven reason
KultsiKN: Jani, I think in IWFNE the borders are quite vague.
Major oz: ….depends….in the cave or the hi-rise appartment ?
siannon prime: Kultsi, that’s what I mean about not gender-based. Bill, isn’t there a christian tradition of sexless females devoted to intellect?
BPRAL22169: There are time sin RAH where the woman becomes “completed” and sinks into herself — disappears behind a metaphorical schwartzchild radius. Mary/Alluquere in Puppet Masters; Dr. Stone in ROlling Stones.
Merfilly8: too many dollar words for this poor girl 🙂
BPRAL22169: There are intellectual women and there are spiritual women in the christian model. I don’t know of any synthesis. Dorothy Sayers tries to look at those ideas in Gaudy Night.
siannon prime: I’m thinking of the Apollonian nuns in SiasL, I think …
BPRAL22169: Brides of Christ.
siannon prime: Yes, but not brides in the sexual, fertility sense. Not synthesised as RAH tried to synthesise the females
BPRAL22169: Heinlein is in the conventional hermetic tradition; “women,” he says, are “smarter” and “more practical” than men. The motive power in the relationships is provided by the men.
BPRAL22169: “Lost Legacy” has very interesting demonstrations of the dynmics of his multi-person communities on several levels as the triads combine and recombine.
KultsiKN: And the woman does the steering?
Major oz: ….and that was supposed to be groundbreaking ?
BPRAL22169: Picks the mechanics, perhaps — makes choices, provides the values on which choices are made. . . interesting new light thrown on Hilda Burroughs, methinks.
Major oz: It was always plain to me that Hilda was manifestly in charge of the group.
siannon prime: But how female is Hilda?
Merfilly8: She was the JOAT, and she had the dynamic spark that made others jump
Major oz: And she was the only one who was not highly schooled.
siannon prime: What’s a JOAT?
BPRAL22169: She seems to be a female counterpart to Lazarus Long — more complete in herself, maybe.
Merfilly8: Jack Of All Trades. She had many knowledges, but had followed none to degree
siannon prime: Yes, agreed. Not railroaded into a particular discipline.
Major oz: …an observer as opposed to scholor…..
Merfilly8: She was an academic dilletante with Napoleonic leanings, according to her family 🙂
Major oz: the best kind
BPRAL22169: Hmmm- I just flashed on “encyclopedic synthesist,” the leaders of the society in Beyond This Horizon.
Merfilly8: Her femininity comes across mostly as a love for hot baths and overt sex drive
Major oz: Wasn’t it RAH, in one of his essays, that pleaded for the technological librarian ?
siannon prime: Lol. Got to be more to it than that
BPRAL22169: As opposed to Lazarus Long’s love afair with the ‘fresher and abundant sex?
BPRAL22169: Oz, I think that was at the end of “Where to?”
siannon prime: Laz had had more lifetimes than Hilda, though.
Major oz: Hilda, as most of His charecters, but more than most, is a no-bullshit / keep your eyes on the goal person — male OR female.
Merfilly8: I think Hilda is the intellectual match to Laz. His emotional one appears to lie in Tamara/Maureen
BPRAL22169: And I just flashed on the Lensman series — Maybe Lazarus and Hilda are the penultimate generation combining in the next generation.
Gaeltachta: Don’t mind me….. I am watching and making breakfast at the same time. What’s the discussion today? 😉
Major oz: Good ol’ Doc was a sexist par excellance
Major oz: ….but in tune with the times
Merfilly8: I enjoyed the slective breeding of the Lensmen series
Merfilly8: selective
BPRAL22169: Ok — i’ve been monitoring over in AOL, and I don’t think we’re going to get any morebig influx of people. Why don’t we move on to talk about “Space Jockey” and the general tenor of those stories Heinlein wrote mostly for the Post after WWII
siannon prime: Sean, it will get official any minute, at which point I’m off (not having read the texts..)
BPRAL22169: Oh, stay, why don’t you?
Gaeltachta: Don’t change for me. Like I said………. I’m sorta tied up.
Merfilly8: You can still throw insight
KultsiKN: Neither have I, but I’ll stay
siannon prime: I’ll call back later, if that’s okay … I am embarrassed by not having done my homework. And I’m not supposed to be on the computer anyway!
Gaeltachta: Why not, Jani? Is there a law?
BPRAL22169: Okay — “Space Jockey” is set in the near future (!) when a rocket pilot with an erratic work schedule feels his work is breaking up his marriage. Ultimately he decides to take the more humdrum (!) moon run so he can have more time with his wife. And that’s what the glorious technological future will be like, according to Heinlein.
siannon prime: There’s a medical regime 🙁 See you in a while!
stephenveiss: Again, I havent read the texts. I’ll lurk 🙂
siannon prime has left the room.
BPRAL22169: This near future was supposed to be about 1960, I think.
Merfilly8: He chooses family over fortune, even though the moon run will still pay good.
Major oz: ……BUT, the runs are scheduled, close to home, and wifey (terrible characterization) will live with him in Luna City
Gaeltachta: Did he? I thought he asked his wife to join him at Lunar base? He just told her.
BPRAL22169: When he started writing these Post stories, he was excoriated by sf fans for abandoning science fiction.
Major oz: They must have never caught on in the first place.
Merfilly8: I thought Heinlein’s depictions of life in the science fiction he wrote were encouraging
BPRAL22169: I think they just never made the tansition from gadget stories.
Major oz: BEM’s
BPRAL22169: One of the odd things about Heinlein is that science fiction continuously reformed itself around his writing.
BPRAL22169: Not just in the early 40’s when he virtually invented the Astounding form.
Gaeltachta: Correction – he asked if she was willing to go to the moon. Still, it didn’t leave much room for her.
KultsiKN: A talent of telling a convincing yarn.
Major oz: He wrote PEOPLE stories (as do all great authors) and set them in space and/or future
Major oz: eg Star Wars was the same thing I used to see in Saturday matinees in the 40’s and 50’s. They had horses instead of rockets, but the stories were the same.
Merfilly8: I’ll agree about Star Wars.
LadyS122 has entered the room.
BPRAL22169: Joseph Campbell made the point that these are all retellings of myths.
Merfilly8: Hey Helen
Merfilly8:
LadyS122: Hi.
BPRAL22169: Campbell early on said of Heinlein that he wrote magazine stories of the future from the perspective of that date — a story of 2049, say, that would appear in a Post of Colliers of 2049. “Space Jockey” really seems to qualify.
Major oz: We are back to “editor” Campbell, yes?
Merfilly8: Interesting way to get your ideas. Seem to remember McCaffrey having several stories like that in her anthologies
BPRAL22169: Yes — editor of Astounding 1937 to 1972 or 3.
Gaeltachta: The plot in Jockey could have been transposed easily to a terrestrial setting – e.g. Truck-driver, businessman, airline pilot. RAH showed living and working in space as the norm, with the same family issues as have always existed.
Merfilly8: I found Phyliss to be atypical of Heinlein’s women at that. She actually complains about his livelihood, and attempts to thwart his job to get extra time with him.
BPRAL22169: Yes — perennial stories; I think that’s why they worked so well. He did that before, btw; “Misfit” seems to me like a mountain-rescue type of story.
BPRAL22169: He has Jake bring up the frontier theme in his second –third?– letter to Phyllis.
Major oz: Agree, Mer. While I cringe at the “stand by yerrr man” concept, when you comit to someone in a job, you knew what you got — don’t mess with it.
Major oz: eg someone who marries a GI then bitches about moving, etc.
Merfilly8: It’s similiar to the women who …. Thank you Oz
Merfilly8: In the case of Jake being in a limited, high risk field, I’d go so far as to point out Special Forces’ wives
BPRAL22169: So are all women supposed to be Ruths — “whither thou goest, so go I?
Merfilly8: No, but if the committment is made with the profession as a factor, the woman should be helpful
LadyS122: I don’t think iut goes that far, but people should remember that when they marry a person with a dangerous career, that the career comes with the spouse
Major oz: If, Bill, that is what she says at the beginning, yes
BPRAL22169: Ok — I’m not disagreeing . . . but I get the feeling that the dynamics of the story is two people of goodwill working out different points of view.
Merfilly8: That’s highly probable too
Major oz: Not my take at all, Bill
BPRAL22169: GA oz
Major oz: He is vaccialting as to whether to placate a whiner by changing who he is / what he does.
Major oz: She signed on for the cruise and now wants off.
Major oz: TS lady !!!!!!!
BPRAL22169: I don’t think of her as a “whiner.” Her one letter shows that she’s found a limit to her commitment that is making her uncomfortable. That’s a legitimate thing to be dealt with in a relationship.
Merfilly8: I had to help counsel several soldiers being divorced for being gone all the time. So I’m prejudiced on Phyliss
BPRAL22169: Against, I take it?
Merfilly8: yes
LadyS122 has left the room.
BPRAL22169: In this case, a compromise offered itself, and the marriage was saved by the overriding affection of the two for each other.
Gaeltachta: When the living on Lunar option was presented to her, Phyllis jumped at it. She had had time to think things over (same as Jake), and realised that she would do whatever was necessary to stay together. Both realised this.
LadyS122 has entered the room.
BPRAL22169: Sometimes it’s not possible to work it out.
BPRAL22169: Sometimes it is.
Major oz: How, Gae, do you see that she was thinking all these things.
BPRAL22169: Unfortunate, but not a personal fault of the individuals involved. IMO. “Just one of those things.”
Major oz: She may have, but it isn’t so stated
Gaeltachta: I think she was thinking about these things, yes.
Major oz: the Q is: How ?
Merfilly8: it could be inferred. She does seem to love him
Major oz: I see her as closely related th Hugh Farnham’s wife
BPRAL22169: The one things we know she was thinking about was being done in by the strain of worrying about his safety.
Major oz: “to”
Major oz: About his safety — yes. How did that differ from his first flight….or his first flight after they were married……why is it different now?
Gaeltachta: Thanks Merf, …. the end of the story has her POV (in part), so we KNOW what she is thinking, and has thought.
Merfilly8: Grace Farnham is more closely related to Harriman’s wife in my mind
Major oz: Three of a kind
Major oz: Surprising in a RAH female character.
Major oz: Usually only invented as background
BPRAL22169: It’s the difference between getting over a crisis and dealing with a chronic disease — it’s much easier to deal with a crisis; the mettle is tested by the chronic, perennial, ever present.
Merfilly8: With Grace as the extreme, and Phyliss as the minor view of the trinity perhaps
LadyS122: little things get to a person after a while.. it builds until it becomes too much… that happens with stuff like the topilet seat and with more dangerous stuff
Major oz: Agreed, Mer
LadyS122: the key is to talk about it before it gets to intense to deal with
Merfilly8: Evidently talk had either not worked or been used here
Major oz: And the only available solution is for him to give up something ???????
BPRAL22169: And of course, in those occasions, it’s not the toilet seat or the toothbrush that is the real problem — though they may trigger the blowup.
Merfilly8: She arbitrarily takes matters into her own hands to get what she wants
Major oz: agree
BPRAL22169: People have to make choices about what is worth pursuing. Jake is a little disingenuous. If he is really interested in supporting them, there are plenty of dirtside careers. Jake is making a choice but he is not being entirely honest with himself about it.
BPRAL22169: Now, understand, this is not to say I don’t think Jake is making the right choice.
Major oz: 1. she knew what she was in for 2. now she doesn’t like it 3..so he must change
Major oz: ?????
BPRAL22169: The caryatid is falling under the stone. What do you want Jake to tell her? “Buck up, kid!”?
Merfilly8: She may not have seen the solution he finds, that of a slight variation
BPRAL22169: Obviously I’m overstating the case.
Merfilly8: It is a compromise he might not have seen had he not made that last run
Gaeltachta: The Lunar run he accepted was a “regular” job. So they could plan their time together, and not have as many interuptions to their private lives together. Maybe it was safer as well? I can understand that they both made compromises here.
Major oz: I find it difficult to understand why the one who expects the other to honor a committment is (usually in today’s society) looked at as rigid / unyielding / insensitive./
Merfilly8: He may have felt his edge was gone, or that he should not tempt fate after the Junior Rocketeer fiasco
BPRAL22169: Oz, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.
Major oz: But he immediately proved that the edge was better than ever.
Major oz: Looks that way to me, Bill
Major oz: He expects her to accept him as she found him
Merfilly8: I do think that if he was capable of being the best, then he should be allowed to be such, Oz, and his wife could have done sociably acceptable things for the ten years her husband felt he had left
BPRAL22169: You can make a very good case for Jake being the one not fulfilling the commitment — after all, what is marriage but a commitment to live together psychologically?
Major oz: eh ?
Major oz: didn’t get that, Mer
BPRAL22169: Husbands who sink their entire emotional life into the work are not “in” the marriage. I can’t remember the term — “unavailable”?
BPRAL22169: But basically I don’t think this is a story about fulfilling a commitment or not fulfilling a commitment.
Major oz: ’tain’t a either/or. Bill
Merfilly8: Sorry, two babies hyping at me makes my thoughts scatter
LadyS122: I know the feeling Filly
BPRAL22169: I think it is a story about finding a way to make the marriage work for both.
Gaeltachta: Unfortunately I have to go. Family commitments 🙂 Have fun, all!
BPRAL22169: Ciao sean.
KultsiKN: Bye, Sean!
Merfilly8: I was agreeing to put it simply, that he did not have to be the one to change, and I don’t see it as unyielding
Major oz: But “entire emotional life” indicates a POV that I find interesting
Gaeltachta has left the room.
LadyS122: I have to go too… bye
Major oz: chow
KultsiKN: Bye, Lady!
Merfilly8: bye Helen. Kiss my sibs
LadyS122: will do
LadyS122 has left the room.
BPRAL22169: I was speaking in general terms. There’s no evidence in the story that Jake does so. You started off talking about “nowadays,” so I put forward the counterargument for “nowadays.”
Major oz: hokay
Major oz: …..but I never understood why one partner should be able to pull out the contract and say: “I don’t want to honor this part, anymore”?
Merfilly8: If I understood that part, I could get get a good argument going for contractual marriages by law
BPRAL22169: Marriage isn’t a contract in the same sense as a service contract where specified goods are exchanged.
Major oz: ….and any objection to that action is, prima face, wrong…..
BPRAL22169: I think Heinlein spoke up for contractual marriages quiteoften. Very Wellsian of him.
Major oz: duh!
Major oz: I realize that, but the contract exists, nontheless
Major oz: …..in a multitude of emotional bases….
Merfilly8: It’s a social contract
KultsiKN: And often not honored.
Major oz: one being, ” I yam who I yam”
Merfilly8: One Heinlein twice?-divorced may have wrestled with
Major oz: Until he found Ginny, who seems to understand committment
Merfilly8: A woman who could disagree with im, but without it disrupting their social contract, I think
Major oz: Too many synonomize “committment” with “subservience”
Merfilly8: not in my household!
Major oz: Keeping your word / promise is one of those old-fashioned virtues out of step in the world of shifting egos
Major oz: June Allison got it right
KultsiKN: What worth do we have if our word is worth nothing?
Merfilly8: In order for it to be okay to go back on your word, the other party involved has to let it happen. Same as manners. When not demanded, they decline.
Merfilly8: In today’s world, especially my generation, your word has no value
Major oz: …..always thought she shold be memorialized as looking at the sky waiting for James Stewart, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, etc. to return from “the mission”
Merfilly8: not even if you feel it does, the other parties won’t recognize it
Merfilly8: Sir, I did not get the reference to June Allison. Please explain
siannon prime has entered the room.
siannon prime: Am I here?
KultsiKN: Yes.
Merfilly8: you’re here
Merfilly8: wherever here is for you 🙂
siannon prime: Thanks, Kultsi. Give me a minute to catch up..
Major oz: June Allison was always the producer’s chioce to play the-long-suffering-GI-wife in any movie involving military families
Merfilly8: Ahh. Would know the face, most likely.
Major oz: Had a very appealing speech impediment — a tear-jerking throat rasp.
Merfilly8: Love old movies, but seldom remember names or titles
Major oz: Her most famous was as the wife of Glen Miller in the GM story.
Major oz: And with James Stewart in _Strategic Air Command_
Major oz: …so…how ’bout Tiny and Brooksie ?
Merfilly8: It is at the half-way point. Time to switch to Delilah?
Major oz: shoo-ahh
BPRAL22169: We usually have a break about this time; shall we break for 5 minutes and come back to Delilah?
Major oz: hokay
Merfilly8: Bill, what about a five minute break?
BPRAL22169: Ha! Got there first!
Merfilly8: sorry
Merfilly8: case of typing without looking at screen
BPRAL22169: Free time — go wander off and come back.
BPRAL22169: Or talk amongst yourselves.
Merfilly8: Wouldn’t you know it…Munchkins get quiet when I’m not actively trying to read the screen?
KultsiKN: Bill — about what we started earlier — I just meant the disk could be put on the new PC & the files copied to the new disk…
Major oz: There is a software installed in may computers called (IIRC) Lap-Link, with which you connect two PC
Major oz: ‘s together with the printer cable and read one HD on to the other
KultsiKN: Rather slow on large files…
Major oz: I loaded my lap top in 20 min or so that way
Major oz: …..but some years ago.
Merfilly8: directly putting said Hard drive into new system would be speedier, in my experience
Major oz: Certainly, once it is in.
Merfilly8: doesn’t take long.
Major oz: In my case, the PC had a “standard” size HD, the Laptop a little bitty one.
BPRAL22169: My timer dinged. Are we ready to go again?
Merfilly8: ahh
Major oz: ga
Merfilly8: sure
BPRAL22169: OK – “Delilah and the Space Rigger” was published in Blue Book in 1949, though in Past Through Tomorrow it takes place just before “Space Jockey.” What do we have to say about Rosie the Riveter in Space?
Major oz: A DISRUPTIVE INFLUENCE
Merfilly8: I think Harriman Enterprises used her to make the break into space for women.
BPRAL22169: And how about “I’d rather have a dope peddler than a woman sniffing around my boys.”
Merfilly8: chuck that in my conspiracy theory bin 🙂
Major oz: Interesting that he brought up dope peddling in ’49
BPRAL22169: Why is that?
Merfilly8: Considering the problem it became
Major oz: Obviously it existed at that time — but it was infinitisimal (except for Gene Krupa(
Major oz: “)”
KultsiKN: Were the gummints innocent of ‘dope peddling’ guring the war?
Merfilly8: according to most of the histories I’ve read, that was during one of the relatively slowest times for drugs
BPRAL22169: This is about the time ON THE ROAD was written. It wasn’t infinitesimal among the Beats.
Major oz: ’twas
Major oz: There was much more to do
Major oz: By that I mean: “keep busy”
Major oz: but the beats were infinitisimal
Merfilly8: Opium had declined to nothing, and Prince Valium came in with Pres. Ike
Major oz: …..relative to readers of his stuff
BPRAL22169: Good point.
BPRAL22169: The “problem” level it has become now is directly because of the laws enacted in the thirties and reinforced since then.
Merfilly8: Prohibition backlash?
BPRAL22169: They created a black market out of thin air.
Major oz: boots, boots…..
BPRAL22169: Or cannabis smoke.
Major oz: Howsomever, from Tiny’s point of view, his statement was TRUE
Major oz: From HIS POV
BPRAL22169: Except, of course, that it turned out not to be.
Major oz: correct
BPRAL22169: “Give the boys a taste of what they’re fighting for.”
Major oz: ’twas a father interviewing his daughter’
siannon prime: A dope peddler is far less disruptive than a female. Fitna “rules”
Merfilly8: He had legitimate concerns…obviously he had a ‘darker’ upbringing and did not figure on male gallantry overcoming bestial need
Major oz: s date, while holding a butcher knife
Major oz: welllllllll, maybe, Mer
Merfilly8: Starship Troopers illustrated the point of letting the boys know what it was for
BPRAL22169: Well, there’s no question that mixed-gender group dynamics are much more difficult to “manage” — more work. And beaer a much tighter looking-after.
Major oz: fathers with daughters are a special connection. H never stated his status
Major oz: Tiny’s status
Major oz: ….was he married
Major oz: was he a dad
Major oz: …of a girl
Merfilly8: He was not married
Major oz: Was he an old bachelor who saw her as a “daughter”?
Major oz: Was that stated, Mer?
Major oz: ….don’t recall
Merfilly8: yes
Major oz: hokay
Merfilly8: during tete de tete with Tiny over Dalrymple
Merfilly8: She mentions having been told of four children, he protests he isn’t even married
KultsiKN: Cute evasion…
Major oz: H foretold EXACTLY what the reaction was to women on Navy ships
Merfilly8: I’d go with the bachelor/daughter simile
Major oz: ok, Mer….I ‘member now
Major oz: The only part left unsaid was the reaction of the men’s wives “dirtside”
Merfilly8: I wanted to be a sub person
Major oz: Women have just recently (in the last 6 months or so) been allowed on subs.
Merfilly8: Quite mixed, likely. Many spiteful, some wistful to be up there too.
Merfilly8: I know. That’s why I wound up Army
KultsiKN: You are talking about submarines, Filly, aren’t you?
Major oz: The loudest howl re: women on USN ships came from shorebound wives.
Merfilly8: Yes. (Wondering where Kultsi’s mind went 🙂 )
KultsiKN: Of course.
KultsiKN: That was to Oz…
Merfilly8: They imagine, in their catty ways, all things going on on ship, when worse has happened through the years in ports
Major oz: phhfffftttttt !!
Major oz:
Merfilly8: Some women will support the new frontier for their kind. Most can’t escape their basic proprietory, nasty jealousies
KultsiKN: Well, to a shoreboud wife’s mind there is only all this nookie running around.
Major oz: no comment, Mer
BPRAL22169: I think that’s a reflection on themselves.
Major oz: agree
Merfilly8: Of course it is, Bill
Major oz: Was DatSR timely?
siannon prime: Jealousy springs from a lack of self-worth. Shore wives are relegated to kinde kaffee kirch, aren’t they?
Major oz: …..and that’s the connection with _Space Jockey_
BPRAL22169: Maybe timely in a negative way — that’s about when the clampdown on women began to be felt. Get Rosie the riveter back in the house.
Merfilly8: Yes, or joing the Officers’ Wives club
siannon prime: Erch! Worse than kkk….
Major oz: ….although at the club at Edwards, they had a LA stripper come out and teach the wives how to twirl tassells with their breasts — they practiced with tea bags
TAWN3 has entered the room.
KultsiKN: Hi, Tawn
siannon prime: Tea bags has a different meaning in Brit – lol..
TAWN3: Hi all!
Major oz: I suppose……..
Merfilly8: evening Tawn
KultsiKN: Pray, tell
Major oz: yo, T
TAWN3: yo
Merfilly8: I heard of Wives getting belly dancing lessons, strip tease lessons…all to spice up their lives even if they never shared with hubby
siannon prime: “bag” is an unattractive woman. Tea-drinker is elderly, or very conservative. A tea-bag stripper is a contradiction in terms
Major oz: Sometimes (as at Edwards) there is nowhere but “here” and the club is all you got.
TAWN3: What is the topic? Sounds interesting. 🙂
Major oz: interesting, siannon
siannon prime: Women is the topic, Tawn! Hi!
TAWN3: Space Jockey and neglected wives?
BPRAL22169: We’re talking about “Delilah and the Space Rigger” (Blue Book 1949)
siannon prime: Yep
KultsiKN: Women enetering the men’s domains.
TAWN3: Hi Jani
Major oz: …..and how “dirtside” wives feel about women working in space with the hubbies
TAWN3: Ahhhhh Interesting take on it.
TAWN3: The “other” female POV.
KultsiKN: Only to them it would be “working”…
Major oz: right
siannon prime: It’s the wife thing – not having one’s own personality, being an adjunct of someone else
Merfilly8: Cute Kultsi
Major oz: WORKING women…..not that old saw…..
KultsiKN: The dirtside POV
siannon prime: And wives see a lotta dirt
Merfilly8: Jani: that being, until more recent years, the epitome of the wifely role, especially in military circles.
Major oz: Next time you see a re-run of an old Bob Hope USO show, note that EVERY time an actress plays a nurse, she is wearing a coin changer.
siannon prime: Exactly, and in civvie circles too
Merfilly8: More extreme in military or quasi-military organizations
siannon prime: Coin changer?
Major oz: ….a little gadget that paper-boys used to make change for buyers of the paper…..
Major oz: made of metal,,,,,fits on the belt
siannon prime: Filly, even in civvy there is an “attitude” about women who pursue careers. Getting better, though
Major oz: levers that spit out each of four kinds of coins from four tubes
Merfilly8: True.
TAWN3: Interesting Oz
siannon prime: So why nurses with coin changers? Don’t understand?
Major oz: …..moonlighting……
Major oz: ….for cash…..
Merfilly8: Doubtful our male partner will ever leave work, even if I follow my electronics and could support him
siannon prime: Ahh
TAWN3: They are hooking Jani
siannon prime: Ahh!!
Merfilly8:
BPRAL22169: And does this shed any light on Gillian Boardman’s profession?
siannon prime: Who is accusing me of being Welsh?
siannon prime: 🙂
Major oz: ooops, faus pas
Major oz: ?
Major oz: “X”
Major oz: mata faux pas
siannon prime: de nada, cariad 🙂
Merfilly8: Doesn’t explain her methodiness concerning sex
Major oz: Gillian’s ?
Merfilly8: yes
Major oz: she is a teacher, not a hooker
TAWN3: Haetera?
Major oz: yo
Merfilly8: excuse, got wrong character in mind
Major oz: a sacred temple lady
siannon prime: Gill’s a nurse in the male fantasy world of nursing at the start of SiasL
TAWN3: Is =/= teaching
siannon prime: Haetara is still a rude word in Greek, or was when I used it on holiday there
TAWN3: Ah
Merfilly8: right character then. She was, to me, prudish, concerning Mike’s sexual education
TAWN3: How was your holiday?
TAWN3: Gillian wasn’t hooking.
TAWN3: I was thinking of TEFL
siannon prime: A long time ago. Delos was supernatural 🙂
TAWN3: 🙂
Merfilly8: Delos = Harriman….oh, wait, Greece
Major oz: Jubal’s sirens/furies had only the highest moral standards
Merfilly8: sideslipped
Major oz: ….except with family
KultsiKN: Or anyone they wanted to add to the family… Isn’t that universal?
Major oz: yes
Merfilly8: not in my birth family
siannon prime: Yes, I meant Greece .. interesting middle name. Did the H’s visit the Cyclades?
Major oz: If David was here, he could tell us
siannon prime: Anyone know how David’s mum is? I haven’t daren’t ask…
BPRAL22169: He was in Athens a couple of times, but I don’t recall hearing anything about the islands.
Major oz: no word, that I know of
KultsiKN: Not me. either.
KultsiKN: He has not been online any times I have.
Major oz: I don’t recall ever seeing Greece in any of his stories
Major oz: oblique references to Classical Greece, is all
siannon prime: Okay, I guess we leave all the prayers and healing on file 🙁
Major oz: yes
Merfilly8: I saw David briefly online, but didn’t want to presumptiously IM him
BPRAL22169: I tink he mentioned shopping on the Acropolis in one of his essays in EU.
BPRAL22169: It’s not presumptuous to IM David — or anyone, actually; if they don’t want to chat, they can just not do so.
siannon prime: Well, if he was in Athens he might well have felt the atmosphere on Delos.
BPRAL22169: Depends on how much time he had on the trip.
siannon prime: Bill, I know – but sometimes you feel they’ll talk to *you* if they want to
KultsiKN: The Greek athmospere is something you must experinece.
BPRAL22169: Lol.
Major oz: any double meanings there Kultski ?
siannon prime: Yes, there is abit of the “ancient” hanging around – you have to be there…
KultsiKN: None. I like the place.
Major oz: I have heard the same from all I know who have had the experience.
Major oz: My aim is to sail the islands and proceed to the Turquoise Coast.
siannon prime: Like Stonehenge, or Avebury – Greece is full of atmosphere, in the same way that Shakespeare is full of quotes 🙂
Major oz: And that Clinton is full of………….
Merfilly8: Hmmm, could see a double meaning Jani
BPRAL22169: Now, now! TOS Warning!
Merfilly8: Shakespeare seemed to have filed a lot of serial numbers off
BPRAL22169: (There is no TOS on AIM, btw)
siannon prime: Not at all! That was a genuine comment!
BPRAL22169: No — shakespear engraved the serial numbers.
siannon prime: What’s TOS? (Toss I understand
Merfilly8: Not according to most english lit classes these days.
KultsiKN: Terms Of Service
BPRAL22169: Terms of Service — it’s an AOL term. Means you are subject to disciplinary actin.
Merfilly8: Claims he just prettied up the works of his peers or earlier.
Major oz: Rules of the road
BPRAL22169: I know, Mer. he did recycle a lot of old stories from a lot of different sources.
siannon prime: Keyboard. You ain’t seen Demon v Godfrey, over here
n1yqh a has entered the room.
Major oz: The twenty….opps…..ten commandments of AOL postings
siannon prime: Hi Mike!
n1yqh a: hi, guys…
Merfilly8: welcome Mike
BPRAL22169: Talking — kinda — about “Delilah and the Space Rigger”
n1yqh a: I keep forgetting that these are earlier than they used to be…
Merfilly8: Works better for me…no lap over in my RPG time
TAWN3: Ginny says Hi and sends her regrets that she can’t be here. She asks all of us to have a good chat.
KultsiKN: Why? These have allways been at midnight?
KultsiKN: Tawn, give my love.
TAWN3: What do you RPG Mer?
siannon prime: Ask Ginny if she ever went to Delos…
BPRAL22169: Let me see if she’s on AOL right now.
Merfilly8: Lately? DC Superheroes game. Done a lot more in the past
TAWN3: Is Delos an island in Greece?
KultsiKN: Yes, she is
TAWN3: Yes Bill, she is.
siannon prime: Yes it is
Merfilly8: Delos and Delphi?
TAWN3: Is someone already talking to her? I don’t want to fill up her screen with IMs.
TAWN3: Bill?
siannon prime: The oracle was at Delphi. Delos is an island, which is protected by the cultural ministry of Greece nowadays
BPRAL22169: Yo. She must be busy with something else right now.
TAWN3: Why Jani? Lots of artifacts?
Merfilly8: ok
BPRAL22169: No, they never visited the Islands.
siannon prime: Very few. But it’s illegal to even remove a pebble from Delos.
Merfilly8:
TAWN3: What makes Delos important?
TAWN3: ba-na-na. Biiiiig woooorrrrrd.
Merfilly8: mythical birth place of Apollo/Artemis?
TAWN3: 🙂
Merfilly8: no, that’s not right
Merfilly8: sheesh…need to read Bulfinch again
KultsiKN: Why, if there were no restrictions the tourists would just export the whole of Greece…
TAWN3: I have Bulfinches Mythology. Never read it though.
BPRAL22169: The British tried to do that last century.
TAWN3: finch’s
Merfilly8: Used to read it every time I ran out of books
siannon prime: It was, I think, the centre of the mythos – a god born, and a light never extinguished. And if you go there, it *feels* like that. Hard to explain, but there is a purity and clarity about that island which isn’t paralleled anywhere in the European “old” sites
TAWN3: The reason the Parthenon is shot (pun) is because the Turks set up camp in it, thinking the Greeks would not fire on it. Well, the Turks were wrong. And now the Parthenon is shot.
Merfilly8: Hah! Was right, Birthplace of Apollo
BPRAL22169: omphalos kosmos
Merfilly8: sorry
siannon prime: Sun god
siannon prime: Delos is light
Merfilly8: my memory has been haywire lately. Remembering anything makes me have hope it is recovering
siannon prime: How old is the baby? It gets better!
Merfilly8: She’s four months now
Merfilly8: her ‘sister’ is nine months
siannon prime: Then your memory will continue to increase exponentially
Merfilly8: so both Ebontress and I are haywire most of the time
siannon prime: You both do far better than I did 🙂
Merfilly8: Easier, I think, with two full time mommies
Major oz: tap…tap….tap….
BPRAL22169: Well, shall we take up another perspective on “Delilah and the Space Rigger”?
TAWN3: Sure
KultsiKN: There must be fluff sometimes…
siannon prime: Ok, I’m going. (First lesson, do not bore the men 🙂
Major oz: …why “Delilah” ?
BPRAL22169: Anybody have a remark to make in self-protection before I think up something to say.
Merfilly8: yeppers…don’t mean to sky off on tangent
Major oz: no seduction took place
BPRAL22169: I think it would have ruined the story if it had.
TAWN3: I liked the aspect of the wives on dirtside POV. Have we examined all there is to that?
n1yqh a: No *intentional* seduction, at least – accidental, though?
Major oz: ga
BPRAL22169: All of Tiny’s direst predictions would have come true. Of course Tiny was seduced.
TAWN3: Can the men bore the women Jani?
Merfilly8: on an intellectual level
siannon prime: Delilah is powerful female figure, and I’ll leave it at that .. good night, all!
Major oz: mental seduction by competence
Major oz: ?
Merfilly8: agreed
BPRAL22169: I think so. And personal worthwhileness.
siannon prime has left the room.
Major oz: or more properly, psychological or attitudinal
BPRAL22169: Not boring the men, S’ – but a cadence had been reached.
Major oz: ?
BPRAL22169: Oh, well, she’ll see it in the logs.
TAWN3: Why did Jani leave?
Merfilly8: didn’t read up
Major oz: she pays by the minute
Merfilly8: so she bowed out
TAWN3: Was it something I said? I hope not!!!!!
Merfilly8: no Tawn
Merfilly8: she breezed through earlier and left
BPRAL22169: She had also said something earlier about a medical regimen.
KultsiKN: No, none, Tawn. More like Oz…
Major oz: 🙁
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
Merfilly8: Now, now
Major oz: ooopa
Major oz: s
Merfilly8: ok, bill left us
KultsiKN: Hup! What ate Bill?
TAWN3: Everybody is bailing out on us!
Merfilly8: AOL DAEMON ATTACK!!!! 🙂
TAWN3: Bill’s been having trouble with AIM.
n1yqh a: The AIM server is probably acting up again..
TAWN3: He might be right back.
Major oz: mayhap it is like my local, propane-powered ISP
Major oz: It dumps me as the slightest hiccup
Major oz: at
Merfilly8: Or like here, 56k ability, except when they wire up new houses in the boonies
Merfilly8: so my top is 28
Major oz: me too
TAWN3: Propane powered ISPs must not last long during flame wars Oz.
n1yqh a: I love my cable modem… 🙂
Merfilly8: no cable where I live 🙂
Major oz: I am at the end of a LONG line in the boonies
Major oz: boooooooo, T
TAWN3: 🙂
Merfilly8: I’ll try to drag him back
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
BPRAL22169: Thanks Mer, Dw. I hit the cancel instead of the minimize on aol.
Merfilly8: the instigator of the room should not leave
stephenveiss: Revolving door? 🙂
Major oz: …..so, where were we. Intellectual seduction by a competent person. Seductee didn’t even know he was being had.
Merfilly8: makes me feel as if I might be in a Klein bottle
BPRAL22169: How can you lurk in a revolving door — oh, I see; that’s what you do when you’re delurked.
Major oz: so who was “Dad”?
BPRAL22169: Well– in a real sense, he’s not being “had.” That is what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Major oz: ….in the sense that things (social movement) is taking place without his realizing it.
Merfilly8: Dad was merely the window to the moment in my opinion
TAWN3: The Hookey Pookey, That’s what it’s all about.
BPRAL22169: I agree — a viewer.
Merfilly8: the observer/participant to let us view the happens
Major oz: …and (usually a sin of youth) when he realizes what is happening, he thinks he invented it.
BPRAL22169: Us primate folk like to establish connections each to each.
Merfilly8: ooh ooh ah ah
Merfilly8: 🙂
BPRAL22169: (danger! danger! “The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock” Alert! danger! danger!)
Major oz: So he was Ishmael ?
Merfilly8: no disrespect intended to other primates of the other orders
TAWN3: Did you read his obituary?
BPRAL22169: No, never did. “He” I assume TSE?
TAWN3: I’m not sure, may be confusing people. Who is Proofrock?
Major oz: Sounds like a Dickens character
BPRAL22169: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock” is a poem by T.S. Eliot.
TAWN3: Disregard my last statement.
BPRAL22169: I wound up quoting three or four lines from it last Thursday and did NOT want to repeat the experience.
Major oz: I limited out at Robert Service
BPRAL22169: The “atmosphere” of “Delilah” seems cheery and ingenuous by comparison to the PC wars going on Out There now. I don’t think anything like that could take place in today’s atmosphere.
Major oz: The space station was a “…big tin can (cyllinder)….”, with a smaller one inside that was set to spinning. I find that hard to realize, technically.
Major oz: Any help, anyone?
Merfilly8: I’m sorry. Inept with spatial visualization
TAWN3: ok, how do these female roles compare to other females roles of the same period? Is the Space Jockey wife like D.D. Harriman’s wife?
TAWN3: Who is Deliah like?
BPRAL22169: Virginia Heinlein. I got that very strongly.
Major oz: we madt precisely that point earlier,
TAWN3: What does this say about the role of women in the forties and fifties from RAH’s point of vieww?
BPRAL22169: It was the “Ticky” hair ribbon that set off that train of thought.
Major oz: and we included Grace Farnham
TAWN3: Is there a dichotomy at work?
BPRAL22169: Some of us included Grace Farnham. I think people generally agree that Grace Farnham is paired up with DD Harriman’s wife, but I don’t think Phyllis belongs in that category.
TAWN3: Which does RAH prefer, The Deliah role model, or the at home wife in the background model?
Major oz: T, do you see Phyllis as “older”?
TAWN3: Can one prefer both models simultaneously?
TAWN3: Is there really a conflict between these two roles?
Major oz: Not at all
TAWN3: Or are they simply different aspects of the same thing?
Merfilly8: I see Phyliss as being somewhat, a year or three, younger than Jake
BPRAL22169: It may be just the perspective we get from the circumstances of the story.
Major oz: I think the soliloqoy (whoa,,,,spelling) on “specialization” in the Notebooks of LL apply to women also
TAWN3: I think they are two seperate realities.
BPRAL22169: I mean, Phyllis might be working for General Services, but we don’t know that from what’s in the story.
TAWN3: Deliah would never be a stay at home in the background person.
Major oz: never
Merfilly8: If she can just pick up and leave for Luna….at home wife would be my vote
Major oz: but she would be Dora on Boondock
Merfilly8: Delilah has been cutting her own path, using the same tricks we are taught on job applications. Using initials instead of your name, for instance
Major oz: which ALWAYS means female
BPRAL22169: I don’t know about Delilah — think about Ginny Gerstenfield and her history — industrial chemist, Navy engineering helper of some kind at NAES, then student, then jet-propelled hausfrau.
Merfilly8: That way, the reviewer ‘sees’ the gender s/he intends to hire
Merfilly8: Very few pick up on it, though, Oz
BPRAL22169: Same tricks Dr. M.L. Martin used.
Merfilly8: Been on both sides of the hiring desk.
Major oz: All, Bill, choices she made
BPRAL22169: True, but I’m saying G[loria] might have made the same choices.
BPRAL22169: Given the appropriate circumstances.
Major oz: ….should have said: “….SHE made”.
Major oz: and she probably will, given time
Major oz: Gloria
Major oz: that is
BPRAL22169: Gloria Brooks — I forget her last name.
TAWN3: Deliah = Gloria.
BPRAL22169: Brooksie.
Merfilly8: Mc Nye
BPRAL22169: I think the seduction we talked about before must have been deliberate from that title — Delilah traditionally is a seducer.
TAWN3: Gloria B. McNye.
Merfilly8: Yes Bill
Merfilly8: For getting th other side the upper hand, at that
n1yqh a: But does the title refer to what she was doing deliberately, or was it just in reference to the situation?
BPRAL22169: I would say the situation.
KultsiKN: Giving G.B. McNye, which means a white, male engineer in every hirer’s book.
Merfilly8: or radio operator in this instance
KultsiKN: Techie, anyway
BPRAL22169: It’s an ironic seduction, though — the biblical Delilah brings run on Samson, whereas Brooksie brings fulfillment, richness on Tiny.
Major oz: I am between nlyqh and Bill. She wanted to do what she could do. She only had to wheedle her way in (seduce) because she had to in order to be recognized.
TAWN3: I have a different take.
Merfilly8: GA Tawn
BPRAL22169: I don’t think of the “seduction” as being deliberate or “wheedling” — it takes place when you are definitely and unequivocally what you are. People are drawn to that.
TAWN3: Deliah cut Samson’s hair, Emasculated him in a way. Stopped him from doing his job (of slaying the enemy).
Major oz: ga
TAWN3: Gloria distracts the men from their job.
TAWN3: Men alone in the field can acomplish a lot.
n1yqh a: I totally agree, Bill – that’s what I was (badly) trying to say…
dwrighsr: But the point of the story was that they actually improved their performance
TAWN3: Now, they are distracted. Have to start worrying about quarters for the wives and girlfriends etc.
BPRAL22169: Now I’ve got to pull that darned story out. . .
TAWN3: When men don’t spend their time on relationships, they expend their energies elsewhere.
BPRAL22169: But the purpose of the thing was colonization of space, and that’s what GBN got them focused on.
BPRAL22169: As I say, it’s an “ironic” seduction.
Major oz: So, T is for Tiny
TAWN3: Perhaps that is why Newton was a virgin. Or, perhaps because he was a virgin, he could devote all his time to the calculus.
n1yqh a: They may have been distracted by worrying about settling the women in, etc., but they were *much* less distracted by the lack of women…
Major oz:
Major oz: ….and never have sex before the big game……?????
Merfilly8: seen research both ways on that one, Oz
BPRAL22169: Only part of his time. he did some work in optics — and let’s not forget his asrology and alchemy and extra-curricular pursuits
TAWN3: Liebnitz (?) on the other hand was a ladies man and big Romeo at the German court, and he did ok with his calculus. So, perhaps, it does not matter either way?
Merfilly8: Seen the Mirror Has Two Faces? Bridges’ character could not work when sexually involved
n1yqh a: What was it that RAH said about geniuses? That they are rarely near the sexual norm, whether that be on the celibate side or otherwise?
Merfilly8: Moderation or excess?
n1yqh a: (IIRC it was in SIASL, talking about Foster, but I could be wrong)
BPRAL22169: I believe you are correct.
KultsiKN: Mike, is that a reference to powers-that-be?
TAWN3: Probably true nlyqh
BPRAL22169: And in TEFL — geniuses make their own rules about sex (and durned near everything else)
TAWN3: Anne Muir.
n1yqh a: “powers-that-be”, Kultsi?
Major oz: I agree with Mike. History seems to bear it out.
BPRAL22169: Humans don’t have to pay much attention to the customs of monkeys.
TAWN3: Brain sex again.
BPRAL22169: Einstein?
TAWN3: Leaders in all species tend to have more sex and aggression hormones excreted.
KultsiKN: Not naming any C-names around…
BPRAL22169: Feynman?
TAWN3: Those at the bottom of the pecking order have less.
Major oz: My man
BPRAL22169: Bohr
TAWN3: The body adapts.
n1yqh a: Oh, gotcha – that’s implying that you consider him to be a genius?
BPRAL22169: Only the Man of the Century, hey.
TAWN3: Nature self selecting what genes to pass on.
BPRAL22169: According to Time Magazine, anyway.
KultsiKN: With all due respect — no way 😉
TAWN3: So, people like Clinton will have a big sex drive. JFK too.
Major oz: Leaders =/= genius
BPRAL22169: Could be. I think Churchhill qualified on tht point.
BPRAL22169: (my second candidate for Man of the Century, btw)
KultsiKN: Which way?
BPRAL22169: But also not near the center of the curve sexually.
TAWN3: True.
BPRAL22169: Churchill was both a leader and a genius.
TAWN3: Leaders=/= genius. However, leaders =leaders.
TAWN3: And low IQ =/= leader.
Major oz: and therefore………??????
BPRAL22169: Sometimes geniuses are leaders. A low IQ person can be a leader if they’ve got the necessary moral wherewithall. — Not too low, of course.
n1yqh a: which does *not* imply that either a) high IQ = leader (or vice versa) *or* b) high IQ = genius….
BPRAL22169: Right.
TAWN3: Look at any pack of mamals and you will see this law of nature being played out. Including monkeys.
Major oz: Ted Kozinski
BPRAL22169: I’m losing the thread here. Tawn, could you expand on your comment?
TAWN3: By definition, leaders have to be smarter.
TAWN3: Politics.
BPRAL22169: No. They have to be leaders.
TAWN3: Is a deadly game.
Major oz: clever ???
n1yqh a: Not really “smarter” in an absolute sense… Just “smarter” when it comes to human interaction
KultsiKN: They must have that something that makes people follow them.
Major oz: smart is a null word (just for me — I can never quantify it)
BPRAL22169: But that’s not an “intellectual” quality per se —
KultsiKN: Charisma?
BPRAL22169: i.e., not a matter of I.Q.;, which measures something like problem-solving abilty.
stephenveiss: I’m off. G’night!
stephenveiss has left the room.
n1yqh a: Were Einstein, or Feynman, or Bohr, etc. leaders? Would anybody argue that they were not among the smartest members of the human species?
TAWN3: Clever, smarter, either way, it must be better than most people in saome way, or others WILL NOT follow. To follow you, I must innately recognize that I admire and/or respect you or that you have more to offer by my following you than by going my own way.
BPRAL22169: It is 5:12, so we have exceeded our scheduled 3 hours.
Merfilly8: yes, indeed we have
Major oz: time cops, time cops…….
TAWN3: So, if I accept to folow you, I am defacto saying by my actions that I recognise your superiority in some way.
BPRAL22169: No, Tawn — a leader needs only to put up an example. It is also possible to lead by shaming people into following a good example.
Merfilly8: good comments, even if not fully on topic
TAWN3: Or else I would not follow. I would lead and or go my own way.
Major oz: …and one of those ways may be to act as a shield so you get shot and I don’t
n1yqh a: Which means that if I can *fool* you into thinking that I am superior…
BPRAL22169: “Come on, you apes, do you want to live forever” does not require a high IQ to create, but it does speak to high moral stature.
TAWN3: I believe the Harvard model of seven IQs is the most correct model.
BPRAL22169: You can only lead someone where they want to go.
n1yqh a: There’s a difference between what it takes to make a *good* leader, and just what it takes to make a leader..
BPRAL22169: I think we started this thread talking about leader versus pretending-to-lead.
Major oz: Feynman is one of my superheroes, but he couldn’t (maybe he could) get my vote to act as my advocate for tax or foreign policy……….
TAWN3: Either way, many people WANT to lead. The smartest will actually end up doing so.
BPRAL22169: Part of being a hero is doing what you do. Feynman wasn’t a dog catcher, and he probably wouldn’t have been a hero if he were.
Merfilly8: Perhaps that is the crux. Genius is so rarely multi faceted
Major oz: ….by killing off the pretenders
Major oz: like Hitler
Major oz: or Stalin
TAWN3: It is a job prereq. Many people WANT to play pro ball, only the most qualified ever end up doing so.
BPRAL22169: I think there are several kinds of genius — only a few of them are narrow and specialized.
TAWN3: You can lead in many ways.
Merfilly8: I always fail prey to the philosophy of the one not wanting to lead, does
Major oz: John Paul II leads effectively
BPRAL22169: Remember The Dispossessed? He did not want to lead — but he went wherehe had to go.
TAWN3: Rare. Cincinatus
TAWN3: Cincinnatus(?)
Major oz: Alvin York
TAWN3: But, he WAS the most qualified. Which is why they wanted him.
Major oz: Brigam Young
TAWN3: Yoprk was good, but he didn’t lead in a big way.
Major oz: Hughie P. Long
TAWN3: Lequin? Hated it. Feminist claptrap. A strident feminist professor made us read it for a Philosophy class, along with Plato! That is how highly she thought of it.
BPRAL22169: How interesting. The creator of syndicalism and a book about syndicalism. Disagree about the feminist claptrap, though.
TAWN3: And, I think LeQuin was making points that were totally lost on the feminists. Had I read it free of feminist theology, I probably would have liked it more (The Disposseesed).
Merfilly8: Afraid I must retire. Evening all, and enjoy your nights
BPRAL22169: I thought it a wonderful, moving story.
Merfilly8 has left the room.
BPRAL22169: Mer thanks
TAWN3: Yes, but we were reading it as part of “indoctrination”. But it in a whole other light.
Major oz: LeQuin ?
TAWN3: That is why I said, had I read it free from that environment, I would have liked it much more.
BPRAL22169: I’m afraid my orienation was to the refinement of the theory and praxis of anarchism.
Major oz: love that word….praxis
TAWN3: We are talking The Dispossessed by LeQuin, correct?
BPRAL22169: And the notion that theory freezes up and must be thawed with the warmth of humanity reacting with creative vigor.
BPRAL22169: Yes.
Major oz: Ursula ?
TAWN3: Two worlds, one ultra “sexist”, one ultra “none sexist”.
KultsiKN: Yes, Oz.
Major oz: thought it was LaGuin
BPRAL22169: That’s a bizarre interpretation. They are clearly given as capitalist versus syndicalist anarchist.
KultsiKN: LeGuin.
TAWN3: ?
TAWN3: One world is very egalitarianian. A perfect communism.
Major oz: The University of Oregon Flash?
TAWN3: One world is very capitalist.
TAWN3: The capitalist world is very sexist.
BPRAL22169: Not communism — syndicalist anarchist. VERY different.
Major oz: …..the novel where one suffers through “Kemmerer” ?
TAWN3: The other is very non sexist
TAWN3: Remember the role of women in the capitalist world?
BPRAL22169: I think that’s Left hand of Darkness, isn’t it?
Major oz: yes, thanx
TAWN3: Remember, we were reading this assigned by a radical feminist prof.
BPRAL22169: Yes – they were essentially “property.” among the propertarians.
TAWN3: So, the point in discussion for two weeks was very clearly her feminist POV.
TAWN3: Not Communism like Stalin, communism as in communal.
BPRAL22169: how very narrow a slice of the book that point of view will admit to light!
BPRAL22169: “communitarian”?
Major oz: well, then there is “Handmaiden”
TAWN3: Communitarian works.
BPRAL22169: Eewwwww!
TAWN3: IcK!!!!!
TAWN3: Only saw the movie.
Major oz: movie?
Major oz: didn’t see it
TAWN3: The Handmaidens Tale. With Duvall and others.
Major oz: that’s it
Major oz: read it ’bout ten years ago
Major oz: diatribe
TAWN3: What was our point of this? 🙂
TAWN3: I forgot! 🙂
Major oz: that’s my question
BPRAL22169: How did we get onto The Dispossessed?
Major oz: feminism
Major oz: literary examples
TAWN3: Someone compared it.
BPRAL22169: I can’t look back — my scrollbar is gerplonkt.
BPRAL22169: Well, shll we call it a night, filk?
Major oz: hokay………
KultsiKN: Morning, like. 😉
TAWN3: Sure
BPRAL22169: Call it a morning, then.
n1yqh a: time to start dinner, anyways…
Major oz: Kultiski, do you live in Helsinki?
BPRAL22169: Ok. next topic is “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous” — “The Long Watch” and “Gentlemen, Be Seated.” May 25, I make it.
KultsiKN: Been a pleasure! Bill, IM or e-mail me with any new developments, pls!
BPRAL22169: Certainly.
BPRAL22169: David, I believe you have the entire log this time?
Lenjazz: Thanks for letting me “listen” in…bye folks.
KultsiKN: No, Oz, in the Boondocks. Work there, though.
TAWN3: bye Lenjazz!
Major oz: I regret to say that that is the only part of
BPRAL22169: Next time talk more.
Major oz: Finland I have visited
Major oz: Wanted to see more.
Lenjazz has left the room.
Major oz: see ya all in two weeks
Major oz: by
Major oz has left the room.
BPRAL22169: Ciao
KultsiKN: There is much more to it, yes. Helsinki is also Finland, though — the people are ~ same…
KultsiKN: Oh then he went.
n1yqh a: Off to make dinner – homemade pizza, albeit using frozen dough… 🙂 G’night, all, see you in a couple of weeks.
BPRAL22169: Ciao and Chow.
n1yqh a has left the room.
TAWN3: 1
TAWN3: 🙂
TAWN3: Ciao and chow!@
TAWN3: 🙂
KultsiKN: Bye Tawn!
BPRAL22169: I have a mind that runs in those gutters.
TAWN3: Bye!
TAWN3: 🙂
KultsiKN: Bye, Bill!
KultsiKN: I’m off!
BPRAL22169: Thanks for coming —
KultsiKN: My pleasure!
KultsiKN has left the room.
BPRAL22169: Good work with Astyanax.
BPRAL22169: Are we ready to shut down the log and the room?
TAWN3: I’m going to stick around and reread this chat while I have it on screen.
TAWN3: Sure Bill.
BPRAL22169: Feel free– but you can also save the whole thing to your hard drive or to a floppy disk (use the file pulldown menu and the save option) and read it at your leisure.
BPRAL22169: I think David must be away from the screen right now.
dwrighsr: I’ll have the log posted on the web site in a couple of hours.
TAWN3: Yes I know. I missed ther first part though. Will read now, then save to disk, then replace when the new log is posted.
dwrighsr: Looks like it was a good one. Look forward to reading it.
BPRAL22169: Nope — there you are. You got the entire log this time, didn’t you — you were one of the first people in the room.
dwrighsr: Got the whole thing.
TAWN3: How do you make a log?
BPRAL22169: Great. In that case, at 5:37 I declare we is done!
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
dwrighsr: Night Tawn. I closing the log and signing off.
TAWN3: Bye David.
Final End of Discussion Log
