Since the special topics forum at the old forum was a mix of light hearted discussion like the “what’s going on with you” thread and stray political topics, I’ve decided to define to forum as the “lounge” for light hearted discussion.  Serious topics should be avoided) unless something serious is happening in your personal life and want to mention it) and the personal attacks should be completely off limits.

Since the special topics forum at the old forum was a mix of light hearted discussion like the “what’s going on with you” thread and stray political topics, I’ve decided to define to forum as the “lounge” for light hearted discussion.  Serious topics should be avoided) unless something serious is happening in your personal life and want to mention it) and the personal attacks should be completely off limits.

With the old forum shutting down tonight here are the most prolific posters:

Eric the GreenSenior Member
07-04-2001
22,504

Marx & LennonSenior Member
09-13-2001
16,715

pbrower2aSenior Member
05-04-2005
15,016

OdinSenior Member
09-26-2006
14,442

Child of SocratesSenior Member
09-12-2001
14,092

Brian RushSenior Member
07-23-2001
12,392

Justin '77Senior Member
09-20-2001
12,182

playwriteSenior Member
07-07-2005
10,450

Chas'88Senior Member
11-30-2008
9,432

HopefulCynic68Senior Member
09-14-2001
9,412

I've increased the video limit to 5 videos per post.

I find Popper an interesting thinker.

Quote:Karl Popper on Religion, Science and Toleration

http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/07/14/karl-popper-on-religion-science-and-toleration/
… "It is necessary to make it quite clear that I am speaking here about religion in a very general way. Although I always have Christianity in mind, I want to speak in sufficiently general terms to include all other religions and especially religions like Buddhism, Islam or Judaism. Everybody agrees that these are religions. I shall…extend the term even further.
He suggested that a person can be considered religious if he or she has some faith that provides a basis for practical living, in the manner of people who appeal to an orthodox religious faith to guide their moral principles, their actions and their proposals for social improvement. He insisted that science has no answers in the search for these principles, though of course science and technology become all-important once we have decided on our aims.
By invoking the idea that we are all motivated by some kind of faith (which he chose to call our religion) he hoped to get over the dispute between the militant atheists (who he regarded as proponents of the religion of atheism) and people of orthodox religious beliefs. He wanted to get past the issue “Have you a religion or not” to address the question “What are the principles of your religion?” – “Is it a good religion or a bad religion?”
He was in favour of “good” religions, including the faiths of secular humanists, which promote the core values of the great religions – honesty, compassion, service, peace and especially the non-coercive unity of mankind. Against these good religions he identified the evil religions of totalitarianism (communism and fascism), and the persecution of heretics. He pointed out that even as science can be misused, so can religions, including Christianity.”…
… "He then moved on to the differences between liberals and socialists. The socialists assert that the state should provide much more than the minimum. Popper, like the liberals, saw this as an ever-present danger that the state will grow, and corrupt and inefficient bureaucracies with it. He had a foot in each camp, not a comfortable position and one that made him owned and disowned by both sides (mostly disowned). His aim was to find some way to reconcile the differences between the two camps.
He thought this could be done by addressing simultaneously the evils that each side identified, that is, by addressing the downsides of too much liberalism (unlimited economic freedom and no public welfare) and on the other side too much state power (loss of freedom in the servile state, bureaucratic or worse). He thought that this resolution was blocked by the degree of attachment on each side to their pet loves and hates – on one side the love of economic freedom, on the other side the utopian vision of socialism.”…

We have the same economy as in the 1920s, the same hard sectionalism as in the 1850s, and the same faddish hostility toward taxes as in 1765-1775 - all late Unravelings.

Forget about whether we have achieved the regeneracy yet.  We haven't even achieved the catalyst yet!

I found this in the old Obituaries thread in the T4T forum from 2012. As I discussed the death of Davy Jones at age 66 from what sounded like an old man's disease which elicits more sympathy from me than does wrecking one's body with drugs, booze, or extreme obesity.

pbrower2a Wrote:I have plenty of euphemisms for my age -- as in "It's a young 56" that I can justify because I don't have diabetes or liver problems -- and I still have good knees. I'd like to lose about as many pounds as I have years, and I would rather be around people who act and think young. A gout attack can remind me of how old I am and compel me to use handicap parking. Without gout, I can do some hiking and swimming. I'd rather be where I can do both.

But I know how old I am when I expose how much a Boomer I am through my knowledge, my memories (I can remember John F. Kennedy!), and my tastes in music (classical -- and I miss the large selections of CDs of classical music that used to be accessible) and especially movies. I expose my age when I find that the mass culture no longer fits me. I also know that advertisers have little use for me unless it is for items and experiences for the elderly.

But just as 16 and 16 and is short of adulthood even for someone mature for the age, 56 is 56 and is clearly no longer young even if one is intellectually alert and in generally good health. Could I be a good influence upon teenagers? Almost certainly. But don't expect me to be so much a pal as a mentor. If I should ever marry a woman with children I might share A Clockwork Orange with her but keep it under lock and key because it is an R-rated movie... and Meet Me in St. Louis with her and the kids.

Extracted from an old discussion (from 2010):

Propaganda is the norm of 4T communication. Details of reality recede before a desired and sponsored image, whether it is the mind-numbing pageantry of Triumph of the Will or the sophisticated (but tightly-scripted) banter in Casablanca.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04VNB...layer_embedded

Any political entity in Crisis mode must get people to do things contrary to the usual assumptions of ease and hedonism in other times. Nobody now pretends that the war work was easy or perfectly safe. Women who a few years earlier would have been troubled by a broken fingernail and were averse to the aesthetic offense that was the factory had to replace men who had gone off to war. The American soldier, now the Real Man, had to do combat but needed all the supplies available of ammunition, weapons, transport equipment, fuel, and of course food. Rosie the Riveter was almost a Socialist-Realist stereotype that one might expect in the Soviet Union, then the epitome of regimentation and shared sacrifice, at least in its own propaganda -- that one could do heavy, dangerous work and still be very much a woman.

The real Rosie the Riveter almost never looked so good as did the poster image. She was often a middle-aged, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed woman who had worked to supplement a meager living. The poster image was never a black or Hispanic woman. The woman with a career as a factory worker looked it. Maybe it was to appeal to the margin of people who might otherwise do trivial work or stay at home and be 100% domestic. The model for the Norman Rockwell image on the Saturday Evening Post cover proves as marginal as a defense-plant worker could be.

We are now at least five years away from the conclusion of a Crisis era, and probably ten. It is unlikely that the most successful appeals of the American elite will be the glorification of elite greed, the brutality of rapacious plutocrats through their enforcers, or the promotion of the fake populism of anti-intellectualism. We are at most in the Dust Bowl phase of this Crisis era, and if anything the 2010 election shows that the American electorate still pines for the promises of cakes and circuses as a substitute for economic justice.

Americans in the Second World War didn't fight on behalf of the "economic royalists", whether big landowners in the South or heirs of Gilded-Age fortunes. Such would have been failure. That said, we are now being asked to give our all -- and get as little as possible, especially economic security and economic justice, on behalf of elites that now look like the sorts of aristocratic plunderers that many American fled from in Russia, English-ruled Ireland, feudal Mexico, southern Italy, and the most backward parts of the German and Austrian empires. Let us not forget the great internal migration of blacks from the old South, where ownership was everything and toil came with serfdom in all but name.

Work has dignity only when it is well-paid reward for genuine toil. This Crisis will not be won by the investment bankers, by executives who affect aristocratic lifestyles while aping Simon Legree, or by gangsters.

Update: We seem to have made no progress toward the resolution of the existing Crisis Era in the last six years. The 2014 midterm election was an unambiguous victory for the economic royalists of our time. America can become the sort of society in which almost all human efforts go to paying off economic elites who who better resemble feudal lords than capitalists. We will be taxed to indulge an elite that offers neither representation (the US House of Representatives now better serves political donors than the people in districts) nor service. We are now at least five, and perhaps ten, years away from the resolution of this Crisis.

I was going through the Obituaries in the old T4T Forum (as if you didn't notice), and I found one obituary that started a discussion. I will start with the obituary, essentially a Wikipedia article that may since have been updated. After five and a half years I would expect such.


Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (Polish: [ˈxɛnrɨk mʲiˈkɔwaj ɡuˈrɛtski]; English pronunciation Go-RET-ski;[1] December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010)[2][3] was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. According to Alex Ross, no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as Górecki.[4] Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw.[5][6] His Webernian-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen,[7] Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki.[8] He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2 and the hugely popular Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir,[9] to the 1981 choral hymn Miserere, the 1993 Kleines Requiem für eine Polka[10] and his requiem Good Night.[11]
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His name remained largely unknown outside Poland until the mid-to late 1980s, and his fame arrived in the 1990s.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_G%C3%B3recki#cite_note-12][12] In 1992, 15 years after it was composed, a recording of his Third Symphony, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs—recorded with soprano Dawn Upshaw and released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the Holocaust—became a worldwide commercial and critical success, selling more than a million copies and vastly exceeding the typical lifetime sales of a recording of symphonic music by a 20th-century composer. As surprised as anyone at its popularity, Górecki said, "Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music [...] somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed."[13] This popular acclaim did not generate wide interest in Górecki's other works,[14] and he pointedly resisted the temptation to repeat earlier success, or compose for commercial reward.

Apart from two brief periods studying in Paris and a short time living in Berlin, Górecki spent most of his life in southern Poland.

Górecki's music covers a variety of styles, but tends towards relative harmonic and rhythmical simplicity. He is considered to be a founder of the so-called New Polish School.[30][31] Described by Terry Teachout, he said Górecki has "more conventional array of compositional techniques includes both elaborate counterpoint and the ritualistic repetition of melodic fragments and harmonic patterns."[32]
His first works, dating from the last half of the 1950s, were in the avant-garde style of Webern and other serialists of that time. Some of these twelve-tone and serial pieces include Epitaph (1958), First Symphony (1959), and Scontri (1960) (Mirka 2004, p. 305). At that time, Górecki's reputation was not lagging behind that of his near-exact contemporary and his status was confirmed in 1960s when "Monologhi" won first prize. Even until 1962, he was firmly ensconced in the minds of the Warsaw Autumn public as a leader of the Polish Modern School, alongside Penderecki.[33]

Danuta Mirka has shown that Górecki's compositional techniques in the 1960s were often based on geometry, including axes, figures, one- and two-dimensional patterns, and especially symmetry. Thus, she proposes the term "geometrical period" to refer to Górecki's works between 1962 and 1970. Building on Krzysztof Droba's classifications, she further divides this period into two phases: (1962–63) "the phase of sonoristic means"; and (1964-70) "the phase of reductive constructicism" (Mirka 2004, p. 329).

During the middle 1960s and early 1970s, Górecki progressively moved away from his early career as radical modernist, and began to compose with a more traditional, romantic mode of expression. His change of style was viewed as an affront to the then avant-garde establishment, and though he continued to receive commissions from various Polish agencies, by the mid-1970s Górecki was no longer regarded as a composer that mattered. In the words of one critic, his "new material was no longer cerebral and sparse; rather, it was intensely expressive, persistently rhythmic and often richly colored in the darkest of orchestral hues".[34]

The first public performances of Górecki's music in Katowice in February 1958 programmed works clearly displaying the influence of Szymanowski and Bartók. The Silesian State Philharmonic in Katowice held a concert devoted entirely to the 24-year-old Górecki's music. The event led to a commission to write for the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The Epitafium ("Epitaph") he submitted marked a new phase in his development as a composer,[13] and was described as representing "the most colourful and vibrant expression of the new Polish wave".[35] The Festival announced the composer's arrival on the international scene, and he quickly became a favorite of the West's avant-garde musical elite.[34] Writing in 1991, the music critic James Wierzbicki described how that at this time "Górecki was seen as a Polish heir to the new aesthetic of post-Webernian serialism; with his taut structures, lean orchestrations and painstaking concern for the logical ordering of pitches".[34]

Górecki wrote his First Symphony in 1959, and graduated with honours from the Academy the following year.[24] At the 1960 Warsaw Autumn Festival, his Scontri, written for orchestra, caused a sensation among critics due to its use of sharp contrasts and harsh articulations.[24][36] By 1961, Górecki was at the forefront of the Polish avant-garde, having absorbed the modernism of Anton Webern, Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Boulez, and his Symphony No. 1 gained international acclaim at the Paris Biennial Festival of Youth. Górecki moved to Paris to continue his studies, and while there was influenced by contemporaries including Olivier Messiaen, Roman Palester, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.[7]

He began to lecture at the Academy of Music in Katowice in 1968, where he taught score-reading, orchestration and composition. In 1972, he was promoted to assistant professor,[24] and developed a fearsome reputation among his students for his often blunt personality. According to the Polish composer Rafał Augustyn, "When I began to study under Górecki it felt as if someone had dumped a pail of ice-cold water over my head. He could be ruthless in his opinions. The weak fell by the wayside but those who graduated under him became, without exception, respected composers".[25] Górecki admits, "For quite a few years, I was a pedagogue, a teacher in the music academy, and my students would ask me many, many things, including how to write and what to write. I always answered this way: If you can live without music for 2 or 3 days, then don't write...It might be better to spend time with a girl or with a beer...If you cannot live without music, then write.”[37] Due to his commitments as a teacher and also because of bouts of ill health, he composed only intermittently during this period.[38]

By the early 1970s, Górecki had begun to move away from his earlier radical modernism, and was working towards a more traditional, romantic mode of expression that was dominated by the human voice. His change of style affronted the avant-garde establishment, and although various Polish agencies continued to commission works from him, Górecki ceased to be viewed as an important composer. One critic later wrote that "Górecki's new material was no longer cerebral and sparse; rather, it was intensely expressive, persistently rhythmic and often richly colored in the darkest of orchestral hues".[34] Górecki progressively rejected the dissonance, serialism and sonorism that had brought him early recognition, and pared and simplified his work. He began to favor large slow gestures and the repetition of small motifs.[39]
Main article: Symphony No. 2 (Górecki)


A performance of Górecki's Beatus Vir conducted by Włodzimierz Siedlik. The piece was composed to celebrate Karol Wojtyła's appointment as Pope
The "Symphony No. 2, 'Copernican', Op. 31" (II Symfonia Kopernikowska) was written in 1972 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Written in a monumental style for solo soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra, it features text from Psalms no. 145, 6 and 135 as well as an excerpt from Copernicus' book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.[40] It was composed in two movements, and a typical performance lasts 35 minutes. The symphony was commissioned by the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York, and presented an early opportunity for Górecki to reach an audience outside of his native Poland. As was usual, he undertook extensive research on the subject, and was in particular concerned with the philosophical implications of Copernicus's discovery, not all of which he viewed as positive.[41] As the historian Norman Davies commented, "His discovery of the earth's motion round the sun caused the most fundamental revolutions possible in the prevailing concepts of the human predicament".[42]
By the mid-1980s, his work began to attract a more international audience, and in 1989 the London Sinfonietta held a weekend of concerts in which his work was played alongside that of the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke.[43] In 1990, the American Kronos Quartet commissioned and recorded his First String Quartet, Already It Is Dusk, Op. 62, an occasion that marked the beginning of a long relationship between the quartet and composer.[44]
Main article: Symphony No. 3 (Górecki)

Symphony No. 3, 2nd movement

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Sample from the 2nd movement

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/43...-parenting

Pulled this off the old forum before the shut down as someone made a thread there about it.  Normally I don't care for National Review but the article is interesting.