On ''what there is''

What there is extends from Grado to Grace, Bluepoint to Goldfinger.+1

Such a long and winding road to the simple answer. Sometimes it's more the journey than the destination.

Kant wrote next to ''pure reason'' also an book about ''practical
reason''. I ever started an thread about ''irreparable cartridges''
caused by my loss of Sony XL 88D (D= diamond cantilever+
stylus from the same piece of diamond!). The reason was
''closed plastic body'' filled with dampening material.  Such
body can't be opened for repair work. I noticed the similarity with
closed (very expensive) ZYX kinds and wanted to inform my
''forum friends''. To my big surprise there was no interest of
any kind. One can argue that ''practical reason'' is similar
to ''rational kind'' . But look at this thread . Unbelievable 
interest and reactions to such ''esoteric thread''. 

Seneca (4 BC) was the first who wrote ''rationale enim animal est
homo'' ( Man is a rational animal ). Since then rationality become
a kind of virtue which all people wanted to ascribe to themselves
with Popper who added to the virtue by claiming his own ''rational criticism''  as the highest virtue. But if we look at the human
history we can state that Seneca was the  first who formulated
''wishful thinking''. There is no such thing as ''rationality'' to find
in human history. On the contrary ; hate, revenge, robbery and
insatiable power hunger can much better explain human history.
Think of Egyptian pharaoh, Chinese emperors, Alexander,
Napoleon , Hitler, Stalin, Mao , etc. Our history teachers even
learned us to admire those creatures.  Way then should our
forum be characterised as ''rational''?   

Addendum, I forget to mention communist monarchy in North
Korea. 

@mahgister, I must not be explaining myself very well. There is only one reality. That reality can be interpreted differently but there is only one reality. As an example, the color red is defined as light energy with a wavelength at 700 nm. That is the reality. If we are all presented with light at 700 nm we will all call the color red because we have been taught to do so even though we are all having a personal experience in viewing the color.  Same thing happens with sound in a more complicated way.
If a system comes close to emulating a live performance just like the colors we will all interpret it the same way even though we are having a personal experience. I have seen this happen on a number of occasions. I use to work with a very high end Audio store and we were setting up these systems on a regular basis. As soon as deviations from the reality start occurring personal biases start infiltrating the evaluation. Which defects can you tolerate, which defects bother you the most? The vast variety of opinions you see here are based on deviations from reality. The "reality" has to be based on acoustic or lightly amplified instruments. Large concerts represent a maze of variables you can't account for. There are great live recordings many of them superior to the actual concert experience. But, you can't hear the light show.

@nandric,  sad isn't it? I prefer to call it primitive human behavior. Will we ever learn to overcome our instincts? All those characters are the same it is only that their weapons got better as time marched on. Thank god the vast majority of us are not suicidal but the Japanese Kamikaze should serve as an important lesson. God will not help us if certain people get a bomb. In the end it will be religion that is the ruin of us.