Since WP was founded by one, and seems to draw Objectivists like flies to honey, I immediately thought of my experiences with them when reading this personal account by the daughter of a crazed Randroid:

How Ayn Rand ruined my childhood

Yeah. This Randroid.

Good find, Mr. Sxepto! The comments on that article (30 pages' worth and counting) are classic - about 95 percent of them are people pointing out the fact that most Randroids are sociopaths and narcissists, and the other 5 percent are Randroids insisting that the woman's asshole father "wasn't a real Objectivist" and that she therefore doesn't "understand the ideas" behind Randroidism, etc.

One of the earlier comments:
And also the fact that Ayn Rand herself had no children, and was an adulteress.

This sort of thing makes you worry about what sort of children (if any) might be produced by Wikipedians who become ensnared in the Randroid ideological trap. If you combine the incessant self-justification with an equally-incessant need to correct everybody else, all of the time, well... it's not a pretty picture, is it?

Yet more evidence if any were really needed of why "Objectivism" is called "The Asshole Religion™".

Wow, I see an Ayn Rand quotation on that law firm home page:



How does that mesh with Wikipedia's almost pathological opposition to copyrights?

Is it possible that Jimmy Wales and his Randroid objectivism, like everything about him, is a hypocrisy?

You'll learn what JimboInc really thinks about copyrights in the same way you learned what Mr. Good Faith Collaboration thinks about copyrights, when he publishes his own book about the glories of Wikialtruism.

Like all self-touted libertarians, Jimbo is pathologically opposed only to other people's rights.

Jon

Yep.

If you think Rand fanbois are disgusting, try dealing with a Scientologist sometime.....

Some Social Security Is More Immoral Than Others

Ayn Rand Center • “Social Security Is Immoral”

Tea Party Patron Saint Ayn Rand Applied for Social Security, Medicare Benefits

Ayn Rand Fanboy Paul Ryan Used Social Security “Hammock” to Put Himself Through College

Jon

To be fair, the whole issue of Wikipedia and its respect, or lack of respect, for copyrights is a bit more complicated than that, but that's essentially how it works out for people outside of the Wikipedia sphere of control.

I've always preferred to separate the issue of how Wikipedia treats copyrighted material that's posted to it on the one hand (i.e., they'll respect a copyright once it's pointed out to them, but their handling of this is purely reactive, not pre-emptive as it is with traditional publishing and therefore inherently less respectful to the rights-holder), and the issue of people citing the "bloated, corrupt copyright system" as an overarching rationale for Wikipedia itself on the other.

You could argue that their treatment of actual copyrighted works is simply irresponsible, but not necessarily malicious. But the idea that Wikipedia is somehow necessary because the copyright system is "broken" is clearly wrong. There was no shortage of encyclopedias prior to Wikipedia's existence, nor was anyone really trying to get some sort of stranglehold or monopoly on them - at least not until now. People do like getting something for nothing, and they got it, but quality-wise you generally get what you pay for.

Getting ever-so-slightly back to the original topic, though... I've become increasingly alarmed by the extent of Randroid-cult influence on Tea Party Republicans in general. At first I was willing to dismiss the idea that wealthy corporate robber-barons like the Koch Brothers were essentially behind the whole Tea Party "movement," controlling it via the purse-strings, because it does sound like a conspiracy theory. I've since come to believe it isn't a conspiracy theory at all; this is actually what has happened. And the internet has facilitated it, better and more effectively than traditional media could have done.

I was beginning to believe that the internet might have reached the point where it's no longer a net-negative for society, though obviously Wikipedia still is (and will probably stay that way). What's ironic (to me, anyway) is that it's mostly the United States that's on the short end these days - other countries are benefitting from the internet a lot more than the US is, and you don't even have to be Fareed Zakaria or Thomas Friedman to see it anymore. And I believe that's mostly because the US is where weirdos like these Rand cultists are most readily able to use the internet to gain influence and, as we're seeing now, power. Those people are cancelling out whatever good the internet might otherwise be doing for American society.

It's pretty scary!

Not long ago I hit some site on Google and hit a "tutoring site." Oh, yes, live tutoring, by chat. Like live chat customer help, but a help desk for academic subjects. May we know your good name? Are you in high school or college? Do you have an exam or paper due? What is the subject please?

They'll tutor you in real-time on just about anything and help with any assignment. For a fee. From the language, run out of India. No doubt a lot of American kids behind on their homework use it. I didn't ask if they sell custom research papers.

I can report they didn't know shit about radiative heat transport in the interior of stars, but will admit that I didn't cough up any credit card numbers, either.

Radiative heat transport in the interior of stars? I'm more interested lately in how much deuterium and tritium carbon nanotubes can adsorb. Also molecular interactions between lithium and CNTs.

So do you have a program that produces random assemblages of jargon?

Don't get me wrong, of course - there are good things about the internet, even for Americans. But let's face it, for countries like India and China, the internet has become an engine for economic growth and increased affluence. For the United States, it's become an engine for transferring wealth to India and China.

That, and anesthetizing ourselves with streaming video just as we've managed to anesthetize ourselves with practically every other technology we've managed to invent in the last 50 years... Oh, and don't forget day trading!

Sssssh. Grown-up time. Go draw a picture of a pony with your crayons.

In other reviews …

The Nation • Rand Appalling : New ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Movie Booed Off Planet

Jon

I read Roger Ebert's review, which Mitchell quotes. He said it was oddly full of trains. Ayn Rand and a strange obsession with trains? It is almost like they are making the WP dream movie, except that one would probably have more Pokemon...

Can't imagine what you'd do with the first except make the secondary of a thermonuke. Somebody once told me the optimal ratio of D to T is 2:1 for maximal yield, but I think that's energy yield, which is probably not the aim in weapons. I think modern weapons maximize blast damage not energy yield (not the same thing, as fission is better for blast per joule than fusion). Which means they maximize tertiary jacket fast neutron fission yield, which means they want all the neutrons they can make. In a modern weapon it's probably as dirty as they can make it, 80% fission instead of 50%.

Tritium's usually bred in place because it's a bitch to replace. 5.5% a year disappears from decay and they can't let He-3 build up since it absorbs neutrons. So getting T into and out of bombs is a problem, and they generally use pressurized gas, and the rest of the secondary is LiD.

If you want molecular interactions between Li and light materials, I suggest checking out the Li analogue of magnesium diboride, MgB2. THAT is an interesting structure, but I cannot find that the Li analogue has been made. Li-B compounds are LiB2, LiB12 and a few others. LiB things in approximate ratio are linear B chains with a lot of Li between:. Still, B can have a formal negative charge and that's helpful for "holding" lithium. For these things the B could be enriched to B-11 if you don't want stray neutron absorption. With B-11 you might even get some neutron breeding, as with Li-7.

Oh, I thought you were joking. You really do think that carbon nanotubes have something to do with heat transport in the interior of stars!


Now listen to Professor Roe if you want to learn something!

Oh, I see. Just a troll.

I'm trying to update my understanding of CNTs (carbon nanotubes) and their possible application in fusion power. I do not believe CNTs and heat transport inside stars have anything to do with each other.

Milton Roe knows quite a bit more than I do about nuclear physics. My knowledge is obsolescent. I am peripherally involved in a project to 'dope' CNTs with D-T and smack them with a powerful laser.

But never mind. DNFTT.

Hah, that's nothing. Look at the Rotten Tomatoes entry for it.
A 10% rating on the tomatometer (which covers critical reception).
But an 85% rating from the "audience", meaning Rotten Tomatoes users.

How? Easy. The teabaggers are voting it up.
They're "crowdsourcing" it into not being a flop. They think.

(And PS, I hope Dick Armey dies in horrible agony. Jes sayin'.)

Yeah, I'm done talking about fusion - that's how Abd died.

If karma worked perfectly, Dick Armey would have been framed for a child porn case by now.

Post-modernist essay generator. Just keep clicking refresh until you find something your PHD adviser likes.

A lovely piece by David Bentley Hart here http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05...e-with-ayn-rand

The Randroids turned out in force.

More Randroids:

Well, you've got to hand it to them! It's a clever strategy, first raping the economy, and then using the ill-gotten proceeds to pay for members of the next generation to learn how to justify their continuation of the same rape-the-economy policy, using quasi-absurdist moral irrationality masquerading as entertainment.

It's funny that none of these folks ever seem to think of the idea of not raping the economy in the first place, but I guess having ideas like that would make them "creatives," not "visionaries," and of course we all know that to a Randroid, creatives are just parasites like any other worker-drone.

5 bonus points to the first person who successfully uses one of these as a source for a Wikipedia article.

Huh. The Koch brothers have been up to something similar. Guess the Randroids have been sharing notes on how to buy academia.

It's an old racket. Control of "higher education," along with control of the media, are favorite modes of social engineering. Why else do you suppose that both Republicans and Democrats have been such idiots on economics, willing to wantonly embrace every kind of deregulation?