Ayn Rand, who described a fetus as "a piece ofprotoplasm", had a virulent hatred of all opponents of women's "right to abortion". In a 1975 article, she wrote that the "anti-abortion stand" was "an indication of a fundamental evil in a person's convictions" (*The Ayn Rand Letter*, November-December 1975.) Nineteen years later, in a very influential lecture on *The Right to Abortion*, a leading Objectivist, Andrew Bernstein, argued that a fetus, at whatever stage of its development, is just a part of the mother's body, and is consequently hers to do as she wishes. Abortion, therefore, according to Objectivism, should be legal up to the last minutes before birth.

According to James Campbell, however, this position is "fundamentally antithetical to basic principles of Objectivism". He accuses both Ayn Rand and Andrew Bernstein of concrete-bound thinking, the stolen-concept fallacy and what he calls the "fallacy of the reification of the One". By the latter, he means "the practice of valuing a particular attribute of a thing to the exclusion of its other attributes"- which, in this case, leads to reducing man to one of his attributes, rationality, to the exclusion of all others. (Had Campbell listened to the Q&A period of Bernstein's lecture, he would have been forced to recognize that Bernstein is just as adamant as he -or any Objectivist for that matter- to reject the reduction of a concept to its definition. Bernstein even considers that a brainless child is still a man: the reified attribute, therefore, cannot be rationality.)

Campbell's main argument is that Objectivists tend to drop the context by adopting a view of man that neglects his developmental dimension: "man" is too often identified with "adult human being", forgetting that a single individual is in fact a sequence, from conceptus to blastula, fetus, neonate, infant, child, adolescent, adult and ultimately geront. Based on this developmental vision of man, Campbell argues that a life begins at conception, and that therefore abortion is murder from that point on.

Campbell is not a philosophical genius, and he is at his weakest when presenting the possible exceptions to his positions, which he does in a purely ad hoc manner. Even though I do disagree with the Objectivist position on abortion and consider a fetus to be a human being at least as early as its nervous system is fully formed, I did not find in this more radical pamphlet much material to support my own position.

A lot more needs to be done to validate even a moderate anti-abortionist position. In particular, a complete argument would have to deal with the underlying epistemological issues. For instance, the official Objectivist position holds that an organism cannot be considered an individual unless it is physically separated from the mother, and perceptibly so: there is no such thing as a human being inside another human being. But Ayn Rand in her *Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology* writes that an entity is "that which is welded together physically and about which we can learn something, to which we can ascribe certain properties, as a whole" (p268). And she discusses the example of "inbuilt furniture in a room", which, she says, "doesn't become entity-less by being attached to the wall; it's still a separate entity, only it's attached to the wall." (p269) I think this is definitely one of the levels to which the debate on abortion needs to move.

Finally, I think Campbell has underestimated the implications of his stand on abortion for the rest of the Objectivist ethics. He does write that "the arguments offered in this essay... have other implications that should lead to explorations in areas in which Objectivism has been notably inadequate" (p8), but he does not really discuss the matter any further. What about Rand's statement that there are no unchosen duties? And if we admit that a woman can be forced by law to support a fetus (to the potential detriment of, say, her own career), aren't we opening the door to altruism, and running the risk of giving moral legitimacy to the welfare state?

As far as I am concerned, I believe that the Objectivist position on abortion is much more crucial to the integrity of the philosophy than Campbell (or any other Objectivist) recognizes. Moreover, I think that all the debate on when the fetus becomes a man, the "piece of protoplasm" rhetoric, the potential vs. actual distinction and the discussions on the size and complexity of the fetus are sheer misdirection, as the egoist foundation of the Objectivist ethics logically entails a woman's "right to abortion" *independently* of the status of the fetus, i.e. whether it is human being or not.

After all, if we have no moral obligation to forgo even our luxuries to support the starving children of the Third World, why should a mother be obliged to sacrifice her own values- however futile- to the survival of a fetus?

For a much more thorough and sophisticated thomistic defense of the strong anti-abortionist position, I recommend Germain Grisez's excellent book *Abortion: The Myths, the Realities and the Arguments*.

Finally someone has gotten to the point without hiding behind arguments that are based on opinions, falacies or ideas that have no basis of thought or values. He stands up and has evidence of facts and attacks what most Americans lack...thought and values!!! It seems that people in this country have no concept what it's like to actually think for themselves, the most basic survival tool and somehow have come to rely on the comfort in shall we say "community thoughts". This essay explains that even a embryo is and individual and has the capacity to form it's own thoughts as an INDIVIDUAL... Good Job

In this thirty-page essay, James J. Campbell makes mincemeat of the mainstream Objectivist view that an embryo is merely a "potential" human being, a "piece of protoplasm" that does not qualify as a living, fully individual human person and has no rights of its own. He directly challenges and refutes Ayn Rand's statements on the subject, and he especially targets the published views of Objectivist Andrew Bernstein.

In all cases he replaces evasion and distortion with reason and biological fact, carefully restoring the concept of _development_ to a topic in which the overall biological context is too often dropped. An embryo is not a mere "potentiality," he argues, but an actual, existing human being, albeit one at an early stage of biological development. It is not a "parasite" in any biologically meaningful sense of the word. And it is an individual from the very moment of conception.

When he is through, he has successfully made his case that abortion, in the case of a healthy adult female who became pregnant through voluntary sexual relations, is not a moral "right" but an objectively immoral act -- in Campbell's own phrase, a "grotesque evil."

He allows for the possibility that in other cases, abortion _may_ be moral. Unfortunately he says so little about such cases that his views are hard to evaluate. (And some of what he says is therefore unconvincing. He seems to maintain, e.g., that for a woman who is herself not a fully developed, rational adult, abortion may be morally justified merely by her own need for "rationality" and the correspondingly greater impact a child would have on her own development. But these considerations would not justify other forms of murder -- and in order for them to count here, Campbell would have to show that abortion is something less than full-blown murder.)

He also says nothing about what some would regard as a crucial issue: What, if anything, should the "law of the State" do about any of this? He also does not address a closely related moral issue: what, if anything, is it morally proper for an otherwise uninvolved bystander to do? In general, he is silent on the morality/legality of prevention and/or punishment. (Though, given his topic, his decision to limit himself to the primary ethical issue may have been a wise one.)

Nor does he discuss the difference between ejecting an embryo from one's womb, on the one hand, and positively killing it, on the other. Pro-abortionists tend to write as though abortion really amounts to the former, but as abortion is actually practiced it is unquestionably the latter.

Still, one can't accomplish everything in namely, to demonstrate that on an issue of tremendous importance, Objectivism has misapplied its own fundamental principles.

For some of the issues Campbell does not tackle, interested readers are referred to Libertarians For Life

I used this book for years and had a love/hate relationship with it. It got me lost lots of times, but also turned me onto some great rides. The real negative is that the book is woefully out of date and some of the rides have changed drastically. If you use it in conjunction with a more recent guidebook like Mountain Bike America:Moab then you will indeed have a powerful tool for deciphering Moab.

This book is old school and it's obvious that the author really cares. Great photos, great maps and great writing. It was the first (I believe) guidebook for biking written about Moab area and having bought and subsequently tossed all the others, I think it is still the best. We have made the Moab pilgrimage every year for the last eight and this book is the only one worth lugging along.

Comprehensive and accurate descriptions of all of the most popular rides in Moab and the surrounding area. Great history, geology and insight into the local area. A must for any Moab cycling trip.

The grammatical man has been highly recommended by some of the icons of popular science including Martin Gardner (Intellectual Journey of the highest sort) This is however a book that makes that journey too circuitous, sometimes even tortuous, to complete. For a book on information theory it is quite ironic that the average sentence in the book has brain-numbingly little information. Some examples: 'The pioneers of communication theory, cybernetics, and intelligent machines came to recognize that they were dealing with a new set of concepts and a new vocabulary unlike any that the science had previously known' Another hollow pearl 'On this issue, researchers tend to be divided along Chomskyan and anti-Chomskyan lines, some at the extreme edges, others somewhere in no man's land, being shelled by both sides' Fine lines, but vacuous if entire chapters are filled with them. Definitely not a book for the impatient reader or one with a reasonable mathematical aptitude. The book tires itself out after the first five or six chapters by needlessly running around the same Chomskyan and shannonian bushes. You (a person with a little exposure to either of the fields) would find that the same theory is phrased and rephrased in words. I do agree that popular science books need to assume little prior knowledge on the readers part, but that should not mean that a point has to belabored and hammered (eloquently...have to give him that) in. I gave the book three stars because of the the first few chapters. It is a steady boring downhill intellectual journey after that.
Sai

If you're attracted to this book because of an interest in the implications of entropy on various aspects of life, including language and information, then you should keep looking.

This was no doubt a radical and satisfying read when it first came out in the early 1980s, but the subject area has matured since then.

I will recommend the very recent "Mother Nature's Two Laws" by A. D. Kirwan as a fine alternative.

Jeremy Campbell performs an absolutely brilliant work, linking and polishing all the important concepts about every level of the universe, in such a way that even when they are the most arcane and "for-initiated-only" in their respective fields, they become crystal clear and ebulliently alive through the pages. I actually HAD to take notes carefully quoting him, in order to preserve the understanding and the wonder conveyed by the exact writing. An invaluable piece on the uniqueness of information that is a truly unique piece of the richest information itself. A book to be read many times, especially good if you are a scientist battling with specific facts every day and would appreciate to refresh your perspective of what is the universe all about.

For and assignment, I read this book. After the first twenty pages, I found that I wanted to, throw it away in a burn barrel and then burn that too. It was a predictable, poor exuse of a mystery novel. The only mystery here was why I chose it in the first place.

It had a bad setting,in the 40's or something,where everything was a mystery, including cereal. It was a predictable at every turn and easily solved for the reader less than halfway through. It was an unrealistic and fake sounding, let alone "looking" book.

In conclusion, I hated the stupid bundle of paper. It had the worst setting ever in any book in my displeasure to read from slimy cover to sticky end. And who in their right mind says "Gleeps"? That is the most stupidest thing I have ever heard.

Christmas at Uncle Monty's dude ranch in Arizona sounds like heaven to the Bob-Whites, until they find that the ranch may have to close when the family of Mexicans that keeps the place going mysteriously disappears. Who can Uncle Monty ever find to tidy the guest rooms, wash the mountains of dishes, and serve the dinners? Hmmmm ... On top of it all, Trixie has to bring her grades up before the midyear exams, so Brian and Jim tutor our distracted heroine. But throw in in the secrets of some unhappy guests and add the cook's little son Petey, who inexplicably wants to run away to join his Granddaddy in a surreal "cavelike place," and Trixie is in her sleuthing element. The book also slides in lots of Arizona and Mexican history and customs, so it gets points for being educational too!

This book is a typical Trixie Belden mystery. It is well-written and entertaining. I enjoy following the happy adventures of Trixie and the other Bob-Whites as they travel all over the world, and this book about a trip to Arizona is one that I have read several times. It is a classic children's mystery! I would recommend this book for kids of all ages.

Almost all of the information in this book can be found in the Help files!

Who needs a thick manual? When I need to get something done in a hurry, I turn to this guide and look it up.

I'm a designer by trade. I work mostly with the web, but I every now and then I get a print job. Problem: I usually forget what I need to do to set up a print job in PageMaker. Solution: This A-Z has me covered. I don't have to wade through lengthy examples or rambling chapters. I get step-by-step instructions for exactly what I need, when I need it.

I especially like the illustrations in this book. Always good for a chuckle. This author has a weird sense of humor (like me).

The price is right on this one. Pound for pound, it can't be beat. Don't miss it!

This book takes a complex piece of software and makes it user-friendly! I especially liked the book's non-patronizing attitude--it was as if a good friend was walking me through the program. I believe my "learning curve" was decreased significantly.

This book doesn't contain the data needed for developing even a simple design for a home water system. For example, there is no data to calculate friction loss from water moving through pipes. The book notes that friction loss is easy to calculate using a table. The book includes a table that lists friction loss for valves and fittings in equivalent length of pipe. But, I can't find a table on friction loss per length of pipe. A third of the book and most of the bibliography is devoted to the author's opinions on water politics, he is no Marc Reisner.

A new age approach to the subject of water. Campbell's need to share his philosophy kept me from wanting to read the entire book. What it has to do with water is anybody's guess. But if you're into new age, and don't mind reading spiritualistic trash, this might be your book. Technically correct, the book attempts to be everybody's introduction to anything you ever wanted to know about water. That broad stroke is it's best and at the same time, worst feature.

This book covers nearly every situation one may encounter in water procurement, perhaps the only subject not covered is hauling water to a completely dry site.

The focus of this book is necessarily on shallow wells, as deep wells require professional drilling, never the less the author covers well pumps, casing, storage devices and filtration systems with enough technical detail to meet most needs. Deep wells and methods are covered, just not in detail.

If you need to know how to identify and correct contamination you'll find it here. Need to compute water needs? Pump and storage specifications? Those are also here. In fact, you'll be pleased with the technical details and comparisons in an easy to read style.

I must have missed the new age stuff or at least forgot it as I read the whole book.

If you want to find water in a rural area, and develop it yourself, this is the book. I would not recommend "Cottage Water Systems" if you want detail on well systems.

Everyone seems to be trying to capitalize on celebrity these days, why should a model be any different? But rather than spill her heart out in juicy tell all, Campbell, obviously figuring there were not enough photographs of her in circulation, toots her own horn in this sappy, silly exercise in narcissism by publishing "never-before-seen photographs" of--who else?--herself! There is Naomi in Thailand, Naomi sans make up, Naomi with family. By the time we read about Naomi's friendship with Nelson Mandela (captioned, of course, under a photo of the two together--who says supermodels have no conscience?) we appreciate why these photos have never been seen before, and further, why they should never be seen again.

By putting this book together with taste and great fun, N. demonstrates she is a brainy & nice lady. She also seems to be such a prima donna (in the best sense of the expression, really, that is deserving it) that she defies the more mundane categories of talent & beauty -- she really creates herself with determination &, I think, a huge dose of humor. This book is as pleasant an experience to read/look at than looking from time to time at a favorite painting on the wall of a museum. I don't think it will ever age and that it can illuminate an otherwise dull day.

All the pictures are of high quality.The layout is great. There is also an interview with Naomi.A book you would treasure for years.

This book is 188 pages and appears to be a relativley easy and quick read. I've owned it for some months now and haven't read it from cover to cover and I'm the type of reader who can tackle a 300-page page-turner in all of two days. Something about the way this book is written really looses me and the plot isn't easy to understand. On the other hand, the sex scenes practically jump off the page. I wouldn't recommend this one to the serious reader, but more to a person looking to get their groove on.

This is the story of Michael who sleeps around with different women, and thinks nothing of the consequences. He meets Monica who makes him thinks about settling down, but she different from the other women he usually dates, she's the one in charge. One of MIcheal's former ladies is out to get revenge. A good book, but real nasty.

A friend introduced me to this little book and it is very interesting because from the moment I picked it up, it was hard to put down. The writing style was very good and the details maybe me feel as if I was a fly on the wall seeing everything that the main charater was expereincing. Highly recommended.

In The Year of The Leopard Song, by Eric Campbell, 18 year old Alan has just returned to his homeland Africa from a year abroad, and is reuniting with friends and family. In coming home, Alan sees with fresh eyes the racial prejudice against white Africans such as himself, and learns to accept that he will never be considered a true African by his friends and fellows. He is only beginning to face this seemingly new challenge when his best friend Kimathi disappears, and in search of him Alan finds himself in much more danger than he bargained for... Although this novel is well written and suspenseful, it is hard to tell whether it is meant to be realistic or simply magical. It is also confusing and you don't really understand the plot until well after the middle. Overall, it simply goes on too long before you can begin to grasp what is happening. I would not recommend In the Year of the Leopard Song because it is confusing and the plot takes too long to unfold. It is confusing because it seems magical in how the Chagga can transform a boy into a leopard, but feels like a story based on reality and African culture. I was never sure whether it was intended to be a magical fantasy or realistic fiction work. The story does not start out with a clear explanation of what is going on, it starts into the story and leaves you to figure it out. It was simply hard to understand, and I would not recommend it at all. Some people might think this is a worthwhile book, because the plot is suspenseful, when Alan finds himself on Kilimanjaro in the hands of the Chagga, if confusing. Still, the confusion overrides the suspense and after finishing it I thought it a waste of time. Older and more advanced readers might find this book worthwhile, but the average teen would not enjoy it. Overall, this book was a waste of time and I would not recommend it.

The Year of The Leopard Song by Eric Campbell is a very interesting book. Alan, a 16-year-old boy, lives with his parents at the foot of Mt. Kilma Njaro in Africa. When Alan's best friend Kimathi is missing, and they find a dead chicken hanging in their shed, they become frightened. So, Alan begins a journey up the mountain to find his good friend. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves action, suspense, and mystery.

I would recommend this book because it many great action scenes that keep your eyes glued to the pages to see what will happen next. For example, when Alan gets to the top of the mountain he finds kimathi. Kimathi is entranced and tries to kill his friend. Also, the book is very descriptive and it is almost as if one can feel the emotions that the characters possess. I think that this is a good quality in a book because it gives the book substance. Besides all of those great qualities, The Year of The Leopard Song gives geographical features of Africa and the mountains around it. You can really see how tough it would be to climb the mountains, like Alan and Kimathi do.

Some might disagree with my opinion of this book. They might think that it is too descriptive and boring. But Campbell does a good job of keeping the reader interested by bringing in brief action scenes that lead up to the main event at the end of the book. Also, the book is 192 pages long and it isn't until around page 170 that anything major starts to happen. But I think that the description before is needed to give the reader a better sense of what is happening, and the different views and feelings of each character. I would definitely recommend this book. It has action, suspense and description. That's about all that a book needs.

This supernatural struugle is truly gripping and thrilling. Campbell reveals the struggle between the African tribal and British white man's ways through the use of realistic, alternating dialogue and thoughts. The descriptions of Mt. Kilamanjaro make me want to climb it to see for myself its mystical wonders. The two boys, Kimanthi and Alan, move from boyhood best friends to predator-prey. The ending of the story left my heart aching for for both boys and their families. I plan to use this novel in my 11th grade English course called Communications III. This novel is a good example of world literature to teach students about Africa and part of its history. Also, it exemplifies how communication is used and misused by people of different age groups and cultures when they try to express themselves or relate to each other.

againandagainandagain. it gets almost interesting. lovecraft's scientific story ending up with nothing much of a climax, Poe drowning in nautical technical information and fragmentary style. taine's is the most interesting one. first too little happens, then too much. could have been good, but is first too boring then too much in the overwhelming action-genre. glasby has good descriptions, but his story doesn't go anywhere. some of the other stories could have been good too. but always, something destroys. too boring, not going anywhere, lacks suspence. truly sad since many of the stories shows potential.

An excellent collection of short to medium length stories, all dealing with Antarctic expeditions and what the adventurers found (but wish they hadn't).

I only gave this book three stars because of the horrible proof-reading. It appeared as if the original documents had been scanned in and run through OCR software without a human bothering to check the results. Some examples: in one story, Tekeli-li is printed T>k>li-li; in one story all instances of "he" are printed as "be".

Other than that, I would recommend this collection to anyone interested in weird fiction set in Antarctica.

From the ends of the Earth come stories of adventure and really BAD things. Start off with a sonnet by Lovecraft himself, called, 'Antarktos', then on to the first course with 'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket' by Edgar Allan Poe, with a follw-up of excerpts by Jules Vern's called 'The Sphinx of the Ice Fields'. This is followed by the not-so-well-known 'The Greatest Adventure' by John Taine. 'At The Mountains of Maddness' by H.P. Lovecraft is served next, the main course, followed by 'The Tomb of the Old Ones' by Colin Wilson. Arthur C. Clarke cooks up a fine story in 'At the Mountains of Murkiness' and what meal would be complete without 'The Thing From Another World' by John W. Campbell Jr.? We finish off our fine dining with 'The Brooding City' by John S. Glasby and 'The Dreaming City' by Roger Johnson. Full yet?