My superior intelleluct means that I should run the airwaves. My vast inteligence, IQ of over 140, means that I should run your country and sleep with your women
You, my Yankee friend, are a dumbass. So you hit 140 on an IQ test once -- big friggin deal. I usually test between 140 and 170, but who cares? If you can't express yourself in (at least) your own native language, it doesn't matter. You clearly can't even paste together a reasonable line of argument using other people's warmed over ideas; just shut your pompous-ass mouth.
There are people who create artwork, and those who try to understand it - you want to understand it, others create it - people who review other's artwork trying to explain it as the author tried is szizophrenic, his skills seem to go beyond to explain, but to create an unique artwork himself
How are creation and understanding mutually exclusive? I think you'll find that good artists generally have informed and critical opinions of other artists. Ever heard of a good author who wasn't well read?
I consider the direct sight the best, and reviews tell more about the reviewers than the movie itself, as (explained in another post) some artwork, like 2001, lives from you putting in something of yourself, the storyline is a skeleton, and when you read some reviews of the movie then you see if people are able to put something of themselves into it.
Reading someone else's opinions about the movie shouldn't replace your own opinions, or remove from you the obligation to make your own judgements; rather, it should inform your own judgements in some way. By agreeing or disagreeing with someone else you come to a clearer understanding of your own beliefs.
uh. so, uh. what plotline is it, exactly, that we could say has NO parallels to the Iliad?
(or the Odyssey, etc etc?)
Right on. The end result of literary didacticism is to reduce all stories to two basic types: "Somebody takes a trip," and "Somebody new in town." The Odyssey and the Illiad are the usual archetypal examples of each, ergo, any movie where somebody takes a trip is going to resemble the Odyssey to some extent.
He might have posted a message which explained his book in a more positive light, rather than picking away at every comment Cliff made.
Playing devil's advocate here, I think it bears remembering that criticism is essentially structured arguement, and that this is what critics are supposed to do, arrive at the truth through debate.
I wonder why people don't spend time, and energy to create something unique instead to review, critize or explain others' artworks.
If someone, in this case Kubrick, goes to great lengths to create something layered and allegorical, why is it a waste of time to try to understand it?
Geesh, I could have lived without knowing that Paul Rubens was playing gollum. That's gonna ruin it for me.
Look at the bright side, dear. At least he wasn't cast as Galadriel.
Inevitable concerns about privacy:
on
"Not a Mini-Spy"
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While it bothers me that governments and corporations are increasingly able to watch our every move, I wonder if the larger threat is the day that we (private citizens) all start watching each other. X10 seems to be doing a pretty brisk business, judging by the number of ads out there, and even data gathered legitimately can be hijacked.
What I do drive however is an electric wheelchair and I pondered the possability of getting one of these build on a much smaller scale but with the same principles.
You'd be losing a lot of useful features, though. (And not all of these apply solely to wheelchairs.)
-While I imagine that you still manage to get around in a wheelchair with a flat tire, a thrown track would doubtless seriously complicate your life.
-I'm betting that most electric wheelchairs can also be moved by muscle power; you might not be able to do this with tracks.
-The added weight and the loss of the mechanical advantage that a tall wheel gives you might mean the need for major drivetrain modifications.
-More moving parts means more noise and more maintainance. A wheel is pretty damn simple and elegant.
Not that the whole idea is without promise, but I doubt you'd want one for a daily driver. Of course, the largest concern is: "Will chicks dig it?"
Doubtful, but they're still cool.
on
Got Tracks?
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So now your truck can spin in place?
If you were willing to spend enough money, you could make your truck do that, but it'd take more than just a track conversion kit. These things seem to be mostly for improved traction and a bigger footprint. Think of them as snowshoes.
A couple years ago, Russia was selling off its old T-55 Tanks for about US$50,000 a pop. If you really needed a tracked vehicle, and you could find one and get it through customs, I'm sure you'd have absolutely no trouble spinning in place or picking up chicks.
A thought on "(F)rank poole". The anagram "ankle poor" immediately made me think of Achilles from the Illiad. Achilles mother dipped him in the river Styx when he was a child in order to make him invulnerable. The one part of his body that didn't get wet was the heel his mother used to hold onto him. During the battle at Troy, Achilles was shot in the heel by an arrow and killed. Interestingly, I believe that it was Odysseus who eventually won the prized armor of Achilles, before beginning his journey home in the Odessy.
Your facts on the Illiad are right. Also, "ankle poor" reminds one of Oedipus, whose name after all translates as "swollen foot." (Although my greek isn't flawless.) "Frank Poole" yields many potentially meaningful anagrams:
Flop one ark: clearly refers to the potential danger to the ship in the movie
Freak'n' Polo!: Odysseus was noted for hating water-polo.
Porno Flake: Obviously refering to HAL's voyeuristic tendencies.
Lo! Fake porn!: Foreshadowing Kubrick's final movie.
OK elf apron: It was rumoured widely at the time that Santa Claus' elves were hired to work as gaffers and key grips for 2001.
No rape folk: The real reason all the scientists were locked up and frozen, to keep Dave from going buggy on their booties.
Lake of porn: the real reason the the obelisks were protecting Jupiters moon -- their grrrly magazines were hidden under its frozen surface.
I could keep going indefinately, but I've probably already made my point and made everybody who's read this permanantly dumber already. Might as well quit while we're ahead . . . .
Reminds me of an anecdote from one of my critical theory classes: A prominent Folklorist designed a mathematical equation to determine whether folk-stories represented actual events or reflected mythological archetypes. A character in a folk story would "score points" for things like military prowess, greater than human stature, etc. It was a very complex equation, subtley and pains-takingly crafted.
Using this equation, it's been proven that Abraham Lincoln never existed historically, that in fact he was a mythological construct.
And then there's the Douglas Adams thing about the guy who proved that God ddin't exist . . . .
The key to understanding why the Greeks (and Romans) did not employ this type of technology on a large scale is probably their mindset; a steam engine was a philosopher's toy, but it had no practical value and was not regarded as something applicable in the real world; it's a bit like building giant observatories to observe the skies for astrological purposes.
Yes, but why the mindset? Here's one way of explaining it.
The Roman economy was built on slave labor, thus there wasn't much economic incentive to develop labor-saving devices, e.g., technology on a large scale. When they had a pressing need, such as the need to throw heavy rocks at people they didn't like, or provide a city with a million inhabitants (Rome, c. 0 A.D.) with adequate sanitation, they did just fine. Indeed, the standard of living in Rome (just the city, not evenly throughout the whole empire) 2,000 years ago was a damn sight better than the standard of living in roughly half the world today. Their endless supply of cheap labor, though, made developing tech to replace labor a rather fruitless endeavour. Labor reducing tech was historically one of the causes of the exponential growth of technology, using tools to make tools to make tools.
The renaissance and industrial revolution were in many ways the direct result of having to pay people for their work, and this is deeply related to the collapse of feudalism and the contemporaneous rise of mercantilism. (If anybody's really interested in this, I can refer you to authors who are much more qualified to explain this than am I.) To broadly over-simplify, the 14th century was incredibly nasty: plagues, the 100 years war, famines, economic collapses, et cetera. This made for a shortage of peasant labour. Suddenly, landowners are competing for workers, and suddenly, there's a reason to invest big capital on R&D for labour saving devices.
I wonder how much the alledged delay in cell phone proliferation has to do with economic factors. Just think of how expensive calculators were thirty years ago, compared with now; what was once an expensive professional tool is now so cheap that pretty much everyone has one, even if they never use it. If we were making A-bombs fifty years ago, we certainly had the capacity to make portable phones, but probably not cheaply or compactly enough that they would've been marketable.
It's all about incentive: not, "Can I?" but, "Why should I?"
As the saying goes, take your work seriously, but don't take yourself seriously. It's kind of sad, really, that a bunch of comedians are doing a better job of this than "serious" journalists.
The shiny rock doesn't represent something valuable, it is something valuable.
This is of course something which can be argued both ways; that's a good thing, it's how we get at "the truth," through the process of rational disagreement.
I would hold, though, that gold doesn't have all that much practical value in the end. You can't eat it, it can't keep you warm, and you it's not any more useful for building things than, say, copper or aluminum or plastic. We like it because it's cool, and this somewhat irrational but nearly universal valuation of it makes it a good media of exchange and representor of wealth. It's not valuable b/c it's useful, it's useful b/c it's seen as valuable. It's value is entirely demand dependant, just like $100 bills. With either one, the world could decide tomorrow that either one isn't especially desirable, and they'd lose all value. (NB: the burst bubble in the stock market, where demand wasn't tied to anything concrete like production or utility, just the perception of value, or future value. When the perception changed, the demand dropped like an ugly rock.) That's fundamentally diferent than something like shelter or food, the demand for which is based on a basic human need.
The world is becoming disturbingly postmodern. In the beginning there was bartering. Then people started using precious metals to represent the value of objects. Then they started using pieces of paper to represent the metals. Then they started using plastic cards to represent pieces of paper. Now they're trading that in for a number in a database.
Currency is pretty useful stuff, though. When you come down to it, wealth is based on production. If you have wealth, it's probably based on something valuable you've produced, whether that's a good, or a service, or whatever. If you're bartering, you're trading whatever you produce, sheep or legal advice or whatever, for what you need, groceries for example. Obviously this isn't very graceful. Any other medium of exchange is simply something representing your power of production, in order to make getting what you need easier. (e.g., you don't have to find a grocer who happens to need legal advice or a sheep, and you don't have to get a whole sheep's worth of groceries at once.) So if the whole point is making things easier, why not use the medium of exchange thats the most flexible? Saying a shiny rock represents something valuable is, in the end, no more rational than saying a string of numbers represents something valuable. If the string of numbers works better, use it.
Let the Russians send the guy up. It's the least we can do for them.
It's a mistake to treat the Russians with disrespect - we can a learn a lot from them if we get rid of our arrogant attitudes.
It's not like NASA would even be going out of their way to accomodate Russia; NASA would just be being polite and civil. You've really hit it on the nose, it's the least we can do.
It's good to be polite and civil to anyone with that many nukes, wouldn't you say?
Generally, the American space program has had more money to throw around (at least recently) than its Russian counterpart. Does this make the Yanks better at space travel b/c they have more resources to bring to bear, or the Russians, b/c they've been toughened up by doing without?
Is this an important consideration? And to whose advantage d'you think it has worked?
It's just like a woman to wish they had a little more tongue action.
I'm sure Carl Sagan is spinning around in his grave on a high speed lathe. Please leave him out of your fantasies
Why Lloyd, you're an anonymous coward! How cute - it suits you.
It's pretty much an open secret that Carl smoked prodigious amounts of dope. You might even be able to get his FBI files under the FOI act; at any rate, I do know the narcs kept an eye on his house in upstate New York, and only held off b/c it's bad form to bust national treasures for something as trivial as pot.
But don't take my word for it - read The Dragons of Eden again.
"High Speed Lathe." You are quite the witty one, aren't you?
xoxo
s_j
Well, actually, the lips and tongue would seem to offer the most axes of motion in the general area, and judging by many people I know they can be run continuously.
I don't know if you were being facetious or not, but it seems like a pretty solid idea; anyways, at least as good as wearing headgear and scanning pages like a dog watching traffic.
Imagine a touch sensitive surface that mounts on the roof of your mouth, which would respond to pressure from your tongue. (You could pop it on and off like a retainer) It would be discreet, and it'd be easy to adjust to, b/c anyone who knows how to talk already has pretty precise lingual control. Also, the tongue is one big muscle: doesn't tire fast.
What a ludicrous, fascinating idea. I bet this is the kind of thing Carl Sagan wrote about when he was baked . . . .
Y'know, if you wanted something fairly water resistant, and with positive buoyancy, you could do worse than this beastie. Just mount the disk drives and what-have-you a little higher up, and you're golden. It could be useful if you lived on a flood plain or in a sewer, as many people do.
Seriously though, that's potentially a very robust case, and it brings computer hardware aesthetics one step closer to the R2D2 look, which is bono in se.
Reducing the number of species/platforms, which is which what markets forces do is actually not good economic sense.
It does make good sense up to a certain point, though. While diversity is a good thing, compatability is also an equally good thing. (Get out your first year History text book and look up "interchangable parts.") Imagine trying to buy software if there were 40 different equally popular OSs on the market. Too much variety will bite you on the ass just as surely as no variety will.
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You, my Yankee friend, are a dumbass. So you hit 140 on an IQ test once -- big friggin deal. I usually test between 140 and 170, but who cares? If you can't express yourself in (at least) your own native language, it doesn't matter. You clearly can't even paste together a reasonable line of argument using other people's warmed over ideas; just shut your pompous-ass mouth.
How are creation and understanding mutually exclusive? I think you'll find that good artists generally have informed and critical opinions of other artists. Ever heard of a good author who wasn't well read?
I consider the direct sight the best, and reviews tell more about the reviewers than the movie itself, as (explained in another post) some artwork, like 2001, lives from you putting in something of yourself, the storyline is a skeleton, and when you read some reviews of the movie then you see if people are able to put something of themselves into it.
Reading someone else's opinions about the movie shouldn't replace your own opinions, or remove from you the obligation to make your own judgements; rather, it should inform your own judgements in some way. By agreeing or disagreeing with someone else you come to a clearer understanding of your own beliefs.
Right on. The end result of literary didacticism is to reduce all stories to two basic types: "Somebody takes a trip," and "Somebody new in town." The Odyssey and the Illiad are the usual archetypal examples of each, ergo, any movie where somebody takes a trip is going to resemble the Odyssey to some extent.
Playing devil's advocate here, I think it bears remembering that criticism is essentially structured arguement, and that this is what critics are supposed to do, arrive at the truth through debate.
If someone, in this case Kubrick, goes to great lengths to create something layered and allegorical, why is it a waste of time to try to understand it?
Look at the bright side, dear. At least he wasn't cast as Galadriel.
Any thoughts on this?
Doubtless you've blocked out all of those god-awful eight hour long Kevin Costner movies. I can hardly fault you for that.
You'd be losing a lot of useful features, though. (And not all of these apply solely to wheelchairs.)
-While I imagine that you still manage to get around in a wheelchair with a flat tire, a thrown track would doubtless seriously complicate your life.
-I'm betting that most electric wheelchairs can also be moved by muscle power; you might not be able to do this with tracks.
-The added weight and the loss of the mechanical advantage that a tall wheel gives you might mean the need for major drivetrain modifications.
-More moving parts means more noise and more maintainance. A wheel is pretty damn simple and elegant.
Not that the whole idea is without promise, but I doubt you'd want one for a daily driver. Of course, the largest concern is: "Will chicks dig it?"
If you were willing to spend enough money, you could make your truck do that, but it'd take more than just a track conversion kit. These things seem to be mostly for improved traction and a bigger footprint. Think of them as snowshoes.
A couple years ago, Russia was selling off its old T-55 Tanks for about US$50,000 a pop. If you really needed a tracked vehicle, and you could find one and get it through customs, I'm sure you'd have absolutely no trouble spinning in place or picking up chicks.
Perfectly reasonable plan, right?
Romulan Bloodworms!
Which actually sounds a little more palatable than some of the things I've seen 'em whip up, e.g., squid gut ice cream.
Hell, as long as I get to see somebody bludgeon large sea creatures to death with the blunt end of a butcher's knife, I'll continue watching.
Are thirteen year old kids usually noted for being emotionally stable? Isn't this something an educator should consider before making threats?
Your facts on the Illiad are right. Also, "ankle poor" reminds one of Oedipus, whose name after all translates as "swollen foot." (Although my greek isn't flawless.) "Frank Poole" yields many potentially meaningful anagrams:
Flop one ark: clearly refers to the potential danger to the ship in the movie
Freak'n' Polo!: Odysseus was noted for hating water-polo.
Porno Flake: Obviously refering to HAL's voyeuristic tendencies.
Lo! Fake porn!: Foreshadowing Kubrick's final movie.
OK elf apron: It was rumoured widely at the time that Santa Claus' elves were hired to work as gaffers and key grips for 2001.
No rape folk: The real reason all the scientists were locked up and frozen, to keep Dave from going buggy on their booties.
Lake of porn: the real reason the the obelisks were protecting Jupiters moon -- their grrrly magazines were hidden under its frozen surface.
I could keep going indefinately, but I've probably already made my point and made everybody who's read this permanantly dumber already. Might as well quit while we're ahead . . . .
Reminds me of an anecdote from one of my critical theory classes: A prominent Folklorist designed a mathematical equation to determine whether folk-stories represented actual events or reflected mythological archetypes. A character in a folk story would "score points" for things like military prowess, greater than human stature, etc. It was a very complex equation, subtley and pains-takingly crafted.
Using this equation, it's been proven that Abraham Lincoln never existed historically, that in fact he was a mythological construct.
And then there's the Douglas Adams thing about the guy who proved that God ddin't exist . . . .
Yes, but why the mindset? Here's one way of explaining it.
The Roman economy was built on slave labor, thus there wasn't much economic incentive to develop labor-saving devices, e.g., technology on a large scale. When they had a pressing need, such as the need to throw heavy rocks at people they didn't like, or provide a city with a million inhabitants (Rome, c. 0 A.D.) with adequate sanitation, they did just fine. Indeed, the standard of living in Rome (just the city, not evenly throughout the whole empire) 2,000 years ago was a damn sight better than the standard of living in roughly half the world today. Their endless supply of cheap labor, though, made developing tech to replace labor a rather fruitless endeavour. Labor reducing tech was historically one of the causes of the exponential growth of technology, using tools to make tools to make tools.
The renaissance and industrial revolution were in many ways the direct result of having to pay people for their work, and this is deeply related to the collapse of feudalism and the contemporaneous rise of mercantilism. (If anybody's really interested in this, I can refer you to authors who are much more qualified to explain this than am I.) To broadly over-simplify, the 14th century was incredibly nasty: plagues, the 100 years war, famines, economic collapses, et cetera. This made for a shortage of peasant labour. Suddenly, landowners are competing for workers, and suddenly, there's a reason to invest big capital on R&D for labour saving devices.
I wonder how much the alledged delay in cell phone proliferation has to do with economic factors. Just think of how expensive calculators were thirty years ago, compared with now; what was once an expensive professional tool is now so cheap that pretty much everyone has one, even if they never use it. If we were making A-bombs fifty years ago, we certainly had the capacity to make portable phones, but probably not cheaply or compactly enough that they would've been marketable.
It's all about incentive: not, "Can I?" but, "Why should I?"
As the saying goes, take your work seriously, but don't take yourself seriously. It's kind of sad, really, that a bunch of comedians are doing a better job of this than "serious" journalists.
This is of course something which can be argued both ways; that's a good thing, it's how we get at "the truth," through the process of rational disagreement.
I would hold, though, that gold doesn't have all that much practical value in the end. You can't eat it, it can't keep you warm, and you it's not any more useful for building things than, say, copper or aluminum or plastic. We like it because it's cool, and this somewhat irrational but nearly universal valuation of it makes it a good media of exchange and representor of wealth. It's not valuable b/c it's useful, it's useful b/c it's seen as valuable. It's value is entirely demand dependant, just like $100 bills. With either one, the world could decide tomorrow that either one isn't especially desirable, and they'd lose all value. (NB: the burst bubble in the stock market, where demand wasn't tied to anything concrete like production or utility, just the perception of value, or future value. When the perception changed, the demand dropped like an ugly rock.) That's fundamentally diferent than something like shelter or food, the demand for which is based on a basic human need.
Currency is pretty useful stuff, though. When you come down to it, wealth is based on production. If you have wealth, it's probably based on something valuable you've produced, whether that's a good, or a service, or whatever. If you're bartering, you're trading whatever you produce, sheep or legal advice or whatever, for what you need, groceries for example. Obviously this isn't very graceful. Any other medium of exchange is simply something representing your power of production, in order to make getting what you need easier. (e.g., you don't have to find a grocer who happens to need legal advice or a sheep, and you don't have to get a whole sheep's worth of groceries at once.) So if the whole point is making things easier, why not use the medium of exchange thats the most flexible? Saying a shiny rock represents something valuable is, in the end, no more rational than saying a string of numbers represents something valuable. If the string of numbers works better, use it.
It's not like NASA would even be going out of their way to accomodate Russia; NASA would just be being polite and civil. You've really hit it on the nose, it's the least we can do.
It's good to be polite and civil to anyone with that many nukes, wouldn't you say?
Is this an important consideration? And to whose advantage d'you think it has worked?
Why Lloyd, you're an anonymous coward! How cute - it suits you.
It's pretty much an open secret that Carl smoked prodigious amounts of dope. You might even be able to get his FBI files under the FOI act; at any rate, I do know the narcs kept an eye on his house in upstate New York, and only held off b/c it's bad form to bust national treasures for something as trivial as pot.
But don't take my word for it - read The Dragons of Eden again.
"High Speed Lathe." You are quite the witty one, aren't you? xoxo s_j
I don't know if you were being facetious or not, but it seems like a pretty solid idea; anyways, at least as good as wearing headgear and scanning pages like a dog watching traffic.
Imagine a touch sensitive surface that mounts on the roof of your mouth, which would respond to pressure from your tongue. (You could pop it on and off like a retainer) It would be discreet, and it'd be easy to adjust to, b/c anyone who knows how to talk already has pretty precise lingual control. Also, the tongue is one big muscle: doesn't tire fast.
What a ludicrous, fascinating idea. I bet this is the kind of thing Carl Sagan wrote about when he was baked . . . .
Not amusing? Sounds like you either need to drink more, or drive faster.
Seriously though, that's potentially a very robust case, and it brings computer hardware aesthetics one step closer to the R2D2 look, which is bono in se.
It does make good sense up to a certain point, though. While diversity is a good thing, compatability is also an equally good thing. (Get out your first year History text book and look up "interchangable parts.") Imagine trying to buy software if there were 40 different equally popular OSs on the market. Too much variety will bite you on the ass just as surely as no variety will.