This is a ramble that loosely centers around Ayn Rand. That's what day logs are for, right?
I suspect that Ayn Rand writeups get downvoted more than is typical. I put a writeup in Critique of Objectivism the other day, and that took a beating. Then today I made a writeup in Ayn Randroid which is doing middling well, though we will see what happens. This may just be my fault. Perhaps I'm not presenting the material well, in which case I need to improve my writing style... but free will got a C! and lots of upvotes the other day, so that probably is not the case. Then again, I put considerably more work into that than into the Ayn Rand stuff.
I suspect that the reason for this is that e2 is a liberal website, by which I mean that the predominant political orientation on this website is liberal. I have very little, some would say no, support for this notion. There is a vague connection between e2 and liberalism in my brain, and an equally vague connection between writing and liberalism. I would expect liberals to be more quirky and moody than conservatives, and I also associate quirkiness and moodiness with e2 for some reason. A conservative could well be quirky and moody, but that seems to clash more with conservative values than with liberal values.
I will likely continue to write about Ayn Rand anyway. I have gotten back into studying her system after a brief fling with Aristotle. I am trying to understand her rather than agree with everything she says, which I think was my failing the first time I tried her out.
Her writings are surprisingly difficult to understand. I have taken high level philosophy courses, and this is almost as hard as that. Although she is a good writer, she is very concise, which means that I have to reread everything several times before I can integrate it properly. This is suprising because the first time I tried her out, it seemed easy to read her. Maybe I've gotten dumber, or maybe I simply wasn't trying to understand her completely the first time around.