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Who Would You Choose?

Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 9 months ago to Ask the Gulch
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If it were possible to put together a discussion group of great people, past and present, who would you choose? We know who the #1 choice would be for most of us. Who else, and why? Limit it to your top ten.

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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I saw a lot of American Bandstand.
    I like all kinds of music, but the Big Band sound is pretty much "daddy music" to me.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Even as a kid I enjoyed Louis Armstrong on the Ed Sullivan Show.
    He sounded real good in a James Bond movie too.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No, I lift that gourmet stuff off the internet.
    I prefer to implant what I lift into a work of fiction and to keep that at a minimum.
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  • Posted by $ Suzanne43 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    As a kid, I listened to American Bandstand, but I also listened to the Big Bands, and I still do,
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  • Posted by mia767ca 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I was an Air Force pilot from 1970 to 1979...then a pilot for American airlines till retirement in 2008
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Limiting to ten is what makes the discussion interesting in that you'll always find persons that deserve to be on the list but didn't make it, resulting in revised lists.
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  • Posted by $ Suzanne43 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I would expect that truffles grow on the estate, too. And the heck with a sequel....put out a cookbook first!
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Between Bix and Louis Armstrong, they changed the role of the trumpet in jazz. Bix proved he could do riffs as fast as a clarinet while Louis played high notes that weren't supposed to be able to be played. If you see a movie in which Armstrong is featured look closely at his lips and note the callous impressed right in the center of the upper and lower lip. Think of how many hours of playing it took to create such a result. However, they were mostly New Orleans style jazz as opposed to the big ban era of the 30s and 40s.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I recall as a little kid listening to my Dad's big band music on the car radio before rock 'n roll came along.
    Then that kind of music faded away except in old movies and the Lawrence Welk Show.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Oh, Babette can cook big time!
    Babette's retired French general father has a semi-retired former Parisian gourmet chef for a cook at an inherited chateau in Belgium near Neer.
    (I have a lot of fun with something being "near Neer," an actual town).
    The chef's wife in the first chapter speaks highly of Babette as "a little rich girl who did not have to" ~ "become a wonderful help. A perfect student for you."
    Shown one time two weeks previously, Babette can duplicate putting together a complicated salad garnished with goat cheese she made herself due to their being goats on an estate that breeds racing horses and grows its own horse feed and other crops. Babette has seven brothers with five there presently helping out.
    During this scene Babette has just baked a goat cheese crepe with spinach and prosciutto (ham from the thigh of a wild boar shot on the property) garnished with a red brandy cream sauce.
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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Michael Moorcock's Universal Champion series is one of the greatest fantasy concepts I've ever read, bar none.

    I imagine a spirit who manifests itself in the guise of a race/planets supreme hero to thwart an civilization ending apocalypse wouldn't exactly be on an objectists bookshelf.Great stuff, would love to chat with him.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I'd add to that list, Aristotle, Ben Franklin, John Locke, Da Vinci, Mozart, Henry Ford, Julian Jaynes...and of course...Albert Einstein.
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  • Posted by $ Suzanne43 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Even though I didn't live during the 20s, I really like Bix's music. My mom played the piano in a combo during the thirties and early forties before marriage and and my sister and I came along. This was the type of music that was heard in our home.
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  • Posted by $ Suzanne43 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    But she also needs to be able to cook. With a name like that she should win the lottery and cook a great feast.
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  • Posted by scottburch 8 years, 9 months ago
    I am a fan of real science, learning more all the time.

    Carl Popper - for writing down the philosophy of falsification and trying to keep science from becoming the garbage it is.
    Einstein - for practicing falsification and giving Carl Popper an example.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My Babette is quite a character. One minute she'll be fervently praying and the next she will be wiggling her butt on her horse to taunt her pursuers.
    Her photographic or endemic memory has given her some crazy as a fox mental issues.
    Pick a subject and she feels compelled to rattle on about it forever.
    She can pick up a foreign language in a snap.
    Babette does not need to read a book. She scans it and never forgets anything she sees.
    Her ailment is her super power.
    She could make a great spy if I ever write sequels.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So tell the story....I only know him as what Tom Cruise could have been if he had been seriously interested in acting.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Never jump to conclusions. Michael Moorcock about gave me a heart attack until I realized yu were referring to someone different than I had imagined. Didn't recognize the name so went to Google. A glance down the page came upon a poem about Ged's boat Lookfar and that led to a new world of undiscovered fiction but the key was the name Lookfar. My old boats name under many different owners A 26' sloop twin keel Westerly Centaur that has two claims to fame. Never had an inboard engine and circumnavigated twice maybe three times by now. It was that boat that carried me on many adventures under a Norske translated name. and rekindled my interest in philosophy. For no sailing with sails fan can manage a passage without that science....So a sideways plus and thank you for your suggestion. here's a 4
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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Good ideas. I didn't really think of them because I always thought of them less as original philosophers and more as people who used their personal cults of personality (like Hitler and Stalin) to push a particular philosophy. I do agree that Mussolini was more of a thinker than Hitler and shudder to think of the Third Reich and WWII if it their places had been reversed...
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I thought you were an Air Force pilot. I want to add Misa767ca to my list of nominees. Carlos Marighella who invented the Cycle of Repression currently in use by Obeyme against the population of the USA, and unlike that clown Guevera deserves some recognition even if it's honoring a worthy opponent.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I had to look Bix up. Found out all I needed to do was type Bix to find all that rest of his name I copied down.
    He's okay but I bet I would have liked him a lot better if I lived back into 20s.
    Listening to Bix reminded me how I Youtube looked up and surfed dancers of the Charleston after I Netflix watched The Great Gatsby a year or so ago.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You might consider both Lenin and Mussolini.. the latter especially. The father of new age fascism in the 30's he invented most of the term s in use today, invented the triumverate of socialist leadership still in use today and terms like statist and corporatist. Got Lenin to admit that one could never teach Marxist economics but only preach it and was along with Lenin huge ini pushing the idea the center is always the center of the left. His most famous namesake Benita Pelosillyni followed in his inventive footsteps with not quite the same accuracy nor success. Based on 7 & 8 possibly 9 his most famous progeny are 10, Lakoff, G. and Soros. G. guy looked liek a puchero clown for ATT/Cingular/United but he was a serious thinker and used a sort of reverse objectivism. How can we get people to do as they are told or remove them from the equation. Thus the Carcano rifle good only short execution range distances was born. This value added method was later adopted by his progency Benita who is iplanning on adding it to the tax code except she can't figure out what the word 'add' means. Math is SOOOOOOOoooooooo hard.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Warning (if I'm successful)! If it was done for books, it would be rated R for violence and salty language. I'm certain European soldiers of 1914 talked very much like the U.S. Marines I was drafted to be with 1969-71.
    In one scene, Babette witnesses the massacre at Dinant from a cliff that overlooks that riverside town. Women and children were also lined up and murdered separate from the men who were all shot and then bayoneted. The historical account itself is shocking. I pull few punches.
    I do try to balance the horror of war and war crimes with humor to give the reader a break.
    I keep in mind what I read about Shakespeare. Provide something for everyone.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Another interesting era of history. Stock Market Crash, Great Depression, unemployment figures for the New Deal and WWII. Can you think about how far apart the dates were in terms of years?
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