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Bold Standard

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  1. I think this wording is a little confusing, too, because Aristotle flourished from 384-322 BC, and David Hume lived from 1711-1776 AD. I think you meant it took Ayn Rand's *completion* of principles which had been pioneered by Aristotle.
  2. I think that Kant's influence is probably the most evil thing about him, if by evil you mean that which is detrimental to the life of the individual--he made Skepticism much more acceptable to the professional intellectuals than Hume did, and introduced the most systematic ethics of altruism that had ever been devised. I don't recall ever seeing the specific quote about trying to "save altruism from Enlightenment influences," but a nice statement of Kant's ethics is in his Metaphysics of Morals. His presentation of altruism is astonishingly consistent and extreme. (The word "altruism" was coined by Auguste Comte, as a description of Kant's ethics). I do not believe that Kant said that the Enlightenment values were "false and vicious because [they were] true and good." At any rate, I don't think it's appropriate to attribute a statement like that to a philosopher, even one as wicked and dangerous as Emmanuel Kant, without a direct reference.
  3. This alleged eye shifting was mentioned in posts #23, 24, and (my response in) 33. But I didn't notice anything unusual about her eye movements. Everyone's eyes move when they're thinking about something difficult on the spot like that--not only that, but it's not constant at all. There many extended periods where her eyes are locked right on Mike Wallaces eyes. I think maybe, since her eyes are large and dark, people notice it more when she moves them, than they would with a normal person? I do think it's possible that she was nervous though, since she so rarely gave interviews. But I didn't notice her as being unusually nervous.
  4. When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I was enrolled in a Christian video homeschool program (A Beka), in which the teachers' lectures had been taped from a Christian private school in Pensacola, and I got them in the mail and would do the work which was graded through a correspondence method. Every day the first class was a Bible study class. I remember studying this story in particular, because the teacher made a comment that really bothered me. He was discussing how the sentence, "Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths," doesn't necessarily specify that they were mauled to death--the word "maul" doesn't always describe fatal injuries. He mentioned that some Bible scholars contended that the bears must have only injured some of the children, and not killed them, because to think of killing them for poking fun at someone would be too severe and unjust an overreaction to attribute to a Loving God. Then he made this comment (it's been a few years, but if this isn't an exact quote it's at least very close): "But I'd like to think that there were some empty seats at dinner at those youths' houses that night." Even as a brainwashed young Christian, the thought of someone liking to think about children (possibly, ones around my age at the time!) being torn to pieces by bears because they offended the wrong guy was unconscionable to me. I did a lot of thinking about what type of premises and psychology could lead a person to say a thing like that, and I learned a lot about the naked truth and often hidden or premises of the Judeo-Christian religion along the way! [My conclusion: this religion in many instances embraces a gleeful rebellion against justice and reason in favor of the absurd (in this case, as in countless others, the morbidly absurd and ethically demented), in a hopeless and chronic psychological rebellion against reality].
  5. This book is actually part of a whole "Feminist Interpretations of..." series. There is a Feminist Interpretations of Kant, and Nietzsche, Plato, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Aristotle, etc. Apparently, being a feminist or an expert in regards to the philosopher in question are not prerequisites to contributing to these books.. ::shrug:: Reference?
  6. I don't think Ayn Rand was trying to state, as a general principle, that self-concepts are final in this excerpt. I think she, and the character Wynand, were both trying to say something more specific about Dominique's character. In the context of the kind of person Dominique was, and the specific choices she was making, it was clear that she could never achieve self-contempt. Wynand--speaking somewhat ironically--compares her to the type of person who seeks self-respect and lacks it. I think that it's significant that Wynand didn't say that the meaning of a quest for self-respect implies that the person will never achieve it, but only that he lacks it; whereas, he doesn't say that Dominique merely lacks self-contempt (she says that), but that she'll never achieve it. I think Ayn Rand is trying to show that Dominique's quest for self-contempt was *more hopeless* than a typical pathetically self-contemptuous person's quest for self-respect (which might be, but, I would assume, is not necessarily always futile).
  7. Did they quote any other philosophers? ..Was the implication that Kant was in agreement with the Sophists? That would be kind of amusing.
  8. I think the most concise answer can be found in Ayn Rand's essay, "For the New Intellectual." For a much more detailed, and quite fascinating account, I recommend Dr. Leonard Peikoff's History of Western Philosophy lecture series (the latter is quite expensive, but if you are interested in starting a campus club for Objectivism, or joining one if there happens to be one at your school already, then you can have access to it for free). Likewise. : )
  9. Now Victor Hugo I agree with.. I don't think there's any question that Hugo is better than LOTR or HP. But Von Mises.. Did he ever even write any fiction? If not, you could hardly say his books had better plots than LOTR or HP.. They didn't have any plots at all, being non-fiction books.
  10. ...As someone who has read LOTR and Sartre, I can say that LOTR, as well at The Hobbit, are at least ten thousand, but possibly as much as several million times better than Nausea and anything else by Sartre, both from a literary standpoint, and in the quality of the ideas. I don't even think LOTR is that great. But it does have a plot, and it's even slightly romantic. And I think the movie adaptation is pretty good, beyond just the special effects. But I don't think I've seen the other movies you mentioned. LOTR isn't the best movie ever, but both it and Harry Potter were fun (for their plots *and* the special effects, and other things including the music and the acting) and I think they were worth watching (i.e., I don't regret watching them). LOTR I like partly because I loved the books when I was a kid. Harry Potter I liked even though I haven't read it yet.
  11. I'm not registered at shop.com. What is it?
  12. I find it *extremely* ridiculous. Especially since you (Aleph) omit whether you think that the books are plotless, and the movies therefore plotless in turn, or whether you think that the books have good plots that the movies omit in favor of special effects. By the way, are there any movies with CGI that you do like.. Or do you automatically assume every movie featuring CGI to be crap without seeing it?
  13. Yeah, it's to commemorate AR's centenial.. They did a special printing of a lot of her books, and there were also a bunch of special lectures and parties and other events to celebrate it.
  14. You might talk to a psychiatrist then.. There are some amazing drugs on the market for ADD.. Taking Ritalin, Adderall, or Concerta are the equivalent of putting on glasses for me, for my whole mind. They also make me much more alert than coffee, without the jittery side effects of caffeine (they're all amphetamines). Yeah, I think I understand what you're getting at.. I'd like to make more songs set to the pace of the outside world.. I know a lot of my songs as well as a lot of my mental habits are geared more towards introspection. I want to make more music for enjoying the world outside, too. A lot of 1920's music is like that for me.. I've been studying and trying to learn to play in that style for a while now. It's a lot of pretty complicated theory and difficult finger-work for guitar and piano, but I expect that when I finally master it, and integrate it with what I already know about tone and so forth, it will be way better than anything I've done so far. Ha.. Sort of a joke.. But maybe there is something to it. I think both can be automatized only with practice. Yeah, I know. Riders on the Storm has lots of reverb, as do my songs, and I think that might be what makes the atmosphere seem strange, detached, and indistinct to you. Hmmm.. In that case, I'm not sure why you think the sounds are not clear and sharp.. The melody seems to me to be rather easy to distinguish.. It's something you can easily hum to yourself in your head, and it's a memorable melody, which I would think would be impossible unless it were clear and sharp. Melodies that I would consider unclear and unsharp would be, for instance, free form jazz, or some type of random avant-garde classical music, that defies tonality and even modality, and goes off in every direction without any distinguishable pattern. The exact distinction between tonality and modality remains an elusive subject for me.. Every time I think I understand what is supposed to be the difference, I read another explanation or interpretation of it that makes it seem like I was wrong about their definitions and what makes a piece tonal vs modal. But I *think* that both that Doors song at least several of the songs I posted are modal.. Which might lead to less distinct melodies than tonal music. But... That's just kind of a semi-educated guess. Yes.. But it's an indistinct echo. It's not like, if you shouted from the mountains, "HELLO..hello...ello...llo....lo..." But more like the echo you hear when you're in the bathtub, or in a sports arena, where the sound just kind of keeps going, and fades off into a whisper-y kind of ambient remnant of the original sound. Actually, one of my top favorite musicians and producers, Robin Guthrie of the band Cocteau Twins (the originators of a style of music that people sometimes refer to as "dream pop") says that he hates reverb. He says, if he ever wants to have an echo sound, he will use delay instead. Delay is a more distinct type of echo.. More like shouting from the mountains. It was originally achieved by recording the sound onto a 1/4'' tape in real time, and looping it, so that the sound keeps repeating (the speed and duration of the repeats are adjustable). Now they can do this digitally, too. Today, I've been listening to Cocteau Twins with this in mind, and I think I might start using delay instead of reverb, too. Maybe my songs won't sound quite so escapist or surreal that way. Oh.. but there's also an "instead" between "reality" and "inner thoughts." Hmmm.. maybe so. I'm going to put some more thought into the technical idea behind the melody and voice leading, and maybe I can think of some improvements to make it make more sense. The note "e" is very important, but it's not in the key of E major.. hmm, I think it's E Lydian, at least for the first part.. The truth is, if the melody is supposed to be the central idea, I haven't thought that out extremely well yet. It was kind of spur of the moment/improvised. Actually, I'd started out playing one of my other completed songs, and I messed up on part of it and that came to me. Still, there's something about it that really captures my imagination. (Oh, not offended, btw, I think you have a point.)
  15. I really like this. Your newer stuff seems to have much better proportions than some of the older sketches on your site. That's an interesting pose, and a great facial expression. I like the shading on the breasts, too.
  16. Ah, I came to this thread to ask if this was intentional, and here you've said it.. But why do you only do nudes of women and not of men? Do you not find the naked male form to be beautiful, too?
  17. Ohh, what did you expect me to think? Well, that's interesting, because that is precisely the song that comes to my mind when I think of The Doors. In fact, it's been playing off and on repeatedly in my head since you told me you thought we were alike. I think that my songs and that song are alike, and strange, in the sense that they're not quite rock, pop, or blues--they're strange in the sense that they don't fit into a familiar genre or the familiar set of emotions those genres have trained people to relate to music. They're also both intense without being abrasive. Yeah, that happens to me whenever I don't take my Adderall. They say it's ADD. : ) The outside world has a fast pace? How do you determine this? Is it the same tempo on a rainy day as a sunny day? Does it change with seasons, or on weekends, or at night? Is it objective, or does it depend on your state of mind? I'd like to write some more extrospective songs. Oh.. Maybe my extrospection is less clear because I need glasses. I've needed them for years, but I haven't had optical insurance. My perception of my inner world seems much more distinct by comparison--it doesn't require nearly as much concentration to bring it into focus. The sounds in that song don't seem sharp or clear to you? You know what I think it is.. It's the reverb. I use lots of reverb in the songs I've posted (*especially* bonus), and so do they in this song. Reverb is an effect that simulates the type of echo you would hear in a concert hall or a cave, or even a small room, depending on the type used. Originally, reverb was generated by playing the sounds through a spring or a metal plate, but I use a digital reverb. Some distinction can be lost with a lot of reverb, in a certain sense, but other aspects of the tone can become more distinct. Yeah, I think I know what you mean--although I've never listened to the lyrics, it does kind of sound like that. The implication in this statement is that one's inner thoughts are not real. Is that what you meant? I think sense of life might even effect the moods and sensations of certain drugs. Yeah, maybe a more skilled lyricist and songwriter could write a fully integrated song by making up lyrics first and then the song (or by making a song inspired by an old poem, like Carmina Burana or something), but I'm not quite that talented yet. Eventually I'd like to try it! Hmm.. But don't you like some elements of fantasy in art? Why does the creator of Lost in Jungle and Woman in a Dark Garden feel uncomfortably lost when she hears this song?
  18. Could you provide a reference for this? What do you think he meant by saying it can "work"?
  19. Do you feel the same way about the books, or do you think these movies exaggerate the mystical elements in the books?
  20. There are several significant differences between owning a VHS copy of an interview and watching it on an online sight on which it is posted. For instance, you can watch the VHS on your TV, whereas you can only watch the online video on your computer (unless you have your computer linked to your TV, or have the Internet on your TV, which most people don't). Also, you know that you'll have the VHS forever or until it brakes, whereas the Youtube video could disappear at any time. Besides that, some people get selfish pleasure from owning an official copy of a commercially released, professionally mastered video, with a professionally designed case to display on their movie shelf; which is a significant reason why people buy VHS movies and DVD movies, rather than simply recording them on a blank tape or disk when they come on TV. Hmm, I haven't honestly researched this or seen real evidence one way or the other.. My working assumption is that at least *some* of it is legal, rather than none. Frequently, when I've seen material that is clearly illegal show up (although I don't actively seek it out), it is gone and the user who posted it has his entire account suspended or deleted pretty quickly. Hmm, no.. Her eyes didn't annoy me at all. Actually, I really enjoyed watching her facial expressions. She revealed a lot of things one might not expect in a philosophical conversation of that sort--humor, kindness, and an almost childlike enthusiasm, for instance. She definitely seemed in a better mood than in the Donahue interview which was previously posted.
  21. How do you know that in this particular case, the profits of sales of the interview are being undercut, and that the video's circulation on Youtube is not instead serving as free advertising that will increase sales of the VHS? I don't know one way or the other, but as I've heard of the latter scenario being the case for similar things, I just wonder how you know that it is as you say (i.e., is it based on actual evidence, or just an assumption). But that assumption would be false. There are commercially produced videos posted on YouTube that are legal, and sometimes even ones posted by the actual copyright or license holders.
  22. Why not, though? There are many other political ideologies which have risen to prominence in various parts of the globe and then vanished, at least for the most part if not entirely. Why wouldn't that happen to Nazism?
  23. Can one person go on strike? I think that's just called quitting. It's only a strike, I believe, if a group of people withhold their services, as a demonstration of the necessity of their efforts. I don't think a student can technically go on strike either.. That's just called dropping out.
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