Evans

I seem to recall seeing occasional recommendations from people like Peikoff for textbooks on logic, or grammar, or the history of philosophy--usually they are recommendations for old books that predate or ignore most of 20th century philosophy. I am looking for a good book on rhetoric, and wondering if anyone knows of any gems of that sort in that field. Thanks for any leads.

Going back to the first bit of the original post and FWIW, my own theoretical take on minimalist music is that it is music geared to the psycho-epistemology of an adding machine. Speaking personally, i can't abide it at all, ever, under any circumstances. Even decent music that happens to use motives similar to those Glass uses (and uses and uses) irritates me. It has nothing to do with whether it was written last year or last millennium. Boring is boring. This is coming from someone who on any given day might listen to Xenakis, Beethoven, Bjork, Stravinsky, and Thelonius Monk for his own pleasure. It's true that there is some music written in the last 100 years that crosses the line from complex to not-possible-to-follow. But speaking personally, i prefer a composer to err on that side, rather than on the side of the implied insult of minimalism. And speaking as a some-time composer, i've always said that if i ever meet Phillip Glass, i'd punch him.

I too have known such people. I've also known people who were not happy with their jobs, etc. who did not laugh uproariously at movie comedies or at parties. I've also known people who were happy, rational, content and successful who do laugh uproariously at movie comedies and at parties.

There's this movie i love called "Palm Beach Story," from 1942. One of the characters, despite being a millionaire (self-made, IIRC), carries around a little ledger and carefully keeps track of every penny he spends. One of his repeated lines is "Tipping is un-American." I thought that was strange at first, but on some reflection, unlike most trades, with tipping there is no agreement in advance about price. At the end, one party has provided a value, but the other party is free to pay anything they feel like for it--even nothing at all. It occurs to me that the reason someone in 1942 might have said tipping is un-American is that then, at least for some old-fashioned people, the issue would have been less about `us versus the communists,' but of `us versus the aristocracy.' Working without a guarantee of payment puts people in a position they might not like if they associate it with being servants (read: slaves) to an aristocracy. On the other hand, i have a friend who used to serve sushi at a place in Colorado and make okay money. But now he's making mad gobs of cash doing the exact same job--but he's doing it in a place where movie stars and billionaires go to eat. And lets face it, nobody's putting a gun to his head making him work there. Personally i like to tip decently if i can. And really well if she's cute.

I have never actually posted here, but i just had to here. I haven't had cable TV for a while, but at least it used to be that the History Channel would run a *lot* of `documentaries' about the `real' history of Christian this and Christian that. For a while it seemed you couldn't turn the channel on without seeing something about the life of St. Peter or somebody's theories about where Jesus was on his third birthday. I concluded the channel was a revisionist propaganda machine for Christianity. But maybe i'm wrong.