Howard might not like what people do to each other, but you can bet on one thing. Wherever there's an idiot with money, someone is taking that money. And that's a beautiful thing.

I beg to differ in opinion.

This is how all book reviews should be written:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/b...kner.html?_r=0

That was great. Thanks for linking. Nice to see the art of the wordsmith survives in little pockets of notarial cadastre.

Well, hasn't this been fun so far! If I'd known that a simple question regarding what I can only take to be, having done my best to ferret it out, an unsupported bald assertion by someone of Dennet's credentials and reputation would be a smash hit I'd have started a thread!

As to your question: I haven't said that 'mechanistic' has lead to horror. Rather it is that SOMETHING has led to horror and if it's mechanistic then you are welcome to my share of the experience. I'd rather have avoided the entire thing.

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Maybe I'll take that perv's (guess which one) advice and go to a topless bar after all of these years. And have a beer. But there's a problem: I stopped going bec the ones around here charge $20 for the 'special chair' lap dance and I am at risk of spending too much.

A topless bar is the last thing you need

You think that figure is experiencing anxiety? I think it's a lot more than that and, I'd bet, so does the last person to buy one of the four versions for $120 million.

I occasionally wonder about whether I am the worst person ever

It is also beautiful. I'd have bought an original if it weren't outside of my purchasing ability.

I can't help it, tbh. I'm always thinking about something, can't look at a mechanical device or sometimes a process w/o trying to analyze it's workings. The only thing that stops it is a book, almost any book about anything, or a good movie.

And I do fun things like play poker and laugh hysterically on the inside at the various behaviors adult people, often enough in one of the professions, are willing to put on public display as if it were therapy.

Although, in it's way, it's kind of like group, I suppose.

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Taking mom to Morton's for Mother's Day tomorrow. That's always fun until they bring the bill and we don't even have drinks!

Not according to me you're not.

I'd call it powerful although 'beautiful' is fine. My second favorite, nearly as powerful to me. I've had my face inches away from it at least 5 times.

Salute!

I like the way perspective is used in this one:

The first Alien is good. The second is overrated. I'm not sure I want to rewatch the third and fourth now.

By Otto Dix:

Zeno? Matt? Bobo?

I apologize in advance for not following the thread closely enough, but can you describe the source of the horror in a little more detail? Until the last year or two, I have felt very little anxiety. But my anxiety levels have increased as of late.

For those that like to open their mouths a lot without saying anything...

I'm not certain that I take your meaning but I will offer this:

I think that the 'bad' far outweighs the 'good.' To give an example I'll use a torture/execution method used by the Spanish Inquisition. A demon of some type would be walked backwards (so that they couldn't cast a spell, har, har, har) into an Auto De FE, placed in a canvas sack connected to a crane which would then be dipped into and out of a bonfire. It could take up to two hours to kill the victim.

The question: How many pleasurable experiences does it take to 'cancel out' that horror? How many enjoyable movies, family gatherings, love, anything that you care to name? My answer is no amount. Yet that sort of horror gets repeated throughout history even in this day. And if someone wants to say 'Ying/Yang' or some such I mock them.

So, if it's all causality I say I'd rather not participate. Why would I?

The pain an Inquisition victim or a Syrian gas attack victim has suffered is, for whatever reason, an abstraction to me. I certainly understand that suffering as an intellectual matter, but that suffering is far away in place and/or in time to my perception, and I thus weight it less. The difference between a good burger and a so-so burger means more to me than the suffering of an apostate a thousand years ago. Callous? Perhaps, but nothing can be done about that now. Suffering in the here and now is perhaps different, but no man can alleviate all suffering, so there seems little point in worrying about it much. People live; they experience pain and pleasure in some combination, and then they die, their experiences eventually to be forgotten. I take my joy where I can find it every day, and hope that tomorrow --as I did yesterday -- that joy will not be overwhelmed by sadness and suffering. What other choice is there?

Go and take solace where you can find it, Howard, wherever that might be.

'Solace.' Just another word.

I suspect without knowing that you will not be considering your existential angst quite so much if you go and find your ATF at your local AMP, Howard -- at least based on that thread from a number of years ago.

ehhhhh..........I've gotten too old for that. And, tbh, I'm not really very bothered by all of this. I just want to face the facts and I can accept anything provable. The problem I have is w/ people who state as fact what might not be such at all.

I suspect that some fair number of my strong beliefs are not actually proven or perhaps even provable. It seems somehow pointless to try to assess and reconcile all of those.