His essays are spirited and a lot of fun, as well as his stuff about biker gangs and whatnot, but I have yet to read any of his fiction that I can truly say I liked. I personally think he writes his best when he writes *about* writing; his fiction is always flat and 2-dimensional.
Which of his fictional works can you recommend, and where can I steal a copy online?
You just summed up very succinctly what has always bugged me about his work, fiction especially. I've always gotten a kick out of his essays, but his fiction always leaves me thinking something along the lines of "well...maybe this is one of his early stories...".
Truth is, he seems never to have grown up, or grown in any way at all. Engaging Characters, fictional and real, CHANGE OVER TIME. He (and His) never do.
Ever since the 'Battle' of Seattle, activism has grown in popularity to fill the gap left by the Grateful Dead ever since the death of Jerry Garcia.
Plane-loads of adolescents and stunted adults dazed with their own self-importance now tour the world chasing WTO type events wherever they can find them, spurned on by the Internet Activist pop-culture hero of the week or month.
You probably won't find them in Indonesia, though, protesting indiscriminate inter-tribal slaughter or anything like that. They like the more media-friendly events where they hope to become counter-cultural icons themselves, and get pissed when their childish antics fail to make the front page (Joan What's-her-tits).
The Summer of '69 Student Government and their Suede/Denim Secret Police has finally left the building (along with most of the furniture, but hell, small price to pay). It'll take a while to get used to the idea of a government being run by adults. In time, even you will adjust!
His disclaimer stated "...I THINK he stole the presidency" (emphasis mine). The man can think what he likes. I think we stole it and I'm damn glad we stole it. That's a childishly simplistic summation of my own highly biased opinion, hardly worth a fruitcake to anyone but me.
As for being fair, his fairness was highly evident. Admirably so.
I hope that when the tables are turned, I can be half as fair.
I check the comic strips in the paper now and then and am APPALLED at how miserable they are. Poorly drawn and poorly written with no sense of timing or subtlety whatsoever. 'ZIGGY' looks like Citizen Kane next to the stuff you see in the papers nowadays.
And why the 'classics' are still trotted about like giant stuffed corpse-puppets in the hands of uninspired artists and writers is beyond me. Then again, the new stuff they're trying to replace it with is, truly, that bad.
Hopefull some of the good stuff on the Web will start edging it's way into print.
Why is moonlight so implausible? The surface of the moon reflects light the same as any other lightly colored object.
Light reflects off of snow and ice as well as sand on the beach or the desert. Why should the Moon be any different? Is this light somehow disqualified from behaving as a mild source of illumination simply because it doesn't 'make sense' to you?
Culture is, in turn and by varying degrees, influenced by religion, tradition, pop-culture, philosophy, the weather, science, superstition, etc.
There were some pretty amazing and complex cultues around before 'The Bible' came along to put a few the ideas into words which, being ascribed to an Amazing Supernatural Creature has a more powerful and convincing effect on a painfully self-aware human race which tends to look to the Sky for help when it's back (collective or otherwise) is against the proverbial Wall.
There are PLENTY of standards. You're soaking in them to such a degree that it's hard to see them.
The fact that we can intellectualize and question them leads many (especially the younger ones) to believe that the standards don't exist. Wrong!
"Skill and drill" at the state school level gives kids the raw material they will later need to even begin to grasp principles let alone apply them.
How do you think you got into Caltech in the first place?
I will agree tho', that some students wilter in the face of "skill and drill", and that may well be due to an inclination that first wants to know how and why rather than simply what.
In a relatively short time, these things will be hosting uninvited web-cams and microphones throughout every nook and cranny of our lives. Covers of the Nat'l Enquirer will now show celebrities grunting on the toilet instead of sunbathing nude by the pool.
According to Disch, Le Guin has gained vertiginous regard in academic circles and is using this position to influence the manner in which SF is taught academically.
Who gives a flying hooey how 'SF is taught academically'? Brilliant science fiction is only rarely produced by 'students' or 'academics'. All those college sci-fi (yep, that's what I still call it;) lit classes can do is pretentiously pick over the bones of what has come before, fluffing each others egos in an ultimately pointless academic love-fest. Nothing useful whatsoever comes from their ponderings.
Someone, somewhere, will always be writing something brilliant.
Oh thank you for not burning a mod point! Please! Auuuugghh! Not that! I had no idea you were one of the Slashdot Elite with moderation capability. Ohh! What a close shave!
Hyuck. I've got mod points right now too. Like I give a toss.
who should have control over the process Teachers, School Committee, PTA. Not pot-smoking college protest junkies and not Jon Katz.
who (if anyone) should be allowed to make a profit off of selling information about our children No one. Let's go back and sue all the teachers who filled out the Buyer Feedback cards that came with their copy of Math Blaster too!
I wholly agree that it is the parent's responsibility to teach morals, ie, the 'knowledge and guidance so they can understand why something is inappropriate'. It is the school's job to supply teachers with the resources they need/want to impart lessons to the children who attend that school. If XYZ Filtering software rids a given teacher of a good portion of the distractions (and disruptions) available on the web, but still makes available desired content, then I see no problem whatsoever with that arrangement. If the software is filtering desired content, then the teacher will be the first to complain, and the system can be tailored to fit the teacher's wishes.
It is no more a teacher's right to tell a child which websites are appropriate, as it is for them to teach that multi-racial marriage is wrong
I disagree. It is a teacher's DUTY to tell a child EXACTLY which websites are appropriate for a given lesson. If I'm teaching a class in Earth Science and some kid is kicking back reading an issue of Penthouse, I'm going to rip the magazine out of his/her hands and send the kid to the Principal's office. If the kid is kicking back reading Scientific American, I'll take the magazine out of his/her hands and demand to see them after class, at which point I'll return the magazine, express genuine interest and appreciation for their interest in extra-curricular science, but ask that they persue it on their own time and not during class which is disrespectful.
It's the same with web-content. You want to read Slashdot? Fine. Do it on your own time. Want to look at porn? Neo-Nazi propaganda? Pokemon chat sites? Have a ball, but not here. XYZ software will help reduce the likelihood of these disruptions? Cool. Hand it over.
I had to 'ride' on this 'highly-rated' but otherwise utterly retarded comment because the few dissenting opinions I've seen posted have been moderated down as flamebait.
Funny. All the good doggies, jumping through 'anti-censorship' hoop.
I just can't, for the life of me, see the dread behind this 'issue'. If I ran a grade school, I'd skip on the 3rd-party 'nanny' software. I would simply block ALL internet access except for sites required or requested by teachers for student use. Kids can 'surf' at home. They can do research at the library. If they want to do extra at home, that's fine, but you lose me completely with all this infantile shouting about "kids must have absolute unfettered access to all WWW content all the time / anything less is laying the foundation for the Orwellian nightmare".
Infantile. I want what I want right now and you can't take it from me and I don't have to do what you say and if you try to make me I'm gonna tell my dad and he's gonna get a lawyer and make you let me do what I want 'cause it's a free country and I can do whatever I want.
We're not undergoing a population crisis, or if we are, it's in the opposite direction of what you think. Most people who worry about overpopulation are really just daydreaming about having everyone disappear so you can run around, drive their cars on the left side of the road and drink their beer and stuff.
Get over it, I say. You can do all that stuff right now!
To heck with what the State is "supposed" to be, according to Karl or anyone else. What does the communist state always become? Centralised and all powerful. Fascist. How else to you purport to 'deal' with those who are not 'intellectually mature' enough to agree with you?
The absolute WORST thing about communism, though, is that it's boring. REALLY boring.
Governments SHOULD be run by boring, rich old men. Perhaps the apathy felt by the lower income folks will inspire them to stop waiting for the next miracle hand-out and get on with their lives. Is it so much better to have an Office full of Beautiful People dazzling them with empty promises of miraculous hand-outs in return for their votes?
He taught CS for a while at Westfield State College in the early 80's. His love and enthusiasm for the field was infectious. He had us all buy Vic-20's and read Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine" before the first day of class. The chief lesson I learned from him (digested too late to save me from flunking out of college) was to start 'hacking' as soon as possible, i.e., when you get some knowledge on a new topic you're learning, go out and play with it/use it as soon as you can. Don't wait for an assignment to assimilate all the little pieces you get before the assignment.
The first step, BEFORE you dump empty postage-paid envelope into the nearest mail box, is to affix it to an old telephone book with lots and lots of clear tape.
_NOW_ you're cookin' on all burners!
Slashdot Mirror
His essays are spirited and a lot of fun, as well as his stuff about biker gangs and whatnot, but I have yet to read any of his fiction that I can truly say I liked. I personally think he writes his best when he writes *about* writing; his fiction is always flat and 2-dimensional.
Which of his fictional works can you recommend, and where can I steal a copy online?
; )
You just summed up very succinctly what has always bugged me about his work, fiction especially. I've always gotten a kick out of his essays, but his fiction always leaves me thinking something along the lines of "well...maybe this is one of his early stories...".
Truth is, he seems never to have grown up, or grown in any way at all. Engaging Characters, fictional and real, CHANGE OVER TIME. He (and His) never do.
Ever since the 'Battle' of Seattle, activism has grown in popularity to fill the gap left by the Grateful Dead ever since the death of Jerry Garcia.
Plane-loads of adolescents and stunted adults dazed with their own self-importance now tour the world chasing WTO type events wherever they can find them, spurned on by the Internet Activist pop-culture hero of the week or month.
You probably won't find them in Indonesia, though, protesting indiscriminate inter-tribal slaughter or anything like that. They like the more media-friendly events where they hope to become counter-cultural icons themselves, and get pissed when their childish antics fail to make the front page (Joan What's-her-tits).
Oh well!
Call it sacrelidge, but it so much easier to import/export via Windows, edit under Linux. No fuss, end of story.
It's also not several hundred or several thousand or several tens of thousands of dollars.
For the price, it's positively brilliant.
Take a deep breath.
You're assuming that Bush thinks like Clinton.
The Summer of '69 Student Government and their Suede/Denim Secret Police has finally left the building (along with most of the furniture, but hell, small price to pay). It'll take a while to get used to the idea of a government being run by adults. In time, even you will adjust!
His disclaimer stated "...I THINK he stole the presidency" (emphasis mine). The man can think what he likes. I think we stole it and I'm damn glad we stole it. That's a childishly simplistic summation of my own highly biased opinion, hardly worth a fruitcake to anyone but me.
As for being fair, his fairness was highly evident. Admirably so.
I hope that when the tables are turned, I can be half as fair.
I check the comic strips in the paper now and then and am APPALLED at how miserable they are. Poorly drawn and poorly written with no sense of timing or subtlety whatsoever. 'ZIGGY' looks like Citizen Kane next to the stuff you see in the papers nowadays.
And why the 'classics' are still trotted about like giant stuffed corpse-puppets in the hands of uninspired artists and writers is beyond me. Then again, the new stuff they're trying to replace it with is, truly, that bad.
Hopefull some of the good stuff on the Web will start edging it's way into print.
Why is moonlight so implausible? The surface of the moon reflects light the same as any other lightly colored object.
Light reflects off of snow and ice as well as sand on the beach or the desert. Why should the Moon be any different? Is this light somehow disqualified from behaving as a mild source of illumination simply because it doesn't 'make sense' to you?
Hear Ye! Well put.
(Yes, this is just a 'me too' post. Oh well!)
Culture is, in turn and by varying degrees, influenced by religion, tradition, pop-culture, philosophy, the weather, science, superstition, etc.
There were some pretty amazing and complex cultues around before 'The Bible' came along to put a few the ideas into words which, being ascribed to an Amazing Supernatural Creature has a more powerful and convincing effect on a painfully self-aware human race which tends to look to the Sky for help when it's back (collective or otherwise) is against the proverbial Wall.
There are PLENTY of standards. You're soaking in them to such a degree that it's hard to see them.
The fact that we can intellectualize and question them leads many (especially the younger ones) to believe that the standards don't exist. Wrong!
Cool!
That means I stopped being a virgin when I was, like, 8 years old. I'm not as much of a dork as I thought I was!
Cool! That means I stopped being a virgin when I was, like, 8 years old. I'm not as much of a dork as I thought I was!
"Skill and drill" at the state school level gives kids the raw material they will later need to even begin to grasp principles let alone apply them.
How do you think you got into Caltech in the first place?
I will agree tho', that some students wilter in the face of "skill and drill", and that may well be due to an inclination that first wants to know how and why rather than simply what.
The 'speculation' is well beyond the "gee, maybe someday" stage. It's only a matter of time, and a very short time at that.
In a relatively short time, these things will be hosting uninvited web-cams and microphones throughout every nook and cranny of our lives. Covers of the Nat'l Enquirer will now show celebrities grunting on the toilet instead of sunbathing nude by the pool.
Oh well. We'll adjust, somehow.
According to Disch, Le Guin has gained vertiginous regard in academic circles and is using this position to influence the manner in which SF is taught academically.
;) lit classes can do is pretentiously pick over the bones of what has come before, fluffing each others egos in an ultimately pointless academic love-fest. Nothing useful whatsoever comes from their ponderings.
Who gives a flying hooey how 'SF is taught academically'? Brilliant science fiction is only rarely produced by 'students' or 'academics'. All those college sci-fi (yep, that's what I still call it
Someone, somewhere, will always be writing something brilliant.
Oh thank you for not burning a mod point! Please! Auuuugghh! Not that! I had no idea you were one of the Slashdot Elite with moderation capability. Ohh! What a close shave!
Hyuck. I've got mod points right now too. Like I give a toss.
who should have control over the process
Teachers, School Committee, PTA. Not pot-smoking college protest junkies and not Jon Katz.
who (if anyone) should be allowed to make a profit off of selling information about our children
No one. Let's go back and sue all the teachers who filled out the Buyer Feedback cards that came with their copy of Math Blaster too!
I wholly agree that it is the parent's responsibility to teach morals, ie, the 'knowledge and guidance so they can understand why something is inappropriate'. It is the school's job to supply teachers with the resources they need/want to impart lessons to the children who attend that school. If XYZ Filtering software rids a given teacher of a good portion of the distractions (and disruptions) available on the web, but still makes available desired content, then I see no problem whatsoever with that arrangement. If the software is filtering desired content, then the teacher will be the first to complain, and the system can be tailored to fit the teacher's wishes.
It is no more a teacher's right to tell a child which websites are appropriate, as it is for them to teach that multi-racial marriage is wrong
I disagree. It is a teacher's DUTY to tell a child EXACTLY which websites are appropriate for a given lesson. If I'm teaching a class in Earth Science and some kid is kicking back reading an issue of Penthouse, I'm going to rip the magazine out of his/her hands and send the kid to the Principal's office. If the kid is kicking back reading Scientific American, I'll take the magazine out of his/her hands and demand to see them after class, at which point I'll return the magazine, express genuine interest and appreciation for their interest in extra-curricular science, but ask that they persue it on their own time and not during class which is disrespectful.
It's the same with web-content. You want to read Slashdot? Fine. Do it on your own time. Want to look at porn? Neo-Nazi propaganda? Pokemon chat sites? Have a ball, but not here. XYZ software will help reduce the likelihood of these disruptions? Cool. Hand it over.
I had to 'ride' on this 'highly-rated' but otherwise utterly retarded comment because the few dissenting opinions I've seen posted have been moderated down as flamebait.
Funny. All the good doggies, jumping through 'anti-censorship' hoop.
I just can't, for the life of me, see the dread behind this 'issue'. If I ran a grade school, I'd skip on the 3rd-party 'nanny' software. I would simply block ALL internet access except for sites required or requested by teachers for student use. Kids can 'surf' at home. They can do research at the library. If they want to do extra at home, that's fine, but you lose me completely with all this infantile shouting about "kids must have absolute unfettered access to all WWW content all the time / anything less is laying the foundation for the Orwellian nightmare".
Infantile. I want what I want right now and you can't take it from me and I don't have to do what you say and if you try to make me I'm gonna tell my dad and he's gonna get a lawyer and make you let me do what I want 'cause it's a free country and I can do whatever I want.
It's SCHOOL you fscking retards! SCHOOL!
Good doggies. Keep jumping!
We're not undergoing a population crisis, or if we are, it's in the opposite direction of what you think. Most people who worry about overpopulation are really just daydreaming about having everyone disappear so you can run around, drive their cars on the left side of the road and drink their beer and stuff.
Get over it, I say. You can do all that stuff right now!
To heck with what the State is "supposed" to be, according to Karl or anyone else. What does the communist state always become? Centralised and all powerful. Fascist. How else to you purport to 'deal' with those who are not 'intellectually mature' enough to agree with you?
The absolute WORST thing about communism, though, is that it's boring. REALLY boring.
Governments SHOULD be run by boring, rich old men. Perhaps the apathy felt by the lower income folks will inspire them to stop waiting for the next miracle hand-out and get on with their lives. Is it so much better to have an Office full of Beautiful People dazzling them with empty promises of miraculous hand-outs in return for their votes?
He taught CS for a while at Westfield State College in the early 80's. His love and enthusiasm for the field was infectious. He had us all buy Vic-20's and read Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine" before the first day of class. The chief lesson I learned from him (digested too late to save me from flunking out of college) was to start 'hacking' as soon as possible, i.e., when you get some knowledge on a new topic you're learning, go out and play with it/use it as soon as you can. Don't wait for an assignment to assimilate all the little pieces you get before the assignment.
You know, the whole spiel...
; )
The first step, BEFORE you dump empty postage-paid envelope into the nearest mail box, is to affix it to an old telephone book with lots and lots of clear tape. _NOW_ you're cookin' on all burners!