Post-modern gathering? No, just a modern gathering. I think that the urge to reduce things to simple monikers isn't always productive. Think of Burning Man as one or more of the following: - drugs and fucking - commercial bullshit - rich yippies trying to get back to their roots - poor stoners telling rich yippies that their roots were in Harvard, so fuck off back there, please - an attempt to cohere around a new symbol of spirituality that doesn't necessarily adopt the cultural baggage that a traditional religion carries - a search for meaning and identity in an age when the supposed ghost in the machine has been exorcised - a place where cool things happen - a striving to bring into existence an American version of the pagan mythos that is the predominantly European western esoteric tradition - a banal re-imagining of The Wicker Man - a place where, y'know, you can watch, like, cool stuff - all and none of the above
an octopus can experience an event and not only remember it, but learn from it
Off topic, yes, but I wonder how they know this? What cognitive research has been carried out on octopi? Octopus-Ink blot tests, I'd imagine;)
Also, how do they know that goldfish only have a three-second memory span? Do they observe goldfish watching MTV all the time?!
but no reall thrill
on
Robocoaster
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The point of a rollercoaster is to provide visual cues to pump the adrenalin - massively steep inclines to begin, followed by a rush as the coaster drops 100ft. The wind in the hair.
This looks more like a barf-o-ride. No sense of real vertigo.
Umm, Andrew O'Hehir is talking out of his arse. Bad reviewers may not be able to discuss the work they saw without revealing intriguing plot-lines, but a good reviewer will be able to pull out the good and the bad without resorting to spoiling it for everyone.
Umm, have you tried the Text Select Tool on the toolbar (Reader 5.0, don't know about earlier versions). Once in Text Select Mode, you can cut-n-paste to your heart's content.
What? Are you saying that because some folk used Oracle software, and went bust when the dot.com bubble burst, they ought to be given free money from Larry?
According to Edgar Cayce, it was supposed to crumble away around the year 2000 and humankind's lost knowledge would be revealed...
Interesting that the Egyptians, planning this all those years before the birth of Jesus, would have chosen a date only significant in the Xtian calendar.
And kudos to the Egyptians for having the technology all those millennia ago to make walls crumble at a precise point 4,000 years in the future.
I don't really see magic realism as being a 'sub-genre' of science fiction or fantasy. I'd rather see it as a development of the 60s and 70s (through the works of, for example, Calvino, Angela Carter, Marquez, and later, Rushdie) experiments in novel writing. It developed out of a need to push the boundaries of the traditional realist novel, whilst at the same time providing social commentary - many of the books' social backdrop is in developing world countries, or concerns characters that are underprivileged.
I agree that there are shared tropes between magic realism and science fiction. However, there are big differences as well. A magic realist novel will be pretty much grounded in this world (hence realist), but have some slight quirks of fantasy or otherworldliness (hence magic). With fantasy and science fiction, the world being presented is often an extrapolation of the real world, or a parallel one with significant differences.
I've always thought that the fundamental conceit in American Gods, as you state above, was one that was appropriated from Douglas Adams in The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. I don't have the exact quote to hand, but it was something like 'The Gods still continued to exist long after the people stopped believing in them'.
I think that Gaiman took this good idea, half-developed it in Good Omens, and then fully fleshed it in the current Hugo winner.
Does American Gods deserve to be a Hugo winner? Did Harry Potter? They deserved it as much as Cryponomicon deserved to be nominated in 2000.
Yes - special effects can look realistic, if they are used to re-create already-existing objects or events. Case in point - using sfx to create background scenery - say, for example, a lovely mountain range. Special effects will improve, making the mountain range look more realistic. Or authentic, if you like.
All good reasons for the phased marketing approach. I'd like to add to that that one of the key marketing strategies in films is the availability of actors, directors and other staff to go to premieres, do interviews, appear on daytime tv etc. This becomes easier when you're limited to one geographic region.
About the prints re-use that you mention. Censors in different countries can mandate different cuts of the film based on regional censorship / classification laws. How, then, would staggered releases across markets be benefited through print re-use?
Actually, I did some work for BBC Online, back in the day, and this picture is basically a stock-image that they have. It is sourced from NASA's Image Exchange and since NASA images are royalty-free, this particular pic has been around the block a few times.
I guess the fact that there are, unsurprisingly, no photographs of such events occurring means that journos with a deadline and a desperate need to source an image resort to this old cliche. It's the equivalent of slapping a cheesy space-shuttle launch onto any story about space technology. Easy and cheap and more often than not irrelevant to the story in hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Post-modern gathering? No, just a modern gathering. I think that the urge to reduce things to simple monikers isn't always productive. Think of Burning Man as one or more of the following:
- drugs and fucking
- commercial bullshit
- rich yippies trying to get back to their roots
- poor stoners telling rich yippies that their roots were in Harvard, so fuck off back there, please
- an attempt to cohere around a new symbol of spirituality that doesn't necessarily adopt the cultural baggage that a traditional religion carries
- a search for meaning and identity in an age when the supposed ghost in the machine has been exorcised
- a place where cool things happen
- a striving to bring into existence an American version of the pagan mythos that is the predominantly European western esoteric tradition
- a banal re-imagining of The Wicker Man
- a place where, y'know, you can watch, like, cool stuff
- all and none of the above
punch 'em in the face!!
(Can't get link to work...)
an octopus can experience an event and not only remember it, but learn from it
;)
Off topic, yes, but I wonder how they know this? What cognitive research has been carried out on octopi? Octopus-Ink blot tests, I'd imagine
Also, how do they know that goldfish only have a three-second memory span? Do they observe goldfish watching MTV all the time?!
The point of a rollercoaster is to provide visual cues to pump the adrenalin - massively steep inclines to begin, followed by a rush as the coaster drops 100ft. The wind in the hair.
This looks more like a barf-o-ride. No sense of real vertigo.
Umm, Andrew O'Hehir is talking out of his arse. Bad reviewers may not be able to discuss the work they saw without revealing intriguing plot-lines, but a good reviewer will be able to pull out the good and the bad without resorting to spoiling it for everyone.
Weak pun? Entirely deliberate etymological association, methinks.
I do believe that the very reason astroturfing is called as it is is because of its allusion to grass. Astroturf has fake grass roots. You see?
Two monkeys, ten minutes.
(Thanks to Scott Adams)
I believe it can run MaconLinux which in it's turn can run Mac OS X.
;)
Shit. I misread that as "I believe it can run MalcolmX"
Umm, have you tried the Text Select Tool on the toolbar (Reader 5.0, don't know about earlier versions). Once in Text Select Mode, you can cut-n-paste to your heart's content.
A few times the examples were WebLogic centric when they could have been written them in a cross platform manner
The name of the book is BEA WebLogic Server Bible, and the reviewer is complaining that it's too specific to BEA? Eh?
Steven Johnson's book, Emergence, also details the use of StarLogo as a tool to model self-organising systems.
As an added bonus, the book also has a decent ten-page discussion on Slashdot as an emergent self-organising system.
What? Are you saying that because some folk used Oracle software, and went bust when the dot.com bubble burst, they ought to be given free money from Larry?
Umm, why, exactly?
Who the hell buys those things anyway??
I think the question really is: who the hell fakes these things?
Did you mean this post?
;)
If so, I apologise
According to Edgar Cayce, it was supposed to crumble away around the year 2000 and humankind's lost knowledge would be revealed...
Interesting that the Egyptians, planning this all those years before the birth of Jesus, would have chosen a date only significant in the Xtian calendar.
And kudos to the Egyptians for having the technology all those millennia ago to make walls crumble at a precise point 4,000 years in the future.
Alternatively, it could just be bullshit.
160MB + 160GB != 320 GB
I wonder whether this obscurity through polarisation will assist in defending onself against Van Eck Phreaking?
I don't really see magic realism as being a 'sub-genre' of science fiction or fantasy. I'd rather see it as a development of the 60s and 70s (through the works of, for example, Calvino, Angela Carter, Marquez, and later, Rushdie) experiments in novel writing. It developed out of a need to push the boundaries of the traditional realist novel, whilst at the same time providing social commentary - many of the books' social backdrop is in developing world countries, or concerns characters that are underprivileged.
I agree that there are shared tropes between magic realism and science fiction. However, there are big differences as well. A magic realist novel will be pretty much grounded in this world (hence realist), but have some slight quirks of fantasy or otherworldliness (hence magic). With fantasy and science fiction, the world being presented is often an extrapolation of the real world, or a parallel one with significant differences.
The old gods' interaction with the current world
I've always thought that the fundamental conceit in American Gods, as you state above, was one that was appropriated from Douglas Adams in The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. I don't have the exact quote to hand, but it was something like 'The Gods still continued to exist long after the people stopped believing in them'.
I think that Gaiman took this good idea, half-developed it in Good Omens, and then fully fleshed it in the current Hugo winner.
Does American Gods deserve to be a Hugo winner? Did Harry Potter? They deserved it as much as Cryponomicon deserved to be nominated in 2000.
Yes - special effects can look realistic, if they are used to re-create already-existing objects or events. Case in point - using sfx to create background scenery - say, for example, a lovely mountain range. Special effects will improve, making the mountain range look more realistic. Or authentic, if you like.
All good reasons for the phased marketing approach. I'd like to add to that that one of the key marketing strategies in films is the availability of actors, directors and other staff to go to premieres, do interviews, appear on daytime tv etc. This becomes easier when you're limited to one geographic region.
About the prints re-use that you mention. Censors in different countries can mandate different cuts of the film based on regional censorship / classification laws. How, then, would staggered releases across markets be benefited through print re-use?
Well, DNA chose the name Deep Thought as a parody of Deep Throat (the Watergate mole / porn flick).
Oops
Actually, I did some work for BBC Online, back in the day, and this picture is basically a stock-image that they have. It is sourced from NASA's Image Exchange and since NASA images are royalty-free, this particular pic has been around the block a few times.
I guess the fact that there are, unsurprisingly, no photographs of such events occurring means that journos with a deadline and a desperate need to source an image resort to this old cliche. It's the equivalent of slapping a cheesy space-shuttle launch onto any story about space technology. Easy and cheap and more often than not irrelevant to the story in hand.
Another gripe that I have is referring to "interactive games". All games are interactive - please give me an example of one that isn't...