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Arthur C. Clarke Talks With The Onion
sootman writes "The Onion has an interview with Arthur C. Clarke in this week's issue. My favorite line: 'The asteroid [named after me] is number four thousand and something, and the International Astronomical Federation, which deals with these sorts of things and numbered it, apologized to me because number 2001 wasn't available, having been given to somebody named "A. Einstein."'" Reader ronys point out that Despite the source, the interview is not a spoof or satire."
He's one of very few to be designated a Science Fiction Grand Master, he's the author of the classic novels Childhood's End and Rendezvous With Rama, and he first created the popular axiom "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick."
Um no, that was Asimov. Clarke coined the term "Violence is the last refuse of the incompetent"
The interviewer's blog can be found here, for what it's worth.
2001: A Space Odyssey came out in 1968 if memory serves, isn't Clarke getting a bit old?
Next they'll be conducting an interview with Philip K. Dick by Ouija Board. Not that this wouldn't be any weirder than The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or Radio Free Ablemuth...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The Onion does have real interviews and a pretty good AV section.
The print edition is like a reverse newspaper, with the comic section everywhere and a small non-comic center pull-out.
'The asteroid [named after me] is number four thousand and something, and the International Astronomical Federation, which deals with these sorts of things and numbered it, apologized to me because number 2001 wasn't available, having been given to somebody named "A. Einstein."'
Asteroids are, in fact, named by the International Astronomical Union, not the International Astronomical Federation (whatever that may be). I'm surprised that Clarke made this mistake; maybe he simply misspoke himself, or the Onion reporter screwed up the transcription.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
he first created the popular axiom "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick."
Which of course leads to the corollary: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
O: Do you have any particular hopes for what they'll find in this round of exploration?
ACC: Well, I think they've already found life. There's some pictures from the laboratories which seem to me to be unmistakably vegetation--leaves and stems and things. I don't see what else it could possibly be. And where there's vegetation, you can bet there'll be something nibbling on it. I'm still hoping we'll find some Martians up there, holding up a sign that says "Yankee go home." [Laughs.]
I've watched all the press conferences and I want some I that sri lankin he's smoking.
Actually it was the SF author Stuart Hardin that coined that term. Clarke was more famously known for his book "The Time Machine" than anything else.
God damn I'm a nerd.
Seriously, who marked this as interesting?
Since when has stephen hawking been nuts? physically disabled yes, nuts no.
Or am I speaking out of my arse?
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
Too bad for us.
Hawking thinks that humanity needs to genetically engineer ourselves to pre-emptively keep machines from taking us over.
Here's the article
I think the Onion has enough bandwidth to cope with a slashdotting. I call Karma whore! Quick, someone better put up a mirror of www.yahoo.com given the previous story.
Clark is fascinating despite his age - we should treasure the elderly, there is much knowledge there to be gained, but all too often we simply shuffle them to the side like a pair of worn shoes. Enjoy his insights while you still can. He has some fascinating opinions on Martian life, for example.
Stop corporate
I mean are you showing off your math skills that someone whose most famous work was made into a movie 35 years ago is now old?
Mod Parent Down!
My other sig is extremely clever...
Yet again he refers to seeing pictures of vegitation on Mars, yet I've never seen them or even a half decent reference to them.
Is he going slightly eccentric in his old age, or are there Mars pictures being held back from the public?
The first quote deals exclusively with Mars and whatever pictures Clarke has seen that appear to be vegetation. The second quote is more general about intelligent life in the universe and how we've seen signs of vegetative life on Mars.
Where does one get the idea that he's talking about pictures of vegetation from some place other than Mars?
ACC: Well, I think they've already found life. There's some pictures from the laboratories which seem to me to be unmistakably vegetation--leaves and stems and things. I don't see what else it could possibly be.
I almost wondered: did I miss a day of NASA releases where they casually announced that 'Oh, by the way... there's stuff growing on Mars'.
I mean, I suppose it's possible that he was referring to debris that resembles decayed plant matter. I'd think anything decayed would be long-since so weather-worn and scattered that it couldn't possibly resemble plant-life at the macroscopic scale. Of course, IANABotonist or Geologist, so what the hell do I know?
But hey, he is Arthur C Clarke, so maybe he's privvy to stuff that we aren't. Then again, he's Arthur C Clark - the guy who predicted the Kuwaiti oil fires would cause a nuclear winter-like effect and essentially cancel summer in the region. Thankfully that came nowhere near being true - though it certainly casts some doubts on his pontification.
The second response though is geared solely toward intelligent life - so I don't know that he necessarily contradicted himself or anything.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
That doesn't mean he's "nuts".
Informative??: I doubt we'll /. The Onion.
So basically he's saying he's seen pictures from labs with vegetation from some place that isn't Mars
Incorrect. The discrepancy lies between the semantic difference of 'life' and 'active intelligent life', clearly separating the contexts. The first paragraph you quoted obviously refers to Mars, as he states "I'm still hoping we'll find some Martians up there".
Note I am not commenting on the validity of his assertions vis a vis lab pictures--just on your statements.
I pity the fool who doesn't name an asteroid after one of The Onion's previous interviewees, Mr T.
Actually Asimov was the one who said (through one of his charecters) "Violence is the last REFUGE of the incompetent" (emphasis mine to point out the fact that you misquoted him.
It was Salvor Hardins' motto throughout the Foundation Series (by Isaac Asimov). The Foundation series was among the best Science Fiction I have ever read (although Childhoods End still retains the top spot).
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
The Onion AV section holds plenty of weight, even after the joke articles get old.
I find their music and film criticism to be especially astute; I'm sure there are examples of bad calls but on the whole I find their criticism insightful.
And their interviews are top-notch.
The biggest problem with the AV club is the annoying ad click-through. But the content is good enough for me to look past.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Just his glasses frames.
Ummm first comment is regarding life on mars ..
.. and it's not intelligent (stems and leaves), but plantlike :)
second comment is about intelligent life.
therefor he's seen pictures of life on mars
Sanity is a majority vote.
while i was reading it...i could have sworn he was going to say that "it's a terrible waste of space" :)
you've written two autobiographies
I hope it inspires them to go buy my other books.
Hah, that's certainly an interesting thing to say.
I did kind of like that one, but I thought a much more interesting Clarke book, concerning the long future, was "The City and the Stars". Anybody else have favorites?
Energy: time to change the picture.
perhaps he had some other 'Star' topic in mind when he said 'Federation'. Hmmm...
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Was I the only one who noticed this little quote?
Incidentally, have you heard about the discovery of the largest living creature on Earth? Would you believe it's two or three miles across, and probably several thousand years old, and still growing? It's this fungus that's eating Oregon. It's a single creature. I'm not quite sure how that's determined.
Does anyone know WTF he is talking about here? Before I came back to China last year I didn't seem to remember my fellow Oregonians running away in fear from the killer fungus...
Do not anger the worm.
Nevermind, I am amazingly stupid, it was the FIRST result from google when searching for "largest living creature earth fungus oregon"
http://www.extremescience.com/biggestlivingthing.h tm
http://www.chez.com/lesovnis/htm/marsveg01.htm
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Black magic? Its behaviour is certainly often incomprehensible.
His word choice leads one to envision doom and death, and I was sufficiently motiviated to search for more info on this beastie.
http://www.harpers.org/Oregon.html
http://www.newhouse.com/archive/story1b080700.html
Google search gets you more.
on another topic: Anyone amazed at how many quotes this guy has stored up in his head?
I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
ACC: [Laughs.] Well, I was rather a cynic once. But now I've combined all my beliefs into this phrase I've been circulating: "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." It's adapted from a phrase by the British writer and scientist Richard Dawkins, who said that religion was a mind virus, an idea that infected the mind. He said that not all mind-viruses are malignant; some may even be beneficial. But many are harmful--racist theories, for instance.
What's his address? I'll mail him the damn DVDs.
[*]There's a reason that Clarke lives in Sri Lanka or whatever the fuck it's called this week. Easy access to young boys and lax law enforcement and extradition.
I did a double take on this one too, but he seems to have his facts straight.
My questions is, why hasn't this been bigger news? Did it come out and I just missed it?
I've met people involved with leaves and stems and things that seemed a bit odd, but knew an awful lot about hydroponics.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It's a fairly strong indication of it, though, isn't it?
My friend Robert Clemenzi created a program to view the Mars pictures in stereo. It downloads JPL pictures and then allows you to view them in cross-eyed stereo. He believes that some of the debris looks like spiral conch shells. Whether or not this is true, it is an enjoyable program to play with and I recommend it: http://www.cpcug.org/user/clemenzi/science/MarsIma ges_3D.html
I highly recommend his book "Greetings, Carbon Based Bipeds", which is a collection of his various writings. Very entertaining reading, especially when you consider the timeframe when some of them were written. (1934-1998) You can pick it up for next to nothing .
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
yeah, I would have expected him to say "read my other books", implying that he's more concerned with getting his ideas out there than the monetary rewards of writing.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
This may well have already been mentioned but... The Onion A.V. Club (the serious side of the operation) published a collection of interviews similar to the Arthur Clarke one. Book is called THE TENACITY OF A COCKROACH and includes conversations with other pop culture movers & shakers like Harlan Ellison, Chuck Jones, and George Romero. Jr.
The "both barrels" approach to marketing really turns me off, but I understand that's the only thing that the Hollywood establishment cares about. "Rendezvous" was one of my all-time favorite Clarke novels. I hope the movie goes into appropriately graphic detail about (queue "Pigs in Space" sound fx) : Sex In Space.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Arthur C Clarke.
25, Barnes Place,
Colombo 7,
Sri Lanka.
That should be sufficient to get the item eventually received by him; I'd guess that "Colombo 7" is actually a postal/zip code.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
"There's some pictures from the laboratories"
That referring to JPL: Jet Propulsion Laboratories...
They're the ones that send out the pics, and are sometimes referred to as "the laboratories"
So no strange secret Mars plants in a lab on 'a place that isn't Mars'
A.C.C. commented on pictures from Odyssey, IIRC, once, in the same vein, saying the strange stuff that you could see on a certain pic was 'unmistakingly plant-like'
Yeah, and the interviews are usually excellent. Even if they're interviewing someone I have little interest in (like Amy Sedaris or The RZA), I'll still read it, because I know it'll be interesting. The A.V. Club's reviews are usually pretty good too, though their "Films That Time Forgot" sometimes get thematic from week to week.
see for yourself (*WARNING* LARGE FILE! ~8Mb i think). It is interesting. Of course, it could be debris from the lander. It'd be nice to get a comment from someone at JPL. I know that one of the rover handlers (among others at JPL) was posting here last week. Any comments?
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Hah hah hah! Nice one, you really should go on stage, you crack me up!!!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Never heard anything about it before or since that one night. I've seen plenty of photos that indicate that life existed that have been debunked; this was supposedly something new. I would agree with Arthur that the pentagon is probably not holding little green men in an underground bunker, but I've always been a bit suspicious that more is going on than we are allowed to see.
If you have an objection, I think it's to Arthur C. Clarke's response. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Martin: As your president, I would demand a science-fiction library, featuring an ABC of the overlords of the genre. Asimov, Bester, Clarke!
Student: What abouy Ray Bradbury?
Martin: [dismissing] I'm aware of his work...
[orating] Thank you, and... Keep watching the skies...
Ah, but the real-life stories they can tell you can have real-life lessons. You figure them out.
When my grandfather was a boy, he and his friends used to go out and tip outhouses in fields. Well, one farmer got wind of their plan ahead of time, and moved the outhouse over a few feet.
When they went out that night to tip the outhouse, they didn't see that it had been moved.
SPLASH!
One kid fell into the hole in the ground. He had to ride on the back bumper all the way back to his house, where they sprayed him off with the hose.
--
When he was in elementary school, he and his friends would draw a circle on a table, then put flies they'd caught (and pulled the wings off of) in the center of the ring, and whoever's fly left the circle first won.
Well, his teacher saw them doing something at their table, and as soon as one boy took his hand off the ring, their teacher slammed her hand down onto the flies (she didn't know they were there) and said, "OK, I'll take this!"
--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I was particularly interested in the last couple of paragraphs, regarding a possible film adaptation of Fountains of Paradise, and the fact that Clarke considers that his best/favourite novel.
Fountains was the first novel to incorporate the modern concept of a space elevator.
Anyone heard anything else about this news item?
Personally, I'm hoping for Steven Spielberg. He did a terrific job on Minority Report. Between that, AI, and Taken, he's definitely on a sci-fi roll lately.
He didn't say anything about fish, actually. Stop putting words in the man's mouth. :-)
But seriously, that statement did strike me as an odd bit of wishful thinking overpowering his otherwise healthy sense of skepticism. Jumping to grand conclusions based on sketchy facts is the kind of thing that leads to crusades, inquisitions, and other deplorable acts he attributes solely to religion.
Nevertheless, you've gotta cut some slack for people who dare to use their imagination. So what if they're wrong much of the time? They're also right, occasionally, and in ways nobody else could have envisioned.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
You're obviously new to /.
<ducks>
"Armillaria ostoyae produces clusters of golden-brown mushrooms, but they are rarely seen in eastern Oregon because of the climate."b 080700.html
http://www.newhouse.com/archive/story1
does this mean if the climate shifts and warms up that oregon will bloom with endless fields of mushrooms?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
I love his short stories (can't remember the titles, been a long time since I've read them) especially the one about the planet in between galaxies that's actually a living computer and starts a jihad to free similar forms of life from their biological parasites. And the one that ends with "if any of you are still white, we've found a cure."
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
The fungus is called Armillaria ostoyae, but is more popularly known as the honey mushroom.
if this sucker is hallucinogenic, my ass is moving there toute suite
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
Sounds like about the kind of thing you'd say if you had a genetic disease that forced you to live in a robot chair.
Mars is the Dalmation Planet!
Table-ized A.I.
Hawking thinks that humanity needs to genetically engineer ourselves to pre-emptively keep machines from taking us over.
Well then, call me nuts, too, but I think this is actually a pretty inevitable conclusion once you start thinking of the big picture - say, developments over the next 1000 years or more. Hawkins may be disingenuous in going public with such long-range thoughts, but they are actually very well-founded.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
how long did you say you've been stalking him? ;)
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
I discovered this short story by Clarke through a previous /. posting concerning chess. I really enjoyed it so here it is again.
Btw, I remember in that posting someone saying there are more possible games of chess than atom's in the universe. How is that possible? And how do you calculate # of games, with pieces moving back and forth ad infinitum?
Well, he's a british gentleman. They usually know their Wilde quotes.
Which brings me to this: I think he's misquoting that one ("Someone who knows the price of everything knows the value of nothing"). I think that Wilde was warning not to think everything in monetary terms. It's a pity that such a great man is a jackass namedropper.
-- Jari Mustonen
Sierra released a Myst-like adventure game based on the Rama series in 1997. I think I might still have my copy in a box somewhere...it was pretty good and pleasingly mindbending, IIRC. Included an interview with Clarke and Gentry Lee to boot. Having only read _Garden of Rama_ and _Rama Revealed_ I can't say how well it adapted _Rendezvous_ or _Rama II_, but Sierra's version was certainly recognizable to me.
Bwah hah hah... your other posts are getting modded down, you pathetic ass-ram... Looks like everyone else thinks you swallow too! Bye now
Well, I'm here in Oregon and I'd like to reassure everyone that there's no giant fungus gobbling up cities left and right. It's a bit of a stretch to call it a single giant organism. Think of it as a single mutated fungus that was particularly successful and kept reproducing as a giant mat of intertwined fungal fibers. It does a poor job at creating spores and spreading with the wind, but seems to do quite well at slowly expanding under the soil.
Yeah... I would've expected him to mention something about inspiring others' interests in space exploration and the future of humanity... not "buy my books."
*shrug*
Article+pics
more pics.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
I know this interview is from the 11th, but from my reading I am beginning to doubt we will even see that there was an abundance of water on early Mars.
...</I>
... Now, on Mars, we may have detected life, but not intelligent life...</I>
Now I see these quotes:
<I>
ACC: Well, I think they've already found life. There's some pictures from the laboratories which seem to me to be unmistakably vegetation--leaves and stems and things. I don't see what else it could possibly be. And where there's vegetation, you can bet there'll be something nibbling on it.
and this:
<I>
What is he talking about? Please give me a clue, because this is astounding if true!
One of the first steps to the Bomb is getting a working atomic reactor. This does lots of things -- you can do neutron experiments to better design a bomb, you can breed plutonium to make a bomb. The first Russian reactor was much like Fermi's reactor -- a big pile of graphite with slugs of natural uranium in it. The big deal is operating this reactor for the first time -- controlling it, making sure it can multiply neutrons, and so on.
You can imagine there are a lot of things that can gets in-area geeks excited but don't do much for show for visitors -- don't know the average person can get all excited by a new Linux kernel although the kernel hackers who know what is going on inside think it is ultra cool.
So Beria is there, and Kruchatov's people get the reactor going critical for the first time, and they start pulling out control rods (by remote control -- you see only dials in the control room), and then these radiation counters start flashing a light and giving a tick, and then the counters blink and tick so more, and then the reactor reaches criticality and the blinking is a blur of light and the ticks are just a steady buzzing, and all the atomic scientists are ready to break out the champaign or the cognac.
Of course Beria sees nothing but dials and blinking lights and wonders what is going on and if the scientists are pulling his leg.
You didn't expect him to give an honest answer to the question "What attracted you to Sri Lanka?", did you?
Be happy if you make it that far.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center deals with naming asteroids, not the International Astronomical Federation. As far as I'm aware, there's no such thing as the IAF.
Actually, I believe Clarke tied with Charles Sheffield, who came out with the novel The Web Between the Worlds at the same time. Sheffield heard about Clarke's book and got Clarke to write a preface stating that the idea wasn't stolen from him. Clarke also notes that he would not recommend Sheffield's plan for attaching the elevator to the Earth, as it is too risky.
--- Brian
That's probobly because they mistook it for another giant slug ;) Or maybe they thought it was Tonya Harding...
Clarke goes into the idea behind his book about Fermat's Theorem, and while I like the idea, he should change the CIA to the NSA in the book. The CIA deals with crypto quite a bit, but the worlds largest employer of mathemeticians (or so I have heard them called) would be far more likely to scoop up someone who made a breakthrough in prime number theory: the NSA.
It just seems they would make much more sense for his book.
Did you guys see the opinion piece from the Gillette CEO? That is good reading... Funny stuff...
http://www.theonion.com/opinion.php?i=1&o=1
moderation abuse! It's Flamebait!
My other sig is extremely clever...
Well, he sure did that a lot. Is there something he knows and we don't?
Besides, I think only his older books are good. Very good, mind you.
But the later ones turned into some kind of mush. Strange, I keep reading mush books like this from authors who seem to run out of ideas. Endlessly long books, very little happening, stunningly boring (also see "Throne of the Ringworld" by Larry Niven).
You could compress such books into a pamphlet without missing anything.
"Rendezvous with Rama" was excellent. Great idea, very well written. The sequels (many years later) were, without exception, junk. Same with "2001", really.
Oh, well. Other great authors popping up left and right. You *have*, for example, heard of Neil Gaiman, right?
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Power and riches were the basis for the crusades, like all wars. Religion was a pretext. France made preemptive strikes against Arab encroachers who had already conquered Spain. It was as much about religion as W's war was about WMD.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
I went to check out this Week's Onion and I get a page full of mySQL errors.
What makes you think his Sri Lankan DVD player can watch the region coded DVDs you'll send him.
Once again technology thwarts an evil criminal!
Would be sad if this great man can't watch his own DVDs.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
So far as seems most necessary, a bit of bluntness rather than bandying about of complex theological arguments. First, what, precisely, is the function of a modern religion? The function alone is the differing aspect unique to it and not particular characteristics which can be refuted by example of other institution with similar characteristics. Second, what is the purpose of this aside discussion of the merits of religion without first establishing either consensus or range of particular views for conception of these most subjective matters? Third, what is the purpose of this discussion: analysis of a quote provided by a great influential figure or adolescent arguments with the fringe of educated language, or perhaps it is something else? Answers to any or all questions are requested. Even if this post is by the partial moderated in negative, the questions and their answers are thought necessary for this discussion to have any result other than continued arguments on averages and anomalies of institutions.
Favorite quote from the interview: "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." Awesome, none of this idiotic, politically correct, don't-say-what-you're-thinking crap for Clarke. I was all set to write the Brits off as total losers - we recently had articles with them trying to get people to stop using the terms boyfriend/girlfriend and then tring to ban a video game for having animal violence (what's next, ban Looney Tunes?) - pretty much as far from this free thinking fellow as possible. Then again the interview also said he doesn't have any interest in returning to England...maybe we should all just write US, UK, and company off as old fogeys that are only getting worse and more restrictive rather than the innovative places they used to be.
Australia's consumer watchdog considers region coding to be a restriction of trade (wonder if that'll change, with the new US free trade agreement). I suspect a lot of countries outside the US feel similarly. Anyone know if Sri Lanka does?
Failing that, there's always a PC and DVD Region Free.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The regions are generally the order in which films are released. It takes a while for a movie to officially get to region 5. They want to stop DVDs from appearing before a theatrical release- this has had a 100% failure rate so far.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us
"The Question." A short story about the future of mankind with some theological implicaitons.
Nevermind. The story I was thinking about was called "The Last Question" and was written by Asimov. Should have googled first.
The Onion AV site where the article is posted hosts obnoxious audio advertisements. ("Hi there, my name is Tina. In the next 30 seconds I will show you how to speed up your computer dramatically...")
Not pleasant at all at 5:30 AM.
No, I don't want to explore the Recycle Bin.
who gets hit by that asteroid -- and the few billion other people on the same planet as him.
Say that in some ass-backwards muslim country or israel and tell them that their whole creation myth is a virus.
Seriously. It should.
Looks like I have to go by the bookstore this week :-)
I did read localroger's "Prime Intellect" - great novella, and I think a perfect exposition of some problems with Singularity hype. I wonder if it's eligible for any of those SF prizes?
Energy: time to change the picture.