[DigitalFreak]

Hey MF, I'm rather curious if you have ever had a chance to sample one of Smeggy's creations and what your final conclusion on the sound was.

 

[gelocks]

So, finally got Richard Garriot's DVD Documentary. Had already seen it but I found it so compelling, so well made, that I had to buy it! If you guys/gals have not seen it, please do!
 
Italian zombie movies... very nice. What I don't like about Fulci or even Argento movies is that the story is often times so disjointed. I have a few movies from them, what they call giallo movies, sometimes they work, sometimes they do not.
 
BTW, I never thought I'd see a great CUBAN zombie movie. If you have time to see: "Juan de los Muertos", please do, I laughed my ass off! (it actually reminded me of Shaun of the Dead... but in Cuba, with communism undertones and making fun of it in a "light" way -- i.e. everything that's happening it's because of the US! lol)
 
Finally... did I mentioned I wanted the new iMac?!?! ARRRGHHH!!!

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Oh yes, and I really enjoyed the series and its expansions, but it was Neverwinter and the level designing suite that specifically that made me a BioWare fan.

 
I never really got into Neverwinter for some reason but I don't really remember why.  I snagged it form GOG during a recent sale so hopefully I'll get around to playing it eventually.  I've got to get around to playing Planescape: Torment first even if it's not BioWare.
 
Have you played and/or read anything in the Planescape setting?  With all its focus on the competing 'philosophers with clubs' factions I kinda get the feeling that you'd love or hate it with no in between.
 
Quote:

For a basic intro to canonical Hegel, I really recommend The Accessible Hegel by Michael Allen Fox.
 
There are two very different competing readings of Hegel however, both as an idealist and a materialist. The former is more of a theological reading which is what philosophers like Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard heavily criticized, whereas the latter is what many people typically see as the precursor to Marx. In the 20th century, the materialist reading is definitely more predominant, but within that framework there have been a lot of different interpretations. Kojeve and Hyppolite were two very influential voices in this regard. Also Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason and Malabou's The Future of Hegel are very important. Personally, I tend to be more influenced by the readings of Zizek on Hegel. I suggest picking up an intro to Zizek such as the Routledge Critical Thinker's Series guide at some point.

 
Thanks for the recommendations.
 
OTOH he doesn't sound like a very clear writer if people can't decide whether he's a materialist or an idealist...
 
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My deep hatred for NK could have been attributed in part by the fact that I'm a South Korean and was taught (or possibly brainwashed) from a young age that NK is an evil nation that should be torn into pieces. But still there's still no doubt that it's evil, unlike some other communist states that managed to get by with what they had.

 
Well the leadership at least.  I don't know what else you'd call spending most of the budget on the military just to maintain your position of authority while letting most people who aren't either party officials or soldiers starve.
 
Quote:

The notion of market economy is more appropriate to industrial countries.

 
An agrarian economy is pretty much just a market economy writ small, at least if you're comparing it to a command economy.  Even if you go back to some version of feudalism where peasants pay their taxes in crops it's pretty much just a market with more barter and less currency.  Even kings that might have had the power to do so didn't try and micromanage the whole economy.  Sometimes they might just demand stuff, or else, but despotism doesn't exactly define a command economy.
 
You could legitimately classify agrarian and market economies differently based on other criteria but Romy's point seemed to be more about decentralized/bottom-up vs centralized/top-down

 

[ardgedee]

I kind of went on a spree at the record stores today. Won't run down all my finds, but a few highlights:
 
Pere Ubu: Datapanik in the Year Zero. The 5-CD version, fortunately. No overlap with the Pere Ubu I already had from that era, fortunately.
 
feedtime: The Aberrant Years. I used to have a CD compiling feedtime and suction, and it went missing well over a decade ago. I'd been mourning it ever since, particularly since collectors had bid it up to silly-stupid price range. This box set of almost everything they ever set on tape* more than makes up for that. *(It doesn't include their only U.S. release, Billy, which seemed to be by a different band entirely, and not in a good way -- despite this, the cover art for this box is the frog from Billy. Not sure what to think about that.)
 
Sly & the Family Stone: The Woodstock Experience. Looks like an odd but useful compilation: One disk has their set from Woodstock, the other has Stand in its original sequence without the outtakes & singles versions that fill the CD reissue.
 
I was kind of annoyed that all the stores had sold out of the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD, but at one of them somebody had recently unloaded their Constellation label collection, so I'm now caught up on a chunk of the Do Say Make Think and Silver Mt. Zion back catalogs.
 
Renderers: A Dream of the Sea. The Renderers were a short-ish lived* New Zealand band that played a mournful sort of American country blues under a heavy haze of guitar smudge. The title track is beautiful. I never knew this had been issued outside of New Zealand, but apparently it had. *(I had last heard they'd only made one album and a handful of singles in the late 90s. Turns out they're not only still gigging, they came to the US a couple years ago, even. Awesome.)

 
The Pogues: Poguetry in Motion. The only Shane McGowan-era Pogues release I didn't have. So.
 
Evan Parker: Chicago Solo. One of my favorite free jazz artists, if for no other reason than Live at the Finger Palace was my first exposure to free jazz and it was so mind-blowing and inexplicably weird that I listened to it regularly, trying to figure out why this cat was doing what he did. It was a great education in music appreciation when I was a kid.

 

[mutabor]

Quote:

 
An agrarian economy is pretty much just a market economy writ small, at least if you're comparing it to a command economy.  Even if you go back to some version of feudalism where peasants pay their taxes in crops it's pretty much just a market with more barter and less currency.  Even kings that might have had the power to do so didn't try and micromanage the whole economy.  Sometimes they might just demand stuff, or else, but despotism doesn't exactly define a command economy.
 
You could legitimately classify agrarian and market economies differently based on other criteria but Romy's point seemed to be more about decentralized/bottom-up vs centralized/top-down

 
I've said above that there is no society without market economy. Even command economy can't exist without market relations. You confuse notions of command economy and socialism. Socialism is an ideology, it's more than economic system. 
 
That is why we hate socialism because it's ideology. Centralized regulation and some forms of command economy are absolutely necessary for any society. What communists tried to do in the Soviet Union was to create pure 100% command economy without any private property. Mission impossible. The only way to create such a state according to Lenin was by violence and dictatorship of proletariat. He couldn't see a peaceful way to achieve that. All the so called command economies are connected with dictators without exceptions. The reason of it is because pure command economy is not possible to support without oppression and isolation. 
 
My take on this: we should get rid of all that -isms. Feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism etc. are artificial concepts which don't describe reality correctly. 
 
P.S. When I said that the notion of market economy is more appropriate to industrial countries I meant western "capitalist" market economy which was criticized by Marx. Such economy was very weak in Russia at that period.

 

[DigitalFreak]

Quote:

 
My take on this: we should get rid of all that -isms. Feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism etc. are artificial concepts which don't describe reality correctly. 

You talk a good game and although I agree with some of what you posted the main question I have for you is....and replace it with what exactly? You can't have an economy and a burgeoning society with an accountable social net without some form of socialism and capitalism coming into play at some level. At a certain level you'll also need a certain degree of a command economy albeit I doubt it would have to be enforced on the general public but more in the inter governmental aspect of things pertaining to certain services and products needed for a governing body to function and provide certain services to it's citizens as well as guarding the well being of it's citizenry. The only way around any of the ideological mumbo jumbo of capitalism socialism etc is to provide all goods and services for free all the while having the public labor away for free in essence taking away any and all monetary value of money. A rather utopian idea I must admit and enough sci-fi writers have used that sort of idea but it's not going to happen anytime soon and I doubt it would ever happen.

 

[mutabor]

There is no need to support outdated Marx's jargon. The notion of capitalism is misplaced successfully by the concept of market economy. 
 
It was good that the church was separated from the state. Economics should be separated from ideologies as well. Hence, Adam Smith's ( for example) purely economical jargon is enough to describe things.
 
Darwinism and Marxism are examples of materialistic doctrines which went too far ( too radical) and both were created at the time when people believed that science can take place of religion. Science can't misplace religion. And religion shouldn't interfere into material life.

 

[MuppetFace]

WOW. A ton of misinformation in this thread. First, I would suggest to some people that they stop reading Wikipedia as a critical source of information. Things are being oversimplified to the point of becoming entirely alien. Take "ideology" for example. A very misused term. Saying the economy needs to be separated from it is naive (and I would say not even possible). Saying something like "religion and science should be separated" is itself an operative a priori paradigm.
 
Also let's not confuse the source with the interpretation of the source. I would actually wholly agree that "Darwinism" and "Marxism" have been taken too far---- but NOT by Marx and Darwin themselves. As I keep saying over and over again... there are so many different interpretations of Marx (and Darwin), you really can't simply say "the effect of Marx in modern society is X." That's BS, plain and simple. Leninism is not the same as Stalinism. Not by a long shot. You can't really say that Marxism itself failed, and therefore Marx's ideas were themselves invalid, without first conceding that the implementations of "Marxism" in the 20th century have all been seriously compromised and subject to very different strains of interpretation. Honestly, that's like saying Nietzsche advocated Nazism because his sister misappropriated his writings to fascism. Stalinism basically reduced Marxism to servitude to party-state, or what Kant called public reason to private reason. What's laughable is that Lenin actually advocated the exact opposite. Stalin was no Hegelian.
 
I actually agree that some people take Marxism and Darwinism to be religions, basically overextending them to domains where they get stretched thin. However I totally disagree with the assertion that religion should be completely unconcerned with the material world. This just leads to some return to vulgar Platonism or Gnosticism and is symptomatic of tepid New Age "spiritualism." Yuck, no thanks.
 
I think DF raises a very good point: you need to ask people who advocate getting rid of this or that, "what do you really want? With what should be replace it?" Often times the answer is very telling. The failure of Communism in the 20th is something that sends a clear message, in my opinion, that the [often] radical mantra of "don't think, just act" is misguided: now is the time for thinking, and maybe we've been a bit too hasty? The suspension of thought leads to some very dire consequences.

 

[mutabor]

Quote:

WOW. A ton of misinformation in this thread. First, I would suggest to some people that they stop reading Wikipedia as a critical source of information. Things are being oversimplified to the point of becoming entirely alien. Take "ideology" for example. A very misused term. Saying the economy needs to be separated from it is naive (and I would say not even possible). Saying something like "religion and science should be separated" is itself an operative a priori paradigm.
 
Also let's not confuse the source with the interpretation of the source. I would actually wholly agree that "Darwinism" and "Marxism" have been taken too far---- but NOT by Marx and Darwin themselves. As I keep saying over and over again... there are so many different interpretations of Marx (and Darwin), you really can't simply say "the effect of Marx in modern society is X." That's BS, plain and simple. Leninism is not the same as Stalinism. Not by a long shot. You can't really say that Marxism itself failed, and therefore Marx's ideas were themselves invalid, without first conceding that the implementations of "Marxism" in the 20th century have all been seriously compromised and subject to very different strains of interpretation. Honestly, that's like saying Nietzsche advocated Nazism because his sister misappropriated his writings to fascism. Stalinism basically reduced Marxism to servitude to party-state, or what Kant called public reason to private reason. What's laughable is that Lenin actually advocated the exact opposite. Stalin was no Hegelian.
 
I actually agree that some people take Marxism and Darwinism to be religions, basically overextending them to domains where they get stretched thin. However I totally disagree with the assertion that religion should be completely unconcerned with the material world. This just leads to some return to vulgar Platonism or Gnosticism and is symptomatic of tepid New Age "spiritualism." Yuck, no thanks.
 
I think DF raises a very good point: you need to ask people who advocate getting rid of this or that, "what do you really want? With what should be replace it?" Often times the answer is very telling. The failure of Communism in the 20th is something that sends a clear message, in my opinion, that the [often] radical mantra of "don't think, just act" is misguided: now is the time for thinking, and maybe we've been a bit too hasty? The suspension of thought leads to some very dire consequences.

 
Butt-hurt Marx advocate is detected. LOL. 
 
Socialism is not ideology? LOL.
 
Leninism is not the same as Stalinism? Maybe but not that much different. LOL.
 
What are you smoking over there?
 
I was brought up on socialist propaganda from the early age ( when you where not even born). You have NO IDEA what subject you are trying to take. You remind me a sofa dreamer who decided to conquer the highest peaks of Himalayas. 

 

[eke2k6]

Quote:

Butt-hurt Marx advocate is detected. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. 

 
 
.....What?
 
You sound like a member of the republican version of the tea party. 
 
Go read a book.

 

[mutabor]

Quote:

Go read a book.

 
Which book?

 

[mutabor]

‘What was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make use of this privilege; Schelling at best equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel...’ - Schopenhauer
 
 
 

Muppet Face:
 
As I keep saying over and over again... there are so many different interpretations of Marx (and Darwin), you really can't simply say "the effect of Marx in modern society is X." That's BS, plain and simple.

 
 
Dean Koontz: "Vladimir Nabokov said that the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct."
 
On Marxism (from a letter to Edmund Wilson, 15 December 1940): "Without its obscurities and abracadabra, without its pernicious reticences, shamanic incantations and magnetic trash, Marxism is not Marxism. The paradox which explodes Marxism and other dreams of the ideal state is that the first author is potentially the first tyrant of that state. . . . The individual whims of a ruler tell deeper truths about a corresponding period than the vulgar generalization of class war etc.; and the peculiar mathematical and historical howlers, in the Capital and capitaloids, are transfigured by the synthesis of Revolution into the beastly cruel stupidities it commits." (Nabokov-Wilson Letters)
 
"Nabokov had complete disdain for Marxism but seemed to consider it to be so intellectually trivial that he wasted little ink in attacking or parodying it."
 

Muppet Face:
 
That's BS, plain and simple. Leninism is not the same as Stalinism. Not by a long shot.

 
 
"Vladimir Nabokov repeatedly tried to point out to Wilson - and to America at large - Russia, for all the stupidities of tsarist rule, had been moving for six decades, albeit in fits and starts, toward increasing political and cultural freedom, until Lenin seized power and turned what had by February 1917 become a democratic republic into a dictatorship that ruthlessly suppressed all opposition. Stalin's secret police were not a betrayal of Lenin's principles but the natural heirs of his apparatus for total state control." ( "Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years" by Brian Boyd)
 
 
 

Saying something like "religion and science should be separated" is itself an operative a priori paradigm.

 
Because you didn't get me I need to explain again. "Plekhanov, the Russian Social Democrat, especially agreed with Engel's insistence that Marxism is simply Darwinism applied to the study of human society." Marx rejected religion and instead of it he placed Darwinist theory. Before human destiny was explained by different religions. Marx interfered into this order. When science interferes into metaphysical sphere then it becomes an ideology, a potential dangerous tool.
 
And vice versa when religion interferes into material life and tries to dominate then it can become a dangerous and harmful tool in conflicts.
 
 
 

WOW. A ton of misinformation in this thread.

 
Oh really?
 
 
 

This just leads to some return to vulgar Platonism or Gnosticism and is symptomatic of tepid New Age "spiritualism." Yuck, no thanks.

 
Oh, if you put New Age "spiritualism" into inverted commas then it automatically turns into BS. So you are sure that it is not spiritualism in true sense? Why? What gives you a right to write in this manner?

 

[billybob_jcv]

Mutabor - I think it's fascinating to have a chance to talk directly with someone that was taught and lived under the old socialist model. When you were growing up, were you exposed to the theory underlying socialism, or was it simply fed to you as Truth by the State? I grew-up on the US side of the Cold War, and so (of course) we heard only about the great "Threat of Communism" that had to be held back from sweeping across the globe. I had little or no history or theory of Marx, etc taught to us until I reached college - and even then, because I wasn't majoring in Political Science/Sociology/etc I did not get much.

 

[thrak]

Quote:

 
And while I'm here, the 40th anniversary of "Thick as a Brick" is out. The sound quality is most excellent, highly recommended.

 
In your opinion, is it better than the MFSL version?

 

[mutabor]

Quote:

Mutabor - I think it's fascinating to have a chance to talk directly with someone that was taught and lived under the old socialist model. When you were growing up, were you exposed to the theory underlying socialism, or was it simply fed to you as Truth by the State?

 
It was a wall of propaganda on every level. Every student book in school ( from primary to high school) and at the universities was full of quotes of Lenin, Stalin, Marx. Even in such subjects like music they had to tell us what music Lenin listened and stories how he cried over Kreutzer Sonata of Beethoven. We had a special subject where we studied theory of Marxism-Leninism.
 
On science classes we were taught that there was no God and religion was an opium to people and primitive tales from old times. There were numerous books, movies about Lenin. As a child I even loved Lenin. I had to learn poems about him and declared them in front of class. 
 
We couldn't study opposing theories because that kind of literature was banned. 
 
Nowadays it is accepted by the vast majority of our intellectuals that Bolshevik revolution was a tragedy. It's not true that it was Stalin who spoiled great idea. It was Lenin who brought chaos and violence which led to severe Civil War where millions of people died.