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The Best of Its Kind
There are very few things that are universally recognized as the best of their kind. But some things were simply better than everything that came before them, and remain better than anything since. In honor of Rush Limbaugh, who was the best talk radio broadcaster in history, I thought it would be fun to hear some of your thoughts on what is the best of its kind. Any category will do – best beer, best album, best handgun – so let’s hear it.
I will say right up front that the best toy for children of all ages are Legos. They’re educational, versatile, can be used to create more than their advertised design, loved cross-culturally, and cross-gender, and are a better investment than many stocks.
What’s your best?
Published in General
Admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve listened to it. As a teenager I used to fall asleep to it every night, and when I first played it for my wife she was unimpressed (she’s a country girl, and was a choir singer). So perhaps for me its greatness is more nostalgic. I play Queen, and Rush, way more often than Pink Floyd these days, and even when I do play Floyd it’s usually the live version of ‘Comfortably Numb’ or the A side of The Wall.
In the popular music world nothing can touch Aja by Steely Dan, though obviously opinions vary.
Best sitcom: Fawlty Towers.
Why is that? They don’t even get around to figuring out what virtue is in Meno.
Damn. We were supposed to see Donald Fagen and Steve Winwood at Wolf Trap last July, but you-know-what happened. Tickets still good for this July (fingers crossed).
Steely Dan were unsurpassed at crafting beautiful melodies coupled with near-perfect production and then pairing those with some of the sleaziest lyrics in pop music.
But on the other hand Socrates does seem convinced that dialogue has a decent chance of discovering the truth. So I guess I should accept the premise of the question.
Did Plato think so too? I think he probably thought at least that dialogue can get us closer.
The lullaby of tawdry?
May explain my pathos.
Well, of course you’d think so.
Best Star Trek soprano:
Way too much fine arts, literature and music culture for this accounting major and lawyer. But thought I should contribute something in the literature area.
Best WWII novel: Catch 22
Best Viet Nam war novel: Matterhorn.
The belief that one can discover some meaning inherent in a word is fallacious. Words are symbols invented and arbitrarily assigned to things, for that purpose only.
I’m pretty sure Plato knows that. They’re talking about virtue the thing, not the name.
Best paternal character in English literature: Mister Bennett.
What are you playing? I have a Les Paul Goth 4-string and being small in stature I have to be careful with picking my instruments.
Obviously.
“Don’t mention the war.”
If I understand you correctly, you mean,
If that is what you meant, then what question are they trying to answer through dialogue?
They have stated the answer to that. Their question is
In other words, their question is
It is an example of a meaningless dialog, because it is circular–self-referential. It is like the question in the Barber’s Paradox (which is not a paradox at all, just a meaningless question.
Yes.
“Can it be taught?” is the main question.
Socrates thinks they should figure out “What is it?” first.
But Meno doesn’t cooperate.
(As I recall.)
I don’t understand why you think the “What is it?” question is circular. They’re talking about a thing, a real thing. You and I agree to use the word “Ricochet” to refer to this website, and am I supposed to think the question “What is Ricochet?” is meaningless?
Yeah. It’s always interesting to consider the band:
Keyboard player: I’ll be over here playing my keyboards
Drummer: I’ll be drumming along
Guitarist: I will be creating epic slabs of sound with a distinctive lead sound both loose and piercing, languid and ominous
Songwriter: I HATE EVERYONE AND I’M SMARTER THAN EVERYONE AND MY DAD DIED IN THE WAR AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON THE JEWS
My wife was surprised that I never thought much, or cared much about the lyrics, it was always about the music for me. Otherwise, ‘Mother’ ‘Hotel California’, ‘Badge’, and ‘Fat Bottom Girls’ wouldn’t have been as enjoyable. Just crank up the volume and don’t overthink it.
In a situation like that, maybe just buy it used so the otherwise-awful musician(s) don’t get paid more for their awfulness.
I got quite a lot of my digital collection during that glorious year 2000, via Napster, until Metallica went and ruined it all.
Napster…egads. I had forgotten Napster.
It’s still possible to get stuff like that now for free, but the quality is probably much better.
I experimented with Morpheus when Napster went down but the user interface didn’t even compare. Plus, once the litigation was settled there was that whole ethical dilemma revolving around digital piracy. Later on I found sites like MP3Panda where you could buy lower quality files for super cheap prices ($0.05/song) but I worried that I was possibly funding the Russian mafia or something. The legality is shady sometimes when dealing with overseas websites and in many ways we’re still in the wild west of digital content distribution, with the rules changing annually and the software always a few steps ahead.
The Napster was in The Italian Job