At 11:40 AM 7/23/96, bryce@digicash.com wrote:

I know a lot about Rand, and about her deep flaws as an individual, especially in terms of treatment of her supporters, but this is the first I've heard of this one. Perhaps Tim is thinking of a play by Murray Rothbard called "Mozart Was a Red" in which the Ayn Rand caricature insists that her followers smoke.

As for smoking being "proof" of man's dominance over nature, Rand _did_ believe that in the sense of "demonstration" or "symbol" but she did not believe that in the rigorous sense of "proof".

This was well-known to a bunch of us in the early 70s who were interested in Rand (and her extreme followers, known widely as "Randroids"). I think some of her essays in her Objectivist Newsletter had explained why smoking was essentially de rigeur. (By the way, at the time Rand was writing this stuff, doctors were recommending smoking as a digestive and health aid, and nearly everyone smoked. I don't condemn Rand for smoking, or for falling into the all-too-common practice of using "logic" to justify one's beliefs and practices.) Rothbard was a source for the smoking example, but not in a play (although he may have also used his knowledge in a play...I wouldn't know). Rothbard wrote an article for "Liberty," circa 1986-8, which is where I read the details. Also, I believe Barbara Branden's biography of Rand dealth with this, but I haven't read it in many a year. And there is this comment, from an admittedly off-beat source (http://www.zonpower.com/zonpower/book/chapters/chapter29.html): "Whatever the root of his irrationality, Dr. Peikoff's persona shrinks with his advocating force-backed intolerance as he expressed during his 1995 Ford Hall Forum lecture. Recall how Ayn Rand's life wastragically diminished by her irrational, deadly, "dot-of-light" glamorization of smoking. Her emotional, irrational denials of the narcotically addictive, physically destructive nature of tobacco smoking led her and some of her "caped" followers to the grave." --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."