Sightings, January 1999

Last November, "Sightings" mentioned Camp Indecon, a one-week summer camp to be held August 1-7 in Minnesota. While noting again that IOS does not endorse other organizations, this department would like to let readers know that Camp Indecon now has an extensive Web site at http://www.campindecon.org. (Indecon, as the Web site makes visually clear, is a portmanteau word combing Independence and Confidence.) Those desiring more information than the Web site provides may call Camp Indecon's founder, Hannelore Bugby, at (314) 514-1977 or (314) 514-9125, or send her a letter by e-mail to hbugby@earthlink.net.

Christian Robey, coordinator of the Leadership Institute's student-publication school, would like Objectivist college students know that, if are interested in starting an alternative campus publication, his program will assist them. The Leadership Institute's Web site is http://www.lead-inst.org; the phone number is 1-800-827-LEAD. Again, IOS does not endorse other organizations or their programs.

Last October, "Sightings" mentioned that Routledge had published a massive ten-volume encyclopedia on the history of philosophy that included an article on Ayn Rand by Chandran Kukathas, who is not an Objectivist but a well-known figure in libertarian circles. Navigator's decision to see the entry as a welcome bit of cultural recognition for Rand brought a sharp response in the form of a letter to the editor from Irfan Khawaja, who cited the entry's numerous deficiencies. Since Navigator has no "Letters" column, the disagreement over how to treat such a deeply flawed recognition is simply noted here. Those who would like to read a brief but harsh critique of Kukathas's article should check the Web site of the Ayn Rand Society (http://aynrandsociety.org.), where there is a letter from Allan Gotthelf to the encyclopedia's editor, Edward Craig.

Skirmishes here and there. Norma Moretz Horvitz of Fort Lauderdale had two letters to the editor published last December. On December 5, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel printed a letter in which Horvitz argued: "If Thomas Youk (the victim of Lou Gehrig's disease whom Dr. Jack Kevorkian allegedly murdered) was the owner of his body, then is he not free to take his life? Just as Mr. Youk was free to prolong his life with a doctor's intervention, so should Mr. Youk have been free to end his life with a doctor's intervention." On December 8, the Miami Herald published a letter from Horvitz on the same topic, but in a truncated form. "Good old Miami Herald," Horvitz commented. "If I wrote them a one-word sentence, they would halve it."

One response to the truncated letter is to shoot higher: for the op-ed piece, which generally runs between 500 and 1,000 words. On December 11, David Stallman of Ridgefield, Connecticut, had an op-ed piece of approximately 700 words published in The Journal News of White Plains, New York. Stallman's article decried union control of local education and urged citizens to get involved both as parents and as taxpayers.

Authors are more likely to get an op-ed published if it concerns a local matter such as education, rather than national domestic policy. But then education is becoming a major concern of Objectivists, witness the attention given to it at the 1999 IOS Summer Seminar.