Re: Has Harpers Lost Its Mind?

1

OT, but are there any philosophers who want to help a Sadly, No!er out? He's looking for articles on moral authority and I didn't think the answers were very helpful -- especially the one that said "listen to God" -- but I wasn't able to be too helpful either. I figure if there are any moral philosophers reading this they might know something.

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Isn't that Labs' field? Or something like it?

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And as far as I know you're right, too. I'm no expert either, but everything I've read makes Duesberg seem like a crank. Bigots love him because they get to blaim AIDS on nasty homosexuals doing amyl nitrite. What Harper's is thinking I don't know -- teh contrarianism?

(On preview; yes, I was thinking specifically of Labs.)

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Dude, that's some seriously stupid, stupid contrarianism. I have no sympathy whatsoever with a magazine that's willing to screw with public health in the name of being daring or edgy.

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The person I most associate with the word "contrarian" is Christopher Hitchens. Then maybe Kaus. So, yeah, I think it makes you stupid.

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And "contrarianism" is just speculation; or, it's the best hypothesis I can come up with for how this happened. Maybe C. Farber is friends with someone. Maybe there really is some breakthrough that has escaped my notice. But if I were a betting man, I'd bet on contrarianism.

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I hate that. I'm very fond of Harpers, and I really don't want to start thinking of the editors as dimwitted irresponsible losers. I'm going to be watching them like a hawk for months now.

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Well, not wanting to cause an argument, and tho I shouldn't because of my limited reading of Duesberg, I always understood him saying that AIDS was a function of malnutrition or other things which cause the immune system to deteriorate. Among those "other things" is drug abuse, and while I do not recall how much he focuses on that, I think his argument could be easily co-opted by those who want a blame-the-victim approach to AIDS politics. Look, perhaps he is a crackpot, but what I also recall when I looked at his theory was the amount of money at stake in this country for the "traditional approach." HIV/AIDS research gets massively funded, and I do not think it is totally out of bounds as a general matter --- even if Duesberg et al are wrong in this case --- to ask how the money/interest/political influence nexus of governments/doctors/research institutions might, perhaps unwittingly, exclude alternative theories.

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9

HIV/AIDS research gets massively funded

Isn't this a cause and effect confusion? At least my understanding is that "the traditional approach" was generated by a lot of solid scientific research demonstrating things which worked and things which didn't in preventing the spread of AIDS and in diminishing the drugs effects. Then it became massively funded because it was working, but if that's the case it's utterly un-objectionable.

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Also, there's nothing wrong with causing arguments. This isn't supposed to be an argument free zone.

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w/d: you may be right, but my recollection is that the funding came first.

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The S,N post was, I thought, looking for guidance on "moral authority" in the sense of "what Cindy Sheehan is alleged to have, and Dick Cheney is alleged not to have" instead of, say, moral expertise or practical wisdom or something like that. I posted a comment there explaining why I don't think there's a lot of literature on this, but I'll think more about it.

Also, wtf, Harpers?

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13

... how the money/interest/political influence nexus of governments/doctors/research institutions might, perhaps unwittingly, exclude alternative theories.

Isn't science - or medicine - precisely the process of excluding theories? You test 'em, they fail, and you exclude them. Or, often, they're patently crazy (hypnotizing lobsters causes AIDS!!) and you ignore them.

If we want to know whether there are alternate theories which deserve more testing than they've had, we should look at those theories, and the theories that have been tested. Looking at nexi (nexuses? nexiums?) of influence won't tell us about how to treat AIDS.

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14

Moral authority flows from me, not from God. Give them my email address and I'll explain this.

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I know nothing about Duesberg, but from the looks of it, wtf Harpers indeed.

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AIDS is caused by drug abuse, rather than an infectious agent

I haven't read the article (though the magazine is on the coffee table) but my hemophiliac family friend who contracted it from transfusions in the 80s would beg to differ. If he could. Being dead makes it difficult. My no-drugs-but-alcohol friend who contracted it from being raped probably has a thing or two to say about that theory as well.

But I'll refrain from commenting further until I read it, in case I'm missing part of the argument.

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Wait, does HIV cause moral authority, too? I'm so confused...

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Ah, I see the part of the argument that I'm missing: they contracted HIV that way. Anyhow, I guarantee that the first fellow I mentioned wasn't abusing drugs of any sort when his HIV switched into full-blown AIDS.

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I think that the comment-spam on "Innocence" should be left as the last post there. The spambots will outlast even the giant mutant cockroaches. Ñongratulations!

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Aha, finally found hilzoy's post on an HIV/AIDS denialist whose child died, basically, as a result of her contrarian position. Apparently Dean Esmay has also given these people a platform.

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Isn't that what Esmay is best known for? I know that is what he is best known to me for.

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The Poor Man on Esmay (actually, it doesn't add much to this discussion, but it's a classic link anyway).

And I see Hilzoy had the same thoughts about contrarianism! I'm honored.

(Previewing: w/d, Esmay is a versatile wanker.)

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Is "Dean Esmay" a pseudonym, or is his last name really pig-latin?

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He ain't the only one.

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18: As I understand Duesberg, he claims no -- that HIV has nothing to do with it. The deaths of your friends are inexplicable.

See, I just can't see this as credible enough to publish.

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AIDS denialism is a much worse form of scientific wingnuttery than say creationism, because it can actually kill people.

A lot of it seems to be driven by people with HIV who don't want to think of themselves as bound to die of AIDS; throw in some conspiracy theorists and "open-minded" people, and it's a real ugly sight.

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23--So his real name is "Dean Mess"? That'd do.

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28

The President of South Africa believes this as well.

(Note: I haven't read the linked article, but it seems pretty reasonable at first glance.)

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How about Swaziland's King Mswati III's approach: "Thirteen wives for me; sex ban for the rest of you."

The BBC's ever-so-understated reporting on the sex ban:

Our correspondent says this was very unpopular, especially in urban areas.

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what I also recall when I looked at his theory was the amount of money at stake in this country for the "traditional approach.

People like Doucheberg thrive on this suspicion of the "traditional approach."

The Western world is on some kind "alternative therapy" kick lately, and it drives me nuts. All diseases can be cured with nutrition! 90 percent of cancer is caused by "toxins"! Don't freeze your water bottles cause it'll release dioxin! It's all a conspiracy by Big Pharma to keep you sick!

Yeh, fuck those "scientists" with their "biochemistry", "genomics", and "pharmacology"

Incidentally, one of the best online resources with regards to HIV is run by UCSF.

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The President of South Africa believes this as well.

Fortunately his Cabinet overruled him 2 or 3 years ago. Their official position is now that HIV causes AIDS. It's still a lousy place to have AIDS, the idea that HIV is irrelevant hasn't gone away, but at least the government isn't categorically refusing to provide antiretrovirals anymore.

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28 - you mean the article you link to, about Mbeki. A casual reader may not understand that.

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32 - Yes, sorry about that.

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34

You know, I'm going to end up buying the damned magazine just to see what the article says. I imagine that, while HIV skepticism was a pretty easy conspiracy theory to sell in the 80s, it's much harder now, since lots of research presupposing that HIV is what we're after has produced effective drugs (which, of course, causes its own problems, e.g. nonchalance). What an astounding coincidence this would be! Of course, if the skeptics can't dance around simple observations like these, they wouldn't be in Harper's, so I should just read it instead of talking about it.

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I don't know. What if we grant that all the questions of empirical fact (i.e., that this particular death happened, that the studies were slap-dash, etc.) in the article is actually true? I think that it at least says something.

I have a genetic predisposition toward conspiracy theory, of course.

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36

Okay, have now read the article and it isn't as bad as, say, some of the stuff I've seen Esmay link. Before it gets into the workings of HIV, the article makes some very important and accurate points about the nature of the pharmaceutical industry, the federal apparatus overseeing it, and the whole clinical trials industry, which sits in a weird place between the two. I work in the latter.

The three are extremely incestuous, people change jobs and companies constantly, and the network of relationships is predictably dense. Of course, mind-boggling amounts of money are at stake as well. Science is but one of many driving forces at work. HIV is a particularly frenzied field because, well, none of the drugs really work over the long haul, so the potential market for newer drugs is huge. Resistances build quickly, dosages and combinations are all over the place, if you ever have to enter an AIDS patient's medication history (I have), it's staggeringly long, with as many drugs to deal with the side effects of the HIV drugs as HIV drugs themselves. The interactions of so many different compounds inside a person are poorly understood.

It's also unethical to do a placebo-controlled trial with patients who have an aggressive, fatal disease. In such cases, you normally do new treatments against the standard of care, but there is no standard of care with AIDS - everything, when you come right down to it, is experimental because we're so early in our study of it. It's fiendishly difficult to do those trials and trials outside the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan tend to be fraught with the very sorts of problems HIVNET had (and the article is right about that - it was a disaster).

She's also right that if HIV causes AIDS, it acts very differently than most infectious viruses. Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't cause it, just that it acts differently from the viruses we've studied so far.

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37

Do I really have to go find a paper copy of the article, my access to a university library's online resources aren't enough?

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It's in EBSCO.

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39

She's also right that if HIV causes AIDS, it acts very differently than most infectious viruses. Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't cause it, just that it acts differently from the viruses we've studied so far.

Well, of course a rather key difference is that it targets T-cells. But viruses have all kinds of strategies for infection of different cell populations. This happens to be a particularly problematic strategy to combat as the target host cells comprise a rather important part of our natural defense system. Beyond that, what is she getting at? There's no set template for viruses.

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40

What really irritates me about Duesberg is that he obviously should know better. Something's going on with him. He's either being patently dishonest, or he's gone off the deep end. Celia Farber is an idiot, but the world is full of hysterical know nothings. Duesberg, on the other hand, is a trained researcher at a top university, and this is within his field.

Recreational drugs? Jesus Christ. This is such an easy thing to control for. Macaques that we infect with the simian version of the virus, SIV, develop AIDS. So why the fuck does he think this happens?

Duesberg is a pro, he damn well knows about animal models, etc. It's bizarre that he's sticking to this.

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41

Yes, Harpers has lost its mind. (Just changing me preferences and finally going to bed.)

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42

Okay, have now read the article and it isn't as bad as, say, some of the stuff I've seen Esmay link. Before it gets into the workings of HIV, the article makes some very important and accurate points about the nature of the pharmaceutical industry, the federal apparatus overseeing it, and the whole clinical trials industry, which sits in a weird place between the two. I work in the latter.

The three are extremely incestuous, people change jobs and companies constantly, and the network of relationships is predictably dense.

This aspect of the article actually bothered me most, as being a terribly, terribly dishonest argumentative technique. For those who haven't read it, the article opens with an attack on a particular clinical trial for a particular AIDS drug in Uganda, and then segues into the general AIDS-isn't-caused-by-HIV argument. The sense I got was that Farber was trying to develop credibility with a perfectly believable story about researchers doing shoddy work and treating African research subjects poorly, and then hoping to spread that credibility over her larger and crazier argument, despite the fact that there's no real connection between the two. I felt as though I were being lulled into nodding along: "Research on subjects in developing countries is done without proper safeguards, uh huh, drug companies rush drugs onto the market without real assurances that they're safe and effective, uh huh, HIV doesn't cause AIDS, uh huh,... "

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43

Yeah, the disconnect between the first half and the second half of the article is bizarre. The transition left me scratching my head. Nonetheless, the stuff in the first half should concern people, and AIDS advocacy groups most of all.

As for Duesberg, he seems to me to be proposing a variant on the "god of the gaps" argument. He's ignoring a towering mountain of evidence for a causative relationship between HIV and AIDS, and focusing on a tiny sliver of cases that don't quite fit the model. Unfortunately for him, pretty much every test of his theory shows precisely the opposite of what his idea would predict, so he keeps proposing increasingly byzantine (and largely untestable) explanations, like Factor VIII clotting agent causing AIDS in hemophiliacs.

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44

I haven't read most of the article, but the description in 42 makes it sound more pernicious than just straight-up denialism; sounds like it will make it easy for people who want to dismiss the legitimate concerns to say "That's crazy-talk from AIDS denialists like that SPIN reporter in Harper's."

Also, for the record, the author of the article is named Cecilia Farber: our own Gary is not being discussed here.

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45

people who want to dismiss the legitimate concerns

I have to admit that I had precisely this reaction -- after reading the first few pages of the article, I was concerned about the clinical trial described. After reading the whole thing, I have no opinion, one way or the other, about whether the events described in the beginning of the article happened at all.

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46

With each passing day, I'm more and more impressed by the way that the people in the new roster's fill the holes left by ogged. For example, Becks has a wierdly oggedian sensibility on a lot of things, Apostropher reads all of the strange sites so we don't have to, and, as evidenced by #45, LB hates black people. It's remarkable.

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47

Still haven't read the article beginning to end, but I note that my hypothesis in 3 has predictive power! At the end C. Farber says that Kary Mullins has "grown weary of the attacks on contrarian scientists."

(Mullins is an interesting case, as I understand; deserves his Nobel Prize but still a bit of a whack job. His own publisher says: "perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens.")

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46: I'm pouring glue on a caterpillar right now.

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49

I'm pouring glue on a caterpillar right now.

And that's not a euphemism.

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50

It would have been more dramatic if the ogged cult had split post-ogged like the Rand people did post-rand, with one of the new posters taking the Peikoff role, declaring Peikoffself ogged's "intellectual heir" and steward of a perfect philosophy that admits no revision; and another or others of the new posters taking the whats-his-name role (you know, the guy who slept with ogged Rand) heading the contingent of folks who believe that ogged was mostly right, but could have been wrong in some particulars. I didn't sleep last night, by the way.

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51

I'm still picturing this as a Battle of the Planets sort of thing. In moments of crisis, Becks, Tia, Wolfson, Apostropher, and I form a human (roughly) pyramid, and then start spinning, allowing us to meld into a giant flaming ogged.

(That's a giant flaming ogged, not a giant flaming ogg. Geez, what are you people, twelve?)

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What's Alameida, chopped liver? She does not yet limit her posting to just the astralest of blogs.

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Alameida is old-skool, not a replacement.

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As far as the replacements go, obviously Tia makes controversial pronouncements about aesthetics and formulates t-concepts, and Wolfson -- huh, judging by front-page posts Wolfson may be Unf's replacement.

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Mmm, chopped liver. Alameida was posting here before ogged's untimely departure, and hence did not internalize a share of ogged's spirit upon depature.

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I've got it! Wolfson gets nominated for awards.

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57

"It would have been more dramatic if the ogged cult had split post-ogged like the Rand people did post-rand" but in fact they're just like the post-Tristanoists.

This AIDS denial goes round; The UK Sunday Times got onto the bandwagon way back and I posted somewhere at the time that it was an odd marketing ploy to try to kill off your readership. But I think the barmy, but vocal, UK people behind Living Marxism/Spiked Online are also ploughing this furrow. Maybe Harper's is being infiltrated?

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58

Maybe Harper's is being infiltrated?

That's what I'm really curious about. The AIDS denialism is weird, and a problem, and important in its own right, but what I find personally troublesome is that Harpers is making loony editorial decisions. I like and trust Harpers, and I really want to know what's going on here.

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59

I wish they'd done a 9/11 conspiracy theory story (i.e., it was an inside job, the collapses look like controlled demolition, etc.)

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60

My mother's first cousin, John Hospers, was one of the Rand splitters, and later the first Libertarian presidential candidate.

The man who invented the dump truck, Gar Wood, also grew up in my home town.

And me and ???? some famous admired person ???? are just like this.

Still working in my weak namedropping skillz.

So who would be the best name to drop to impress the Unfoggedetariat? Probably not Gar Wood.

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Also, for the record, the author of the article is named Cecilia Farber: our own Gary is not being discussed here.
And is no relation, he'd like to emphasize

"I like and trust Harpers"

Whereas I like Harpers, but have never trusted Harpers. They've been publishing crap along with good stuff for as long as I recall (although I've only dabbled in their stuff from before I was born; they've been around rather a long time, after all)..

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62

My mother's first cousin, John Hospers, was one of the Rand splitters,

Old man - is your point that you come by your crazy honestly, or just that we shouldn't assume it's all senility?

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63

I'm just trying to help you guys. I don't expect any gratitude during my lifetime.

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64

You know any famous athletes? Or Mark Schmidt, Dream Democrat? Or GFR? Those would be good names to drop.

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So who would be the best name to drop to impress the Unfoggedetariat?

I dropped Ya-Ya Moo, but only accidentally.

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66

Sally used to share a babysitter with the the daughter of a columnist for the Daily News -- that's about all I have as far as name-dropping goes.

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67

I met Rick Sanders, two-time Olympic silver-medal wrestler, a couple times.

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68

Ice T once called me 'baby.'

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Also, I used to go to the same gym as Paul Wellstone.

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Joan Baez hugged me.

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71

I was thinking of posting, "John Hospers woo hook 'em rule utilitarianism!" And now I wish I had. (SCMT, you lint puppet, do you mean Mark Schmitt?)

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72

I shook hands with Bill Clinton and Timothy Leary. And I smoked up HR after a Bad Brains show once.

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73

Weiner - prolly. Let me check.... Yeah.

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Oh, and I made color copies of publicity photos for Dom Deluise when I worked at Kinko's. Also, Buddy Hackett made a pass at my mom. Both of them were at the Duke Rice Diet Clinic in Durham.

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75

In high school, I once played in the band for a campaign appearance by President Clinton.

I know a guy who claims to have seen Derrida's penis.

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76

A member of the Charlie Daniels band made a pass at my sister. Does that count?

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77

Once at Unfogged I actively refused to drop the name of the contemporary artist who wanted to paint me.

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78

Walter Keane?

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79

One of the Stooges tried to seduce me. The Iggy stooges, not the Three Stooges.

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80

I used to share a flat with a member of B*lle and S*bastian so have met large numbers of minor Scottish (and visiting American) indie-music types.

Entirely unrelated, when I was 17, Dave Navarro from Jane's Addiction once tried, half-heartedly, to pick up my then girlfriend (at a Jane's Addiction gig).

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78: Hey, he would have made me look thin.

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It's probably cheating if you worked in publishing.

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83

Was it one of the real nasty early Stooges, or one of the fake replacement Stooges that came in later?

Beyond actual namedropping, I was thinking we should take it up to the theoretical level as to what the ultimate namedrop would be for this crowd.

"As I was saying to Michel ...."

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Doesn't S*bastian post on this site?

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I dunno. At the time I barely knew who they were--based on the date, I'd say it was a nasty original. He was a Willow Run boy, and kind of pushy.

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86

the ultimate namedrop would be for this crowd.

Jeff Stryker, of course.

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87

When I was about eighteen months old, my mother was a hot young flight attendant working for TWA. She was working a London flight serving drinks in first class to the drummer from Kiss (Peter Criss? Mom tells the story as 'the drummer from Kiss). Dad, my sister, and I were on the flight in coach, going along with her for the layover.

Just as he was in the process of trying to get her to come to some party in London, I came toddling up the aisle, saying "Mommy!" Horrified, he looked at me, and realized that TWA had had the gall to hire someone to serve him drinks who was not sexually available. He glared at me, said, "That's disgusting," and stalked off to the lavatory.

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My high school girlfriend lost her virginity to Paul Stanley.

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Or maybe B*lle.

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the ultimate namedrop would be for this crowd.

I'm thinking Ron Jeremy.

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91

You always are.

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92

Last time I was in New York, Charlie Rose brushed by me while I was disembarking.

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93

Or L. Ron Hubbard.

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94

Brushed past? Winston Churchill III brushed past me once (literally; knocked my shoulder back, actually).

I've chatted with probably half the science fiction writers in English there ever were; partied with lots; been good friends with quite a few; stayed at the house of a number, and vice versa; slept with a few. Listing several hundred people would be kind of lengthy. Worked with lots, too, of course. Ditto artists and editors.

Chatted with another hundred or so writers, from James Clavell to Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) to Whitley Streiber. Used to regularly hang out with James Ellroy (mostly because he was friends with my boss, though). Is Judy Jance ("J.A. Jance") famous now? Etc., etc.

Been several times to the home of a Nobel Prize winner; can get at least four others on the phone. Chatted with tons of celebrities, from the thrills of Dr. Ruth to sounds-a-lot-like-Kermit Jim Henson.

A good friend used to sleep with Jay Dee Daughtery, the drummer for the Patti Smith Group, so we used to get into gigs free all the time, and backstage, and chat with everyone; was otherwise independently friendly with Lenny Kaye, the guitarist, and rock historian/album producer. My first cousin who lived upstairs in our two-family house was the stage manager for the Village People and general manager for Debbie Gibson.

I have a long anecdote about Gene Simmons, who is actually Gene Klein, except it turned out to be an imposter, except that I otherwise have (had, come to think of it; lost them in the fire in '91, oh, well) dittoed monster fanzines the real Gene Klein did when he was 12 years old during the Sixties.

Chatted with a number of politicians, from Liz Holtzman (probably now forgotten by you kids), to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to Newt Gingrich, and a smattering of others.

Met a fair number of well-known movie/tv actors.

Paul Williams, who founded Crawdaddy!, the first professional rock magazine, before Rolling Stone, and who wrote a lot of books (and Phil Dick's literary executor), is an old friend.

Met and chatted with a number of astronauts, and a variety of famous scientists.

Worked a bunch with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's translator, and Jorge Amado's, and Marcio Souza's, and Mario Vargas Llosa's, Julio Cortazar's, and a bunch of other Latin American writers. Chatted with Reinaldo Arenas several times.

I dunno, it kind of goes on like that. I started hanging out with writers like Isaac Asimov and lots of others who were famous to me when I was 12-14, and it only just got more so, so I never really got much into a You're Famous, Gosh stage, since half the people I knew were published writers, artists, etc. I'd already chatted with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein by 14, so for me there pretty much wasn't going to be anyone more impressive/famous.

See, I said it was cheating. (Though I didn't get my first professional publishing work until I was 15, and have been pretty much out of it for about 15 years now, not counting a smattering of freelance work, and none of that for the past few years.)

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95

The winner and still champion.

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Dr. Ruth once answered a sex question of mine at a lecture. Badly too. Also previously discussed at Unfogged, I chatted with Ralph Nader at the airport.

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"Jay Dee Daughtery...."

No idea who he is, actually; it's Jay Dee Daugherty I meant to mention.

And most impressively, Fafnir sometimes leaves comments on my blog and sends me e-mail. It's entirely possible I might know More, That I Cannot Say.

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"Dr. Ruth once answered a sex question of mine at a lecture. Badly too."

Truth be told, my brief single conversation with Dr. Ruth started like this: "Pleese, cahn you tell mee, vere ees dee oofice ov Reeeeeena Volll-na?" [Rena Wolner, then publisher of Avon Boooks] "It's right there, at the corner, just two down, on the right." [About 20 feet away]

It didn't really last a whole lot longer, although there were at least two or three other exchanges.

But, hey, this is name-dropping, not "list all the women you've slept with who have had books published." [That one is two down, on the right.]

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We still haven't got far with the theoretical question as to the perfect Unfogged namedrop. Thomas Pynchon? JD Salinger? Marina Oswald?

"As I was saying to Tom the other day....."

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100

Sex, Democratic politics, and verbal incontinence? It's clearly Bill Clinton, Emerson.

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101

We can all say that.

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Yeah, but Clinton makes his living meeting people. He's really devalued the currency.

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103

Yeah you guys have all met some very impressive people I'm sure. But can any of you claim to have gotten an almost perfect score on the SAT's?

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104

Abiola Lapite is actually an impressive guy with an unfortunate tendency to get into flame wars. I've been flamed by him myself once, but with good reason.

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I could cheat too, Gary. I used to work at the Mus/eum of T/V and Ra/dio. But I won't.

Ya-Ya Moo may not be the perfect Unfogged namedrop--I'm sure no one cares--but I feel as though his is the celebrity spirit that inhabits the place, since he was invoked somewhat magically, since he has been renamed here affectionately/ungooglably, and since apostropher found that picture of him making the obscene hand gesture.

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106

"Abiola Lapite is actually an impressive guy with an unfortunate tendency to get into flame wars. I've been flamed by him myself once, but with good reason."

I've usually enjoyed and respected his comments; as I recall, sometime around two years ago, or so (my time sense is awful) I said something in someone's blog comments that was mildly rude to him (at CT?; don't remember), and he blew his cork at me, something to the effect that he'd once respected me, but now was no longer ever going to speak to me again, or something or other; as it happened, I'd noticed that I'd been rude, and immediately, in fact, apologized. I dunno if he ever saw that; regardless, I disappeared from his blogroll and never heard from him again.

Of course, that was the very first time in my life such a thing has ever happened. Me, being rude to someone, and unintentionally at that? In-con-ceivable!

I did get 760 on my verbal SAT's, which was okay, but I made my usual basic arithmetic mistakes on the math (not the theory; the adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing) and did less well (a sucky 590). I have a weird mental block at remembering numbers and at, well, doing simple arithemetic. Don't ask me why. Just to keep me from being too completely perfect, I guess.

Also, I keep typing Sistani "Sistanti."

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107

Hadn't read that Lapite thread before commenting. I can sympathize with impatience with stupid people leaving stupid comments on one's blog, and with the temptation to mock them, and I was a pretty bright kid, myself, with extremely harsh judgments about not just my peers, but most adults and most humans (to an extreme that I eventually realized in my late teen years had been grossly unhealthy), as regards how non-bright they appeared to me to be -- though I'd never remotely identify with either Mozart or Salieri, in any field -- but, well, let's just say that I'd have responded a tad differently.

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108

But can any of you claim to have gotten an almost perfect score on the SAT's?

Yes.

I don't think I did as well as Abiola, though; I think I got something like a 1560 or 1580, and it might have been a time when it was easier to do that (I don't keep track of these things).

(I actually got a perfect score on the PSAT and was the subject of a terrible komedy-human-interest bit on the local TV news, at the mercy of none other than future "Fox and Friends" jerk Steve Doocy.)

And there's no way I'd have made that kind of headway on the Putnam; I was on the school math competition team for a while but didn't have the patience or the sheer brainpower. Another guy was the local math wonderboy; I was the Salieri.

I've been on both sides of the wonderboy/second-rater divide many times, no doubt about it. Part of it was that I tried to get into so many things that I wasn't going to be the wonderboy everywhere. But, who knows, Abiola seems to have been excellent at everything he's ever done, so maybe it's possible.

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While there is no such thing as being off topic, and people are free to talk about whatever interests to them, have we really devolved to a conversation about standardized test scores?

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Also, Sheldon Glashow once called me a "well-educated boy."

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Just to get it back onto stupid namedropping.

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I got a 1600 on kicking washerdreyer's ass.

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113

"interests to them" s/b "interests them"

While Ben is telling the truth, what he does not disclose is that the test was on the same scale as the newest SAT, namely out of 2400.

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w/d, don't you think you ought to make it a number that indicates that Ben kicked your ass less than half of the time?

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If we can include fannish behavior, I showed Philip Seymour Hoffman my kleenex and told John Lithgow he was fabulous on Broadway and 86th.

I pretty much always get perfect scores on verbal/writing standardized tests, but this is after recentering. I am teh mediocre at math though.

I get really anxious that I am capable of a lot more than I will ever do, because I'm scattered and undisciplined. Graham suggested to me that he thinks I might have ADD though, which immediately excited me, because maybe I could take Ritalin and everything I've ever disliked about myself would go away, like in Thumbsucker. I didn't like the movie, but I did like the idea of being drugged into life competence. Sadly, I think having always performed well in a traditional classroom environment might be a counterindicator. But I was poorly behaved and drew and talked a lot--hope for me yet!

You know what's confusing to me about that AL thread? I only skimmed it, but it seemed like bettany was on his side, and he flamed her too.

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There's only non-academic name I could possibly drop, so here goes. I am, of course, a distant cousin of Orson Scott Card. Of fucking course. God, I'm such a caricature.

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Ooh, are we doing relatives now? On the WASP side, Mary Todd Lincoln, Sir Francis Drake, three pilgrims, and Ellen Terry. On the Jewish side, maybe Kenny G. He shares a real last name with my dad's bubbe.

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w/d, don't you think you ought to make it a number that indicates that Ben kicked your ass less than half of the time?

Why would you think the score has to do with frequency of ass-kicking? While percentile's have not been released for the test on the new scale, if getting 2/3 of the top score on the new test gets you the same percentile score as 2/3 of the top on the old test (rounding up), Ben kicks my ass less well than 42% of the population and 47% of the male population. For which he should be ashamed.

To avoid applying a double standard to Gary and Matt McI, I also criticize Tia for discussing standardized test scores.

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Sigh... hear goes... I lived two floors above Seamus Heaney at Hahvahd and met him once or twice (that doesn't necessarily follow).

The telos of flamewars chez Lapite is of course facilitating d-squared's comments. (In fact, he eventually says something interesting.)

And Tia is right: Abiola's response to Bettany shows that he was not scoring high on recognizing Teh Sarcasm that day.

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Ben kicks my ass less well than 42% of the population and 47% of the male population

Surely you're not claiming that this means he kicks your ass less than half the time?

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Maybe I kick w/d's ass less well than 99% of the population. But I kick it constantly.

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I get really anxious that I am capable of a lot more than I will ever do, because I'm scattered and undisciplined.

Wow... are you me?

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Behind the shit Mozart movie is Rimsky-Korsakov's opera and a poem or play by Pushkin. Salieri confessed on his deathbed, too, but he was raving mad by then.

Rimsky-Korsakov identified Salieri with himself, and Mussorgsky with Mozart. RK also gave private lessons to Stravinsky because he thought the conservatory he taught at was shit. Stravinsky repaid him with snarky remarks, of which Stravinsky was a one of the masters.

Salieri also was in the company of Haydn a few days before Haydn's death. Coincidence? I think not.

I have lots more on my fried computer hard drive that they want several hundred dollars to salvage.

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Mozart was not a copraphile, but he once or twice flirtatiously offered to shit in his lovely female cousin's mouth. His mom and dad talked that way too, IIRC. That's Austria for you; Schwarzenegger was actually one of the OK ones.

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"I get really anxious that I am capable of a lot more than I will ever do...."

Does this mean that you get anxious because you are capable -- which is what it seems to say -- or that you get anxious over the possibility that you might not be capable, but want to be -- which is what I'm thinking possibly you were trying to say?

Does this possibly relate to the sort of thing I partially quoted Mr. -- yes! --- Gladwell as speaking of here?

John: "I have lots more on my fried computer hard drive that they want several hundred dollars to salvage. "

Should have tried soft-boiling it; less cholesterol, you know.

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I interpreted Tia as saying she's anxious because she feels that, since she's "scattered and undisciplined," she won't accomplish as much as she's capable of. But I should let her speak for herself.

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126 -- that's what i was interpreting tia as saying when i asked if she were by chance me.

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"I interpreted Tia as saying she's anxious because she feels that, since she's 'scattered and undisciplined,' she won't accomplish as much as she's capable of."

Yeah, somehow I got distracted (idly partially trying to watch the network broadcast of A Beautiful Mind, which I'd never gotten around to seeing, while reading 9 tabs), and didn't write what I meant to say: that's what I meant to offer as one of the two possibilities, and the one I thought was what she was likely intending to mean, actually.

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Remember big pharma hires agents to spam forums with anti AIDS dissident messages. They got the money and the resources

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