Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Rand Girls, Ayn and Sally

A friend has changed his e-mail name to "randfan." He hastened to add that he meant Ayn, not Sally. That's too bad. I ain't smart enough to understand Ayn and all that stuff she wrote. But I sure appreciate Sally and her fans and bubbles.

2 comments:




  1. All of us, at one time or another,
    have experienced the strange
    physiological reaction of zygomatic
    stimulation and subsequent larynx
    strain.

    This strain upsets the respiratory
    system, which results in deep,
    noisy gasps. The mouth opens
    and closes as the lungs struggle
    for oxygen.

    The struggle for oxygen causes
    the face to turn various shades
    of red and strange, unique noises
    emerge from deep within.

    What is this strange, physiological
    reaction I am describing? It is
    laughter!


    We normally associate laughter with
    humor. But, gelotology, the study of
    laughter, suggests another trigger for
    laughter called the incongruity theory.

    This theory suggests that laughter
    arises when logic and familiarity are
    replaced by things that don't normally
    go together--when we expect one
    outcome and another happens.

    Generally speaking, our minds and
    bodies anticipate what's going to
    happen and how it's going to end
    based on logical thought, emotion,
    and our past experience. But, when
    circumstances go in unexpected
    directions, our thoughts and emotions
    suddenly have to switch gears and
    laughter emerges out of the tension
    between what we expect--and what
    actually happens.

    This phenomenon is what you will
    encounter at 'Thought & Humor's
    Blog
    with well over 1 million hits...

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  2. I would rather see Sally Rand fans on the net than those dreary, objectivist Ayn Rand fans, preaching about how to be utterly selfish.

    Oddly enough, I used to have a web site about a big Rand fan, Robert Heinlein. He loved Ayn Rand's libertarian themes and wrote about them himself, and he loved Sally Rand, with whom he went to high school. Her one vice, he said, was big, fat textbooks.

    ReplyDelete