What the heck is Bin Laden doing here in the Tao? — PoeticUniverse

What's blasphemous about it? Is it because they're admitting their desires are erotic and pleasure-chasing? — Moliere

We're only here to have fun, get drunk
And make loads of money
Cos nothing else matters to me — Alestorm

For this is wisdom’s deepest, sweetest song — PoeticUniverse

if Hawkwind isn't "hippie rock", I'm not sure what you're talking about. — Dawnstorm

Out of curiosity, I've looked over a few top-lists online to see if I even know enough metal albums. Turns out, I know mostly the classics/progenitors (Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Blue Oyster Cult). I sort of feel like I can't make much of a contribution. — Dawnstorm

(My favourite Black Sabbath album, for example, is Sabotage. That came up on maybe one list; it's mostly Paranoid, Black Sabbath or Master of Reality, and don't know the latter two). — Dawnstorm

(Thanks for Afroman; he's brilliant.) — Dawnstorm

Clear evidence that English is a barbarian tongue. :rofl: — Count Timothy von Icarus

"dog dog dog dog dog dog dog." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not thinking corruption, I'm thinking more that they may be aligned with authoritarian visions for America and long to rid society of deviants. — Tom Storm

Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. — Thomas Jefferson

Do you think the police and military would oppose Trump should he decide to suspend the constitution and remain in power as a totalitarian ruler? — Tom Storm

Do we have good reason to assume that law enforcement isn't already a large part of this group? — Tom Storm

What you identify is just one of the difficulties of identifying people and personal identity with bodies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I too prefer toast and butter and haven't found a cause for which dying seemed like a good idea. — BC

Usually, this rhetoric of the patriot's game is voiced by people who are quite conservative, whether they served in the military or not. — BC

A fascination with uniforms, flags, chains of command, obedient service, weapons, and so on isn't in itself fascist. Sprinkle holy water on the troops, and one is a little bit closer. — BC

There is a lot of strong support for the view that organisms and the ordered cosmos as a whole are most properly beings. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A corpse is not a man. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or, one could instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic.

How so? A corpse doesn't consist of "a living brain in a body," so it need not be Truman, although surely it is Truman's body. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fascism has also been characterized as "a style" -- by which I do not mean a mere preference for brown shirts and goose stepping. "Style" would include the regular crude use of force, ruthlessness, crass manipulation of the public, the deployment of sappy 'Volk' sentimentality (like PATRIOTISM), etc. — BC

I once knew an arrogant sculptor who snapped at some remarks about artistic style that were made in his presence. It was proposed during a con­versation that one might design a computer capable of generating count­less new works in the style of an already known author or musician. The sculptor objected to this notion, not in the manner of a luddite, but that of someone quite confident in a specific philosophical position: "there is no such thing as a style apart from the sum total of works an artist has pro­duced." Whatever the merits of this position, they are opposed by the entire phenomenological tradition, and in my view rightly so. A style is actually not a mere concept abstracted from numerous singular cases, but an actual reality that none of its manifestations can exhaust. One can hear a newly discovered Charlie Parker recording and immediately recognize the style; one can and will say that "that solo is really classic Bird," even though up till now it was not part of the known Parker oeuvre. We sense that a certain person does not really belong in Brooklyn or in the military just by their general style, without being able to pinpoint any disqualifying factors. In this sense, styles are no different from intentional objects as defined by Husserl, which lie beyond any of their current profiles and even any of their possible profiles. We can say of any object that it is not a bun­dle of specific qualities, nor a bare unitary substratum, but rather a style. And although style is not often seen as one of Merleau-Ponty's key tech­nical terms, I would suggest that it may be the most important of them all -just as his personal style of seeing the world is surely his most lasting contribution to philosophy. — Graham Harman, Guerilla Metaphysics, p. 55

"Giant Steps" is a jazz composition by American saxophonist John Coltrane. It was first recorded in 1959 and released on the 1960 album Giant Steps. The composition features a cyclic chord pattern that has come to be known as Coltrane changes. The composition has become a jazz standard, covered by many artists. Due to its speed and rapid transition through the three keys of B major, G major and E♭ major, Vox described the piece as "the most feared song in jazz" and "one of the most challenging chord progressions to improvise over" in the jazz repertoire. — Wikipedia

From beginning to end, "Giant Steps" follows alternating modulations of major third and minor sixth intervals (with diminished fourth and augmented fifth intervals between B and E♭). Its structure primarily contains ii-V-I harmonic progressions (often with chord substitutions) circulating in thirds. — Wikipedia

Not a topic to treat in a couple of words. — Banno

Cool. I take the pub Test to imply that you can't suggest anything that you can't explain in two sentences to a drunk. — Banno

Or put differently, whether it is nonsensical to talk about Truman apart from his life. — Leontiskos

When I say that Truman exists because someone is Truman, I'm not refering to Truman's form, but to Truman. It's easier to work with individuals. — Banno

How does your idea fit with what in Australia is called the "pub test"? — Banno

The common sense comparison you made elsewhere? Isn't "Truman exists" about Truman, rather than the-form-of-Truman? — Banno

I see your solution as rejecting this, since for you there is no individual Athena or Piece, but only descriptions of them - predicates. You seem to be going back to the solution suggested by Russell and Quine. — Banno

How that would work with modality would remain to be seen. — Banno

Let's leave it for now. — Banno