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Thoyd Loki

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Everything posted by Thoyd Loki

  1. Really? I'd like to hear that, it would be interesting. It also gives me the idea that I am going to put that album up for rating (I've never put my rock albums up for rating, not even Beggar's Banquet, which I think is one of the best blues albums - ever). I've had the thought that the band's mass popularity resembles the mass popularity of sports. That, no matter the simplicity of the music, or the genericness of the lyrics, they encapsulate the touchdown in action. The chest-pumping confidence of "the win". But, I do not want to hijack a Phish thread with what some would consider their antipode. I'd also like to take back some of my criticism of Phish as somewhat just biased, as at a a certain level of quietness (or "non-hard- rockness") I simply switch to completely different genres of music altogether. But I will stand by the assertion that Phish has a large stoner following. Of course, a lot of bands that I like have a following that I personally would never want to associate with - and I do not know what they get out of it. It is "yuck" for me, but it would be unfair to assume that someone else whom I do not know could not hear value in it. I don't know what that would be, and can be hard to communicate or even to grasp on a personal level. It's not like they are Schoenberg or something.
  2. Not to shun all hippie music mind.. hell I even have a weak spot for John Denver cuts.
  3. I'll call Cartman, he'll want to put a stop to this crap. Really, they sound like watered-down Grateful Dead only way more boring. Thank god Black Ice will be out on the 20th. It won't have a shred of meaning in the whole damn thing, but it will blow away whatever these hippies are doing. I mean - yuck. I've met many a Phish fan. They don't need a set list, everyone is stoned. You have to be stoned to listen to this. IM(not so)HO
  4. And what side of the spectrum do you think this song represents? I fell for Tool long after I discovered Objectivism. They are not my favorite band of all time, but they are certainly the last great band to have come around. I wish that were saying more in the dump-water we have for the "talent-pool" now. I can agree with his list of people that can go F*** off. I certainly have days where this song strikes a chord. It's just out of context misery with the world. A song's lyrics are not a treatise of views that you subscribe to by playing or even liking the song. Some songs are explicitly nihilistic to the point that I can't like it no matter what. But he's just mad at the festering swell of mindless drones and other ilk of LA, and he never states what he thinks is the positive. He points out the negatives and wishes for it to be flushed away - hell you can even take it metaphorically. He didn't say otherwise, did he?
  5. I second this, I got hooked on the first episode. Although I first tuned in because B movie legend Bruce Campbell was in it. He's the other former operative.
  6. Why are you guys answering his "criticisms"? He hasn't even criticized the philosophy. I don't know what he is criticizing except maybe some half-grasped notion from the summary section of Cliffnotes. Ever read some history of philosophy where the author gets everything wrong about a particular philosopher and then goes on to critique it? Well, there may be such out there, but I've not read one. But it seems Ayn Rand can just be breezed over and anyone can garble out any goop that is supposed to be an actual representation of her philosophy and then others are supposed to answer it. So your college professors got you thinking differently. I can't say their job was hard, you didn't have any grasp on Objectivism to begin with. Tell you what. Go back and check every single proposition in your critique and honestly examine it and see if that is what Objectivism in fact says. Every single thing you said was false. Your very opening sentence was false. And the premises of your academics are wrong abstractly, factually and historically. Get everything wrong and want others to correct it. Talk about ego...sheesh.
  7. What is your source for this claim? Nobody but Lucas' closest friends saw the movie a few months before the release, and at that time most of the special effects, and even the score and some sound effects were still missing. Are you saying that he read the script, thought it was terrible, decided to do the film anyway as long as he was whacked, and given small roles in the next two films? Are you saying he saw it after the release but forced it to be remade? Saw the movie in the middle of making it and had his part refilmed? How did he have an opinion of the movie before he saw it? Are you saying that in the middle of filming he decided the film sucked (not very characteristic of Alec Guiness) and convinced George Lucas to change his script accordingly (absolutely, positively not something George Lucas would ever do). Now in Alec Guiness' autobiography, written shortly before he passed away, he did state that he regretted making those films because he got sick of answering kids questions about his role and the movies in general. He felt that any spirituality the films may have had was lost in the minutia of trivia in its fantasy world. Guiness, it may be noted, was a devout Roman Catholic. I know the making of that film in detail, and that claim flies in the face of everything I know about it, and its maker.
  8. AS has been an audio book for many years. It is read by Christopher Hurt who has done many books. The Fountainhead is done by Edward Harriman. Both do an excellent job IMO.
  9. Purely a personal preference on your part. You should have seen The Golden Compass - it was far more reality oriented than I am Legend. BTW, I would have had a link under my book's title straight to Amazon; forget the italics. For a couple more seconds work you could sell more copies. Potentially.
  10. I am Mac crossover person. I switched to Mac about three years ago. I'll never go back. It is so nice to not have to do all that spyware, adware, virus, router, firewall (etc, etc, etc) crap anymore. But, I do not program. So why chuck the PC? I assume that if you are programming for Mac, then you will be using Mac tools. And Windows tools for programming in Windows. Macs are most certainly easier to use and across the board more integrated than PC's. Any form of multimedia is second nature for a Mac. Just go for a test drive at a Mac store. I heartily try to avoid Mac vs. PC wars so I'll just say - go see for yourself. Macs are generally pricier than PC's, but there is pay-off. What Mac to get? Don't get the mini-Mac. The lowest end iMac should be fine. It's a damn beautiful machine. And it will come with the new operating system which is awesome to say the least. It's worth having for the Time Machine function alone. And get your own mouse when you buy the Mac. I don't know what the deal is with their one-button mouse, but mine went in the trash can.
  11. That sentence was supposed to be "That seems to be what you are saying." My reference to GWDS's post was #28 until it got moved to the Trash Can portion of the forum. Thus, the post numbers were reordered after its removal. I assume mine was not because there was argument in the post. So, no you if fact did not address his post. I certainly agree with you on two points though. America should be criticized for altruistic foreign adventures (protecting our oil interests is not one of them, I fully support going there right now and expropriating them back. If Britain does not want their share, we can take theirs as well) like nation building and ensuring they can vote themselves right into theocracy. We certainly should not have had an embassy there but a fully functional military base. It is not like the '79 revolution popped up from out of the blue.
  12. As you have just proven, those are not personal attacks. Unless you want to claim that you do not know that a sentence ending with this symbol "?" is a question. Are you saying you believe X? is not the same as saying "you believe X." Please learn to recognize the difference between an asking of what you believe and a statement of what you believe. Second, do not ignore the fact that I did attack your arguments for 5 paragraphs before my above quoted evaluation. And I do note you didn't have a problem when it was the entirety of GWDS's post #28. Why does our bringing up something that happened 28 years ago have no import but the Iranian government's response 26 years later (1953 - 1979) does? They respond 26 years after the fact - that's ok. But, since it's 28 years since they took hostages - that's not relevant. I don't care if that government was democratically elected or not, so was Hitler. Where is your proof that it was a desire to control their oil fields? What was the name of the Iranian oil company? Just how do you justify that "situation" as morally ambiguous? Were those government employees the very same people involved in the coup? No? Well, hell let's have them cut some more of us up so they can be paid back for what they suffered in the Crusades then. The fact that this was their defining, opening act of retaking power proves the legitimacy of removing them in the first place. Why the need to parade them in front of cameras for the whole world for 400+ days while chicken Jimmy did nothing? They had the power back, they could have just expelled the diplomats and closed the embassy. What was the purpose, the motive, of it? What major terrorist groups draw their inspiration from Iran? You have got to be kidding me. What American hating group wouldn't be inspired by their own legislatures' chant of "Death to America" during their sessions? Or the bellicose Iranian president's rants against America, or their mullahs preaching of hatred of Jews and the "Zionist" conspiracy of which we are a part. All of this stuff is out in the regular old newspapers. This is the information age, I'm not going to do your homework for you, read the newspaper or something. I'm not going to go out and refetch and catalogue citations for someone who (am I wrong?) thinks that Iran is just a misunderstood little boy getting bullied by big, mean America.
  13. Why did we not attack communist Russia? Well we certainly should have the moment they got the bomb. It would have been a lot better strategy than sending them food, money and other such aid. A policy that began not long after the Bolshevik revolution. Likewise, sending aid and "nation-building" gets us nowhere. Attacking the wrong country altogether gets us nowhere. No aid, bomb these murderous apes to their fairy-tale heaven and be done with it. The point of bombing Iran into oblivion goes beyond the actual physical attacks and the documented funding and sponsorship of terrorist organizations around the world, although that is way more than enough right there. It goes to the heart of what they are, they are the epicenter the heart of the whole radical Islamist movement. They fund it, they preach it, they enforce it, in exactly the same way the communists did across Europe, Asia and Africa. They are engaged in a war with us in every sense that could be - except they keep their actual soldiers away from ours (or at least have them change clothes before they hop over the border to blow up our soldiers). They have made no secret of what they would do with a bomb. I do not accept your "we shouldn't have our embassies over there in the first place" argument. This is just plain "blame America for every problem" non-thinking. Embassies are, conventionally, a civilized function of civilized countries. They are not military bases. Just to boot out a country from one's embassy is a sign of hostility, but no reason for war itself. What the hell do you think holding them as blindfolded hostages in front of the whole world for over a year means? I really have to agree with one of the other posters. Your position ignores so much evidence at every single point I would have to assume you either know next to nothing about a multitude of subjects, or you are being purposefully blind. Really, Is it your position that the '79 hostage taking was our fault? Is it really your position that such an action is not an act of war? Is it actually your position that because a country pays other people to kill our civilians and soldiers, but doesn't actually use their own soldiers that we have no right to fight back? That is what you are saying. I'd love to apply this across the board! And one last point to ruffle your feathers. It would not have been the '79 hostage event that would have had my guns in there. I would have been bombing there in the '50's when they nationalized OUR oil.
  14. I agree that the original poster made a mistake by calling Communist Russia's aim "rational". Aside from that, what are you missing? The whole freaking picture! First, an assumption of yours: Is it necessary that an attack has to happen on US soil? The holding of hostages in '79 was more than enough to wage full scale annihilation on Iran. Forget all of the subsequent attacks. That was enough. Where is it written that is "OK" to attack our troops (and kill them) as long as it is on soil not of the US? Are you then saying that any American life (military or civilian) is fair game outside of the US? So why then aren't theirs? To hold to your premise, it is kill and be killed, no rules. Or, are there bonds that restrain us, while they are free to attack? Because we are there? Check your history. Everything they have now to wage war on us they got from us: from technology, to money they took from us, and it has been our disgraceful legacy that we didn't slap their face off at the first offense; re: the Suez Canal. In a way the Cold War was more rational. The communists thought they could achieve a more prosperous, technologically advanced society that would beat us in the long run. The Islamists (like our modern environmentalists and American Fundamentalist counterparts) have no such allusions. They hate, fundamentally, to the core, what makes us distinct. They don't hate the worst of what we are (which is a result of the legacy we hold in common with them) they hate the best of what we are. You don't get the issue with Iran? Nothing since Hitler has been so blatantly obvious. Just what do you think they mean (in their own government - when they are voting on their nuclear resolutions) by "Death to America"? It isn't esoteric. It is not otherworldly, It is a threat, a gun, a chain, a noose, pointed at your own neck. And you still don't get it?
  15. Chicoflaco, Also, the poster you quoted made an error. There is no such thing as "Objectivist music". Oops, sorry Rational Biker, I was referring to the post above my original, it looks like I'm responding to yours so I'm adding a fix.
  16. I would like to see these studies. Your claim that there are studies is not our knowledge of those studies. Support your claim. No, you do not get stress relief from anger in and of itself, but through the actual expression (and or acceptance) of what you are feeling. Being angry obviously is not stress relief, but channeling it out in some productive way (jogging, lifting weights, punching a punching bag, pumping your fist to a charging beat, gunning down Nazis in an FPS game, ripping out a solid beat on the drums etc) is. I remember when I was little I would pound up and down on my bed with a tennis racket pretending I was Angus Young (a lot of kids did) - anger? Pure enjoyment! I don't even think most people properly designate what they are doing or feeling when listening to hard rock of heavy metal music. When I was in a band we were not channeling aggression or anger. We were Vikings, conquerers of mountains, pirates at the helm, George Jefferson just elected president of the Unites States. To you it may possess some of the characteristics of anger. But, that does not mean that is how everyone else experiences it. Take Ayn Rand's words of what? What is it you are claiming she said? Lastly, repression never works. I love a lot of classical music, and you could lock me up for months and I'll still want to listen to Back in Black more than anything else. You were young and stupid - not because of the music you listened to - but for the reason you listened to it. Then you grew up. Well that's good, but tell me this: what if one isn't listening to it because of social pressures, but because one actually likes it? Would you recommend turning away from one's automatic emotional response, and trying to supplant (it can only be artificially) and "conditioning" oneself to a different response? What is the procedure for this?
  17. My suggestion is not in written form, but from Peikoff's The History of Philosophy lecture series. He not only goes into detail about Kant, but smashes him to bits as well. This is done through the fundamentals of Kant's philosophy, but also attacks the buttresses of Kant's main principles. Now if you are looking for something that pecks him bit to bit like a one on one antithesis to his Metaphysics of Morals, there is no such thing in the Objectivist corpus. And such an undertaking would be futile anyway because they would have to wind their way through torturous miles of verbiage and BS, just to get to one point. A succinct writer, Kant was not. Also it wouldn't hurt to read him in the context of a regular history of philosophy series (WT Jones is a good start). I would survey Kant like I would survey a strange planet that I can't make sense of, but have some evidence from those who have landed before me. You can get lost on the sick planet of Kant in a single, 15 comma, 2 semi-colon, 4 colon, ten parenthesis, 19 line sentence! And that sentence may be one of three for a paragraph that goes on for 6 pages. I may be exaggerating a bit, but that is one of things I remember from that unpleasant ride.
  18. I'd like to chime in and add my agreement that the use of fantasy in writing is not inherently wrong. But, like most things, it depends on what you do with it. I have no interest in fantasy for fantasies' sake, the same goes for science fiction. But I could even accept an author going into a deep level of detail about their magical system to the degree that it was used to illustrate something broader. Perhaps an epistemological point, like the need to focus, short-range vs. long range thinking and action; or ethical, independence vs. dependence, rationality vs. whim-worship. That is, if it was done right artistically, stylistically and so forth. The great thing about fantasy (that science fiction shares with it to an extent) is that it allows us (both as readers and those of us that are writers) the freedom to isolate and exaggerate certain themes through fantastic means. Honesty is not seen as costing someone their marriage or career, or gaining these, but as something of cataclysmic importance that is blown beyond all that most people will by themselves dream or experience. I grant that a work that can do this in the here and now, a world we can recognize concretely, is superiour. Atlas Shrugged is one of those books. But that is a very limited playing field. I have no desire to try to top, match, elaborate or copy her. And given that I like fantasy and science fiction, it is quite a logical choice to write in this field. I'm willing to bet a lot of people choose this genre for the same reason. BTW. I was disappointed at age 7 that I could not move my book by using The Force - for 5 minutes or so. I simply made my bike into the Millenium Falcon and went about my business faster than the speed of light!
  19. Which Ancient Greek did you have in mind? Euclid? Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras? Or Johnny "Zeno" Smith who shoveled crap out of stables? Admittedly some of the stuff mentioned most people would or should know. The Ancient Greeks that we know of were towering geniuses compared to their contempararies, and even compared most of us now. Hell, they actually discovered this stuff to begin with. And thinking that Ms. Pinkett's, who trains dogs for a living, inability to recollect a rule of geometry that she hasn't had to use in thirty years is a sign of American stupidity is wrong. And sorry-ass TV if that is what it is trying to get across. When I was in school for engineering years ago, I aced all that geometry and the trigonometry, but I couldn't think of the answer off-hand for the geometry questions. I just don't use it, at all. The elementary algebra question though was easy. Although "air" was a really dumb answer!
  20. While I would agree that the storage capacity is finite, I don't think anyone really knows what its storage capacity is. Needless to say, it is doubtful evolution would have produced a brain that had a storage capacity for 3 billion years when the organism itself can only do a little over a 100. So, in this fantasy projection, I would simply have massive backups (some kind of electro-bio-chemical whatitz ) of experiences and stuff while always keeping some vitals ever present. Maybe I could do millennia backups: Thoyd Loki: The 600th Millennia. Then I could go back and reexperience Rosa, my wife from my 322nd millennia, and spend a couple thousand years just kicking it with my backups. Not really pressed for time am I? Reflection in this scenerio really could be an indulgence.
  21. I'd take it in a heartbeat. There is always something to look forward to. Here is my proof. According to astronomers, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are moving towards each other at a rate of 300,000 mph. Unfortunately that means they won't come in contact for 3 billion years. I would very much like to be there for that. (Of course it goes without saying that it is a way out of context wish - not even allowable outside sheer fantasy.) I'd like to be dancing a jig on my 26,000th pair of robo-legs with a sweet girl , as brand new worlds whisk by in the night sky above me. Or collide with Earth, smashing it to pieces, and sending my immortal ass to float in space for eternity.
  22. Whom are you addressing? If it is I, I can only say that I have never encountered such a clear cut case. I'm sure there were other psychological factors such as asserting his will (his impotence) over others by eliminating them. Maybe to become famous if he thought he could get out alive. And who knows about that. Hate drove him. His desire was to kill. Naming his ends does not make me a psychologist, nor need I or anyone be one to grasp that much. Nor do I have had to know him personally to reach this conclusion. Of course we can fathom his motives. We can't fathom his experience, or see through his eyes. At least, I don't possess the skill of temporarily experiencing that kind of existence. I, for one, don't believe he was mentally ill in a clinical sense. I do think he was mentally evil. Were his mental processes (whatever these were) in conflict with reality? Yup. You can be a psychotic all on your own, practice irrationality long enough and anyone can become "mentally ill". You don't need the help of a "mental illness" "afflicting" you as if by a force outside yourself.
  23. Those 32 dead bodies were his motivation. He craved the destruction of himself, of others and of existence. And since he wasn't an all-powerful dark lord who could bring the pillars of creation (not to be confused with Goodkind's pillars) down and wipe out existence, but merely a human, he did what all his type do - kill.
  24. Don't allow guns? Any guns? I don't find this to be the case. Let's take a look at German school shootings, a developed country with some of the toughest gun laws. March 1999: Branneburg, Germany 1 teacher dead Feb 2002: Freising, Germany 3 dead, 1 wounded April 2002: Erfurt, Germany 17 dead, 1 wounded Nov 2006 Emsdetten, Germany 4 wounded Nov 1999: Meissen, Germany 1 teacher stabbed to death (hey, if you can't find a piece...) Here are a couple others from the developed countries. Dublane, Scotland: March 1996 16 children, 1 teacher dead Carmen de Patagones, Arg 3 dead, 6 wounded Montreal, Canada Sept 2006 1 dead, 18 wounded I'm sure I could dig up a lot more. I even came across something that Brits use a lot more air-guns now because they are still easy to get! I also ran across several studies that indicate that medieval murder rates were many times higher than ours (without guns of course) and that the rates plummeted in the 17th century, and didn't start to rise again until the 20th. Hmm...wasn't the age of reason in there somewhere in those centuries? Guns make it easier to kill, sure. But, if you want to kill, you are going to kill - club, axe, mace, bare-hands, knife, airplane. The rest is only talk about numbers of victims. Talk of banning guns misses the cause altogether.
  25. What I am saying is that a culture that saturates themselves with such crap sounds ridiculous when screaming about something like this. Therefore, it must be acceptable in certain circumstances. You have to be black (and then you talk about blond-hoes and all the white chicks too) and you can do it against a beat. This way people like the slimy Snoop Dog can find his respectable self in my living room pushing family products on me before he gets back to smoking his blunt and chillin' with his bitches. Or you can be a race-pimp and say whatever you want about any race - as long as you are black. Hypocrisy is what they called it in sane times. Once again we must read a post as it was written. I said it was a power play by the 2 bigots, not the girls. But, how do you suppose they got into a press conference in the first place? There has to be a stink before there is a conference. Frankly I don't think they would have been quite so "hurt" if the fire hadn't been made so big. And since when did talented, beautiful, mature young women care what some shriveled old stroke dampered hag blubbers between his sagging lips? I'd bet half of them didn't know who he was before this happened. I seriously doubt they were "hurt". Do you think Imus could have got away with calling the stripper a "nappy headed hoe"? I don't think so! I do not even know what this next sentence means. Can you explain this, for the life of me I don't know what you mean. What I meant is that the last effort of the bigot race pimp team (Al and Jesse) to get those Duke boys thrown in jail was obviously failing, but here comes shriveled Imus and his dumb ass to make sure we are still staring at the most boring topic in our era "race-relations". Snoooze.
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