Hmmm.... Funny about sweets. Mrs. Bricker's cookies. Peppermint or licorice tea (uh-oh -- Dawn says: "NO TEA!!!!"*) and mint cocoa (uh-oh -- Chesterton says: "NO COCOA!!!!**") in my mocha. Norma's Sacra-Mints and licorice. Dawn and Norma licking chocolate ice cream and whipped cream off each other's tounges. Orange sherbet. Spumoni (the Pizza Girl?).

(*a Communist plot, ties in with the Yellow Peril and Perfidious Albion)

(**he wrote a harsh and nasty poem against it)

3 things are "dulce et decorum" unto me:

1) a pulchritunous woman

2) a color wheel

3) an ideological spectrum

I wrote this spectrumology in the Queen's realm and decided that you must get to see it too, as you also are so worthy:

Yes, I've really got to think up a name for the 2-dimensional spectrum I described here:

"I have come to see it more and more as a 2-dimensional spectrum. On the left are those (materialists) who believe that what is most important is the economic. On the right are those of us (spiritualists) who believe that what is most important is the moral or spiritual. On the bottom are those (collectivists) who believe that what is most important should be controlled by the government or the collective. On the top are those of us (individualists) who believe that what is most important should be controlled by the individual.

In the bottom left corner are the pure Marxists who want total government control of economics (socialism). In the bottom right corner are those like Santorum, Bork, or Scalia who want total government control of morals. Between these are those who want total government control of everything (totalitarians, e.g., Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, today's Politically Correct movement). In the top left corner are those libertarians such as von Mises who value economic freedom (capitalism) the most. On the left between the Marxists and the economic libertarians are the various New Deal-mixed economy pragmatists. These are the ones who the media call "the moderates". In the top right corner are those Nietzschean individualists such as Camille Paglia and myself who value spiritual freedom the most. Between the economic libertarians and the spiritual individualists are Ayn Rand and the Objectivists who defend capitalism as the supreme embodiment of man's free mind. On the right between Santorum and Paglia are those conservatives such as President Bush and Justice Thomas who are conflicted between valuing freedom and seeing some government control as necessary to protect morality.

That's how I increasingly see it. Spectrums, spectrums, spectrums, spectrums...."

For now, I guess I'll just have to call it the SMA or SMA4 spectrum.

As to the comment or addendum I wrote after that here:

"I must add that, on the 2-dimension spectrum I just outlined here, Ayn Rand was closer to the Nietzschean pole at the time she wrote The Fountainhead and earlier, but moved leftward on this spectrum, toward a more rationalistic position, as she wrote Atlas Shrugged and after."

I have often thought about those two novels of Rand. I have often thought that we admirers of Rand (not necessarily Objectivists) tend to divide between those of us who prefer The Fountainhead and those who prefer Atlas Shrugged. Perhaps those of us who prefer The Fountainhead like the deeper characterizations, while those who prefer Atlas Shrugged like the more complex plot structure. Rand was superb at plot structure, while my characters (holy Dawn vs. wicked Wanda, etc....) write their own story.... Ties in with the right (or "myth") hemisphere vs. the left (or "math") hemisphere?....

Another thing that my friend Jeanine Ring (another Nietzsche admirer) and I discussed was this reversal: In The Fountainhead, Roark wants to keep on keeping on building skyscrapers in defiance of all the Tooheys, while Dominique urges him to quit. Ultimately, Roark wins over New York City and wins over Dominique. In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny wants to keep on keeping on running her railroad in defiance of all the Mouches, while Galt urges her to quit. Ultimately, Galt wins over Dagny and the lights of New York City go out. We noted that The Fountainhead takes place entirely in the spiritual-artistic realm while Atlas Shrugged takes place largely in the economic-political realm. Was Rand saying that values can triumph in the spiritual but not in the material realm? That would be contrary to all of her explicit philosophy, but it may have been implicit in her underlying "sense of life". (My "sense of life" also it seems....) Most interesting about it all....

Ah, but Steve, Galt didn't convince Dagney, only allowed she, herself, to come to the inevitable conclusion she wasn't running TT in defiance of the Mouches, but for their benefit.

BTW, for sheer, raw emotion, I enjoy We the Living where all the characters are flawed to one degree or another. Even Kira.

Oh, and Eric, (hee hee, Steve distracted me) ... Great post on the continuing "sugar" controversy. I'll take common sense about all forms of sugar over whatever food fad or "experts" are saying about it. Any parent can regale you with tales of what too much sugar can do to small children (trying to peel them from the walls and ceilings before bedtime).

:-)

My only quibble... I don't think ADA or ADHD is a "disease", but it is real. It is just different "hardwiring" for some people, like I'm nearsighted and no amount of someone telling me it's all in "my head" can get me to see a blackboard across a room without my glasses/contacts.

Not to say it isn't way over-diagnosed..as it has been the "in" medical condition (and has the advantage of giving less-then competent public schools something to blame for their own failures with children).

Darleen:

Excellent. You are right about Dagny. I'll just say that Atlas Shrugged was a different story, a different kind of story than The Fountainhead. We the Living was quite different from both. Rand's portrayal of Andrei Taganov was the most sympathetic portrayal of a Communist I've ever seen. Her earlier characters were more varied and interesting, as in her play Ideal.

I should add that, similarly, Roark didn't convince Dominique, but allowed she, herself, to come to the inevitable conclusion that Toohey (so long as he wasn't armed with the political power of a Mouch) was nothing more than a gnat unworthy of anything but her contempt.

Back to sugar ... I often wonder why High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is in 99% of everything in the market, from sodas to barbecue sause to potato salad...

Someone proposed that sugar is grown elsewhere in the world, and is expensive comapred to corn, which we grow here in abundance.

But that only explains half of it. OK, replace sugar with HFCS, but why put it in everything else? Could there be a strong HFCS lobby in Washington?

Now consider bread, especially the "enriched" (sometimes called "squishy white bread"). That's the bread where, after they take all the nutrients known to man out of the flour (you don't have to keep it sealed - the bugs won't eat it), they make bread out of it and put back vitamins and minerals and God knows what all and call it "enriched".

Thanks for the comments! They're even sweeter than my post!

Steven, I'm often tempted put a collection of your comments in a book. ("Quotations from a Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist" or something....)

Actually, a small change in preparation can lead to a large change in how your body reacts to different chemicals, vitamins, and minerals in different foods. A perfect example is biotin (http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/vitamins/biotin/). Eating raw egg whites leads to a biotin deficiency (rash on the face and genitals), because another chemical (avidin) bonds to the biotin, blocking absorbtion. However, cooked egg whites don't have this problem, as your body digests the altered chemical avidin and it doesn't block absorbtion.

Not to say this is true for sugar, mind. But it might be.

I found that webpage after being dragged to a health food store and forced to buy two bags full of vitamin supplements. It is truly remarkable how many of those same vitamins and minerals have never actually had deficiencies reported in the general population.

At least, according to those greedy doctors.

Dear Eric:

THANK YOU!!!! I'm tempted to say, and I guess I'll say it anyway: How sweet of you, ha! ha! Darleen's comments need a book, too. And, if anybody's comments need a book, it's certainly "The Wisdom of Arnold Harris of Mount Horeb, WI." Both he and you are, as he puts it so well, "man and a half"*. The style of that!

(*a phrase Arnold Harris learned from his Serbo-Croation wife)

I must add that, of all of Rand's characters that we have been discussing, I most identify with Dominique. As does Jeanine Ring. And as does Dawn.

And i've often thought about this: Norma = Roark? Dawn = Dominique? Wanda = Wynand?

Eric, the sheer volume of your output is enough to make other bloggers despair.

Who else could take a soft drink ingredient and turn it into a 1,500-word post? And an insightful one at that?

Scott, thank you for the kind words. Success in blogging often strikes me as a seemingly impossible task, and my output seems insignificant in comparison to others. Being appreciated means a lot!

Insignificant? Holy smokes, Eric, you (and the CV team as a whole) are one of the few really prolific "thinkers" (as opposed to "linkers") out there right now. Keep it up.