Slashdot Mirror
A Belated Halloween History - Monsters Edition
uriah923 writes "Nick Dilmore has published the second edition in his Snarky Halloween History series, featured on Slashdot last year. This time around, he concentrates on movie monsters: vampires, werewolves and zombies. From the article: '[D]id you know the movie monsters we've all to come to know and love (in a platonic way, of course) have colorful histories stretching back to the earliest civilizations? What, you didn't think some Hollywood hack actually had enough imagination to invent vampires, werewolves, and zombies, did you? Silly, silly non-monster-trivia knowing person.'"
how exactly is this news? or stuff that matters?
I always though slashdot invented trolls!
thats why they have a preview button!
From TFA:
So what have we learned? Vampires shouldn't have been all that scary, what with their fascination with counting games. Werewolves were probably just really, really twisted freaks who thought blaming magic belts and salve would somehow not earn them a spot on the burning stake. And zombies may actually be real. Throw in the fear of witches, fairies, and evil spirits and it's a wonder our ancestors ever got any sleep at night. Must be how alcohol was invented.
Our ancestors probably didn't have the governments terrorizing them!
Someone who did some basic research, rather than just reproducing what Wikipedia says, might could even have written an intersting article about the subject.
This article deserves to be eaten by the Snark - one monster that is not based on folklore!
2nd post ! ! ! ! ! this is such an exciting post everyone is rushing to post to it !!!! truely news for nerds stuff that matters ! ! !" ! !
Where we post stories that have nothing to do with either Science or Technology.
"Nick Dilmore has published the second edition in his Snarky Halloween History series, featured on Slashdot last year. This time around, he concentrates on movie monsters: vampires, werewolves and zombies. From the article: '[D]id you know the movie monsters we've all to come to know and love (in a platonic way, of course) have colorful histories stretching back to the earliest civilizations? What, you didn't think some Hollywood hack actually had enough imagination to invent vampires, werewolves, and zombies, did you? Silly, silly non-monster-trivia knowing person.'"
If belated doesn't disappoint you, Retrocrush updated their top 100 scary movie scenes -- http://retrocrush.buzznet.com/scary/
I'd say more, but I am aiming at a homage to the TFA here.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires by Michael Bell, Rhode Island's state folklorist.
He makes a pretty good argument for the origin of the vampire legend being in the spread of tuberculosis in isolated farming households. The first victims die, then one by one other family members begin to waste away, often resulting in the extinction of the entire family. However, don't let this scientific explanation turn you off, the stories are creepy enough, only it's the living, not the dead, whose are the gruesome ones.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Do the editors think we are morons? Or was this article just posted so anyone with an IQ > 60 could rip this loser a new one?
I think the fact that I'm about comment #13 on a seven-hour topic says it all...
The Devil's Night.
Read it, if you dare... try not to drink anything, you might spit it out at your monitor.
The thing I find amazing is quite the contrary: the incredible number of people who seem to think that vampires are in some sense 'real.' Now, I don't mean that they seriously think that the most likely thing to have happen to them in a back alley after midnight is that they get their throats bitten, but in the sense that they will have arguments about whether vampires 'really' have reflections or are 'really' stopped by running water—as if there were at least a cultural tradition to refer to and discuss. While in fact, as far as I know (and confirmed by TFA, FWIW), the entities they are discussing were lately invented by Bram Stoker and embellished by Hollywood and, more recently, White Wolf.
That's right, the whole thing was made up in 1897, and (according to Wikipedia, anyway) is the same age as institutional fingerprinting and the Boston subway.
<tongue-firmly-in-cheek>If I were American, I might think of Boston as 'one of our earliest civilisations'—but the London underground was there first.</tongue-firmly-in-cheek>
Speak for your self...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran