Politics According To Krauthammer

Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 8 months ago to Politics
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I just finished Charles Krauthammer's last book, "Things That Matter." It is so brillian that I literally found over 100 topics to discuss in this forum. But I won't. At the very start of the book he makes the point that no matter how much effort he puts into writing about science,medicine, art, poetry,architecture, chess, space, sports, numbers, in the end they must "bow to the sovereignty of politics."In trying to move the spectre of politics off the table he got into the Voyager probes and whose voice narrated but Kurt Waldheim, a former NAZI. It prompted me to ask the Gulch one simple but extremely profound question: What one thing would you send on Voyager 1 and/or 2? Krauthammer finally winds up saying what biologist and philosopher Lewis Thomas proposed as evidence of human achievement ;the Complete works of Bach.(Personally, I would have chosen Beethoven). So, am asking this forum, if you were allowed to send only one item on Voyager 1 or 2, what would it be? Remember you are representing all of earth from fauna to flora, from philosophy to nonsense, from math to quantum. Just one thing. Music? Science? words? go for it.


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  • Posted by 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It need not assume anything. It is a very expensive gamble. The odds are against, but what the hell, it is a great trick if it succeeds. Nothing except a hunk of electronics if we don't.
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  • Posted by 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Why not? Spin the wheel, you never know. Even if it's just gibberish at least we'll know that there is someone there First things first.
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  • Posted by 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So what? It only costs a few hundred million. Like the gambler said, You can't win if you don't play.
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  • Posted by mminnick 6 years, 8 months ago
    I always like Dr. Krauthammer but his book Thinks that Matter was so spot on and so well conceived and executed I thought then and still think now it is one of the most compelling texts I have ever read.
    His mind and writing talent are being missed not and will be missed by all who knew him either directly or indirectly through his wor.
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  • Posted by 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It could be an oxygen or methane breathing critter. Who knows what resides in a few hundred thousand planets that support life, but a great choice. Ricard Strauss' "Death and Transfiguration" and/or "Thus Spake Tzarathustra"also by Ricard Strauss, (not the waltz king.)
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 6 years, 8 months ago
    I agree, Beethoven would be the better choice...it's musical math for the soul.

    I've thought of many things, books, movies, even a DVD of an orchestra playing Beethoven. But, perhaps a painting by Dan O'brien. A painting that shows the best of our architecture, our transportation, our pets, our dreams and our humanity.
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  • Posted by mshupe 6 years, 8 months ago
    Yes, the premise of the question assumes a capacity to learn from what we choose.
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  • Posted by exceller 6 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Agree.

    We should not think whoever finds the Voyager is endowed by the same qualities/traits as we humans. That species, whatever it'll be is unlikely to be human and as such will honor totally different standards as we do in technology, arts, science, etc.

    We should not anthropomorphize space.
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  • Posted by VetteGuy 6 years, 8 months ago
    Nothing. My opinion is that whoever finds Voyager (if anyone) will find out far more about us from the spacecraft itself than from the indecipherable (to them) recordings and pictographs attached to it.
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  • Posted by mshupe 6 years, 8 months ago
    Beethoven's Ode to Joy. As an element of the Ninth Symphony, which took 20 years to complete, it is the crescendo for a combination of a brilliant mind, the low time preference needed to fully express that brilliance, the complexity of the human mind without the need for the complexity of language. Of course it needs air to transmit it audibly, but could be appreciated by an advanced mind visually as the notes would be a mathematical formula.
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