"Miss Le Guin was not involved in the development of the material or
the making of the film, but we've been very, very honest to the
books," explains director Rob Lieberman. "We've tried to capture all
the levels of spiritualism, emotional content and metaphorical
messages. Throughout the whole piece, I saw it as having a great
duality of spirituality versus paganism and wizardry, male and female
duality. The final moments of the film culminate in the union of all
that and represent two different belief systems in this world, and
that's what Ursula intended to make a statement about. The only
thing that saves this Earthsea universe is the union of those two
beliefs."
Sci Fi Magazine
December 2004
I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this
production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways
from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no
business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it
and was given no part in discussions or decisions.
That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.
Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in
making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at
all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.
Had "Miss Le Guin" been honestly asked to be involved in the
planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers
what the books are about.
When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to
characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to
hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty
years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production
was already under way.
So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I
ever intend to make a statement, about "the union of two belief
systems." There's nothing at all about the "duality of spirituality
and paganism," whatever that means, either.
Earlier in the article, Robert Halmi is quoted as saying that
Earthsea "has people who believe and people who do not believe." I
can only admire Mr Halmi's imagination, but I wish he'd left mine
alone.
In the books, the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of
the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The
rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an
unresting, active balance, offering a risky chance of peace.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "people who believe and
people who do not believe." That terrible division into Believers
and Unbelievers (itself a matter not of reason but of belief) is one
which bedevils Christianity and Islam and drives their wars.
But the wizards of Earthsea would look on such wars as madness, and
the dragons of Earthsea would laugh at them and fly away...
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings
had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever
after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien "intended..."
would people think they'd been "very, very honest to the books"?
Ursula K. Le Guin
13 November 2004
Since I posted the above plug, I've gotten several thousand hits on my site (thanks!). Many people have complained about the Intelligence portion, which only uses formal eduacation as a factor.
Long ago, I had a link on my site to a server side quiz by Bruce Blanchard that you could fill out to find your D&D stats if you were unfortunate enough to personally be stuck inside a D&D game (based on Dave Harper's usenet post). When the link died, I rehosted it in Javascript and put it up at my site. If you're interested:
What advice can you guys give me on not becoming a PHB?
Always wear a crucifix. It should keep you safe but if it were to somehow fail and you begin to turn, the smoke from your roasting flesh will be noticed by your subordinates. Assuming you've been good to them before your fall, they will drive a stake through your heart as an act of mercy.
Not so much "bar fights," but I had heard it was indeed to settle bar arguments, especially about sports trivia. The fact that the word "Guinness" is proudly displayed was supposed to make the book into an excellent bit of advertising.
Whether or not that's true, the folks at the Guinness Book have chosen to dodge the topic (here):
In 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, went on a shooting party and became involved in an argument. Which was the fastest game bird in Europe - the golden plover or the grouse? He realized then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove popular.
Thanks for the input. I have to wonder, though, if that technique works as well as you propose. If so, RAID would be selling a "just zap the visible roaches and let them go" spray, a spray that would make robots absolutely unecesary.
Of course, a lot of people would argue that anyways...
While I can imagine (concievably) this thing going after household pests and ridding a residence of a particular kind of creature, I think roaches are a poor choice when you consider how many eggs they lay. The saying "when you see one, there's a thousand" is pretty damn accurate. Unless you made to robots replicate too (and anyone who has ever seen any late night sci fi movie knows how bad an idea that would be), you couldn't keep up.
One possibility is to target mice or rats. They're prolific, but being mammals are less so than roaches. Unfortunately, they're pretty damn smart and might be able to foil or avoid these robots (finding particular crannies in the wall it can't reach, for example). Also, from a public relations standpoint, a robot that snuffs fur covered rodents would probably spill enough blood to freak out a homeowner. And if the thing botched the job and only maimed the little guys, you'd be stuck with a thousand grossed out homeowners complaining about mice with partially amputated limbs crawling across their new carpet.
Ironically, one of the best choices might be the pests that act more like robots than any other: ants. The tough part of taking them out is tracing them all the way back to the nest, which might be inside a wall or foundation crack. A robot that could track them inside walls, etc. and then do a quick one shot of poison spray to get the queen would be perfect. Ants may be as prolific as roaches, but the queen is the only fertile one in the nest. Get her and it's "game over, man!"
OK, I feel unclean for admitting this, but I saw something in the trailer and I was wondering if anyone else saw it. Specifically, there's a quick cut just before we get to see the Emperor's delightful dental work of a hangar door slamming shut (right after the last shot of Anakin and Kenobi slugging it out). If you freeze it just before it starts closing, you see a ship in space just outside the hangar. It might be one of the big ones you see fighting broadside earlier in the trailer, but it actually looks like the Millenium Falcon to me. The more I look at it, the more I think it is.
Tough to tell, with only a partial portion of a songle frame, but I have to wonder. Has anyone else seen this?
Glad you liked it. It gave me an excuse to go out and find an online version of Eliza. I was sure someone must've done it and I was glad to discover I was right. I'll have to keep it on hand, maybe send it around to old timers like myself.
Eliza was a totally one dimensional PerfectFemale. But why do you think Eliza is a totally one dimensional female?
Because she's too perfect Does that make you feel threatened?
Well, no. Well, maybe. Somewhat. Interesting. Do you think this has anything to do with your parents?
Of course, the notion of Eliza as a long winded character all depends on what you ask her in the first place.
I'm going to assume this is a joke, just like the joke I made. It offends me that you would dig up a comment that disgusting, but I'm just going to count to ten and tell myself it's just a joke. It pisses me off that you would presume to know me to make such a vile remark, especially in response to a very mild jibe at a nameless person in a CNN story, but again, I'll just tell myself it's a joke.
But you think you know me, eh?
<rant>
I too have worked with Indians and find them much like Americans: a pretty set ratio of good, solid, caring people (the majority) to mean spirited jerks (a small minority). I've worked with enough groups in enough environments to know this is a universal constant, like the speed of light. You can take a population of Mongolian shepherds or New York subway commuters or MIT engineering undergrads or Mexico City sanitation workers and come up with exactly the same ratio. A universal constant.
I know that outsourcing is just a rational outgrowth of globalization, that we privilleged American techies need to grow up and adapt to it. Even when my wife lost her job at a "family friendly employer" for taking a leave of absence to watch her father die, I knew this. I also knew this when I had no choice but to stay with the same employer and eventually work with the woman brought over from India to replace my wife. Dog tired from staying up all night while my wife cried for her losses, I still had enough sense to realize that this other woman was not a demon, that she too had a family. I saw which side of that ratio she fell on, but I'm not ashamed to admit I was still damn glad to leave that place.
I've gotten racist comments (thankfully, very rare) from elders in my wife's family because I'm caucasian. She's gotten harassed in the street in some neighborhoods (thankfully, even rarer) because she's Japanese.
With all that said, I think I've earned the freaking right to make a mild jibe, especially when I see executives outsource core engineering functions, betray their workers and stockholders (I am both) by mortgaging their company's future just to save a few nickels in the here and now. You want to pontificate? Try the parent post to mine or look around and find something overtly racist. You seem to be looking for it really hard, seeing it even when it's not there.
The real irritating thing is that I agree with most of what you've said: Isolationism and paranoia are screwing this country. Sticking our heads in the sand while bitching and moaning will not get those jobs back, primarily because they're not even in India anyomre, but on a bus to Vietnam or the Ukraine or China. I know that the tide can not be stopped, and that we can't take it personally, and that we must adapt: I'm going to a orientation session tomorrow (9AM on a Saturday: what was I thinking?) for my second Masters' degree. What are you doing this weekend?
</rant>
There. I've gotten it off my chest. I'm sure that I appear to be the exact opposite of what I claim to be. Instead of the enlighted, easygoing guy I'm sure I've come off as a petty, small minded jerk. Your comments (Tell yourself: It's just a joke... It's just a joke...) have pushed me onto the other side of the ratio. But you know what? I just don't care.
By the way. I call Godwin's Law on you for digging up White Supremacy. You loose.
First, I can't believe I'm defending Bill Gates (maybe I should go get a CAT scan or something), but...
You really should go and take a peek at the Gates foundation website. They really are going off and trying to put some of that money to good use and with very little fanfare, too. I agree that you can't simply prop up impovrished populations with aid and ignore higher issues, but the simple fact is that in an environment with massive infant mortality, starvation, or AIDs inspired civil wars, no one is going to get *any* education. I honestly believe the Gates'es mean well and are taking a very practical approach to philanthropy.
His approach to the software business, however, is another matter entirely.
Very good points, all around. I know I'm drawing a lot of negetivity with my post, but I'm glad to be able to discuss these things.
Look, this isn't exactly a high-cost project. If you want to complain about something, complain about Indias Nuclear Arms program instead and leave the PC-in-a-rickshaw guys alone!
Good point, although I want to make sure you understand I do not object to the Infothela effort. It's well worth throwing some money around and try new things, especially in areas that have all the basics (water, vaccines, etc) already handled. As I said, I'm a little dubious about the long term prospects for this, but it's great that someone's at least trying. After all, if you wait until everyone in the world has all their substience problems solved before spending anything on education or other "higher level" efforts, you'll never get around to it. (Didn't Jesus say "The poor will always be amongst you"?)
On the other hand, I want to make sure us technophiles don't lose sight of what this project does: provide higher level needs to people who, while they will make good use of it, are not starving or dying for it. It's wonderful that the Indian government is supporting this, but I for one make sure the bulk of my charity dollars go to places where they'll be even more effective.
"By using computers, I can improve my knowledge," Sharma, whose parents plan to pull her out of school at 15, said in Hindi, before joining a class on Web cameras. "And that will help me get a job when I grow up. (Emphasis mine)
Now, she didn't specify whose job she wanted, but...
Do you still think computing is unnecssary for the poorest of the poor?
As to who thinks there are better places to put resources, none other than Bill and Melinda Gates think so. Two of the high profile efforts are and AIDS vaccine and TB efforts, although there's plenty more fronts they're throwing financing at.
I remember an interview with him (can't find it online) where he recalled being at a meeting with dozens of people pitching high tech solutions to Third World problems and him rejecting almost all of them in favor of vaccines. He said it was silly to start laying down fiber optic cable (this was a few years before WiFi) in an area where you couldn't draw clean water from a well.
Now, don't get me wrong. Any effort that conveys health information or basic education to people who need it is, by definition, a Good Thing (TM). Also, this is an indigenous effort of Indians (presumably the Indian government) helping their own, not someone outside trying to find the best place to spend their money. One would assume (and the photos of healthy people in TFA certainly imply) they've already got their vaccination, clean water, and hunger plans already in place, so they might as well experiment with alternate education efforts.
Still, I have to wonder about the long term viability of this project. With India's struggling masses, you have to wonder if the money might be better spent elsewhere.
I worked with about 400 other developers on the embedded software for the B-2 Bomber. As our groups grew, the VAX clusters we used began to suffer. We complained to management but there was never any money for better mainframes.
Then we switched over to a trouble report tracking program instead of doing everything on paper. The thing was implemented in house and made to run on the VAX'es. Suddenly everything slowed to a crawl, both development and trouble tracking. Since managers were the primary users of the tracking software, we knew it would have visibility. There was much rejoicing when the company bought a DEC Alpha...
...and put only the tracking software on it. No development work was allowed at all on teh new machine.
Many posters have posted ideas about using this thing as a simple remote controlled helicopter (reconisance, corporate espionage, etc). While that's kinda neat, it misses the real value of this thing.
If it can fly autonomously (not possible yet if you have to add more equipment like balance or barometric sensors and blow the thing's payload - but you can put the brainpower in the base station), it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It could fly point to point in a warehouse on a security patrol, recharging at stops along the way. Automated inspections (attics, structual beams in large buildings, etc) could be done in detail with less strain on a manual pilot - you building inspector just watches the monitor and doesn't bother trying to fly the thing.
The big thing, of course, is adapting this technology to be used outside. Think of a swarm of these released from roadside base stations to check freeway bridges, dams, or structures, minutes after an earthquake. Or a version that works in fluid (really, a submarine) checking ship hulls for damage - on infestations of foreign organisms like zebra mussels - as they steam into port.
Slashdot Mirror
I've tried very hard to keep from saying anything at all about this production, being well aware that movies must differ in many ways from the books they're based on, and feeling that I really had no business talking about it, since I was not included in planning it and was given no part in discussions or decisions.
That makes it particularly galling of the director to put words in my mouth.
Mr Lieberman has every right to say what his intentions were in making the film he directed, called "Earthsea." He has no right at all to state what I intended in writing the Earthsea books.
Had "Miss Le Guin" been honestly asked to be involved in the planning of the film, she might have discussed with the film-makers what the books are about.
When I tried to suggest the unwisdom of making radical changes to characters, events, and relationships which have been familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world for over thirty years, I was sent a copy of the script and informed that production was already under way.
So, for the record: there is no statement in the books, nor did I ever intend to make a statement, about "the union of two belief systems." There's nothing at all about the "duality of spirituality and paganism," whatever that means, either.
Earlier in the article, Robert Halmi is quoted as saying that Earthsea "has people who believe and people who do not believe." I can only admire Mr Halmi's imagination, but I wish he'd left mine alone.
In the books, the wizardry of the Archipelago and the ritualism of the Kargs are opposed and united, like the yang and yin. The rejoining of the broken arm-ring is a symbol of the restoration of an unresting, active balance, offering a risky chance of peace.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "people who believe and people who do not believe." That terrible division into Believers and Unbelievers (itself a matter not of reason but of belief) is one which bedevils Christianity and Islam and drives their wars.
But the wizards of Earthsea would look on such wars as madness, and the dragons of Earthsea would laugh at them and fly away...
Toto, something tells me Earthsea isn't Iraq.
I wonder if the people who made the film of The Lord of the Rings had ended it with Frodo putting on the Ring and ruling happily ever after, and then claimed that that was what Tolkien "intended..." would people think they'd been "very, very honest to the books"? Ursula K. Le Guin
13 November 2004
I want to revise the Intelligence test and have put a request for new questions to add to the test on rec.games.frp.dnd. If you enjoyed the quiz, please go to Google at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.games.frp. dnd/browse_thread/thread/a2bfeab938467790/a8525665 755040ff#a8525665755040ff and contribute ideas. I will be taking suggestions until December 24, 2004.
Thanks again for the great response!
- AD&D to Real Life Stats Calculator
- French Version
Try it. Have fun. Be glad you don't fight trolls in real life.Always wear a crucifix. It should keep you safe but if it were to somehow fail and you begin to turn, the smoke from your roasting flesh will be noticed by your subordinates. Assuming you've been good to them before your fall, they will drive a stake through your heart as an act of mercy.
Does that mean Jar Jar was a Browncoat or Alliance?
Or should they be "Greedo chops his hand off with a chainsaw first" jokes? (And, yes, I know that was actually in EDII)
Whether or not that's true, the folks at the Guinness Book have chosen to dodge the topic (here):
In 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, went on a shooting party and became involved in an argument. Which was the fastest game bird in Europe - the golden plover or the grouse? He realized then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove popular.
By the way (and massively OT), doesn't a "Guinness Record" sound like something you'd like to break yourself, at least if it involved consumption?
Of course, a lot of people would argue that anyways...
One possibility is to target mice or rats. They're prolific, but being mammals are less so than roaches. Unfortunately, they're pretty damn smart and might be able to foil or avoid these robots (finding particular crannies in the wall it can't reach, for example). Also, from a public relations standpoint, a robot that snuffs fur covered rodents would probably spill enough blood to freak out a homeowner. And if the thing botched the job and only maimed the little guys, you'd be stuck with a thousand grossed out homeowners complaining about mice with partially amputated limbs crawling across their new carpet.
Ironically, one of the best choices might be the pests that act more like robots than any other: ants. The tough part of taking them out is tracing them all the way back to the nest, which might be inside a wall or foundation crack. A robot that could track them inside walls, etc. and then do a quick one shot of poison spray to get the queen would be perfect. Ants may be as prolific as roaches, but the queen is the only fertile one in the nest. Get her and it's "game over, man!"
Tough to tell, with only a partial portion of a songle frame, but I have to wonder. Has anyone else seen this?
From http://www.foxforums.com/index.php?showtopic=543.. .
% 5D.torrent (BitTorrent)4 aol_dl.mov (Mirror #7)
http://66.90.75.92/suprnova//torrents/2953....com
http://www.worldofepic.net/ep3.mov (Mirror #1)
http://members.cox.net/chambers30/teaser.mov (Mirror #2)
http://www.larney.co.uk/ep3.mov (Mirror #3)
http://www.jackpearce.info/full.mov (Mirror #4)
http://www.astercity.net/~jerry/full.mov (Mirror #5)
http://ufies.org/txt/switzler084hs_dl.mov (Mirror #6)
http://www.mindspring.com/~bodyslide/Video...er08
IMDb:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121766/
Taking a cue from another Mars movie, I vote we cut some corners on the life support system. Gotta pay for those tax cuts somehow, right?
The unicorns thought the original was a foolish idea, too.
P.S. Love your .sig.
Eliza was a totally one dimensional PerfectFemale.
But why do you think Eliza is a totally one dimensional female?
Because she's too perfect
Does that make you feel threatened?
Well, no. Well, maybe. Somewhat.
Interesting. Do you think this has anything to do with your parents?
Of course, the notion of Eliza as a long winded character all depends on what you ask her in the first place.
Reminds me of a video for another switch campaign. Although, I guess the video would be more appropriate if you were switching to IE...
I'm going to assume this is a joke, just like the joke I made. It offends me that you would dig up a comment that disgusting, but I'm just going to count to ten and tell myself it's just a joke. It pisses me off that you would presume to know me to make such a vile remark, especially in response to a very mild jibe at a nameless person in a CNN story, but again, I'll just tell myself it's a joke.
But you think you know me, eh?
<rant>
I too have worked with Indians and find them much like Americans: a pretty set ratio of good, solid, caring people (the majority) to mean spirited jerks (a small minority). I've worked with enough groups in enough environments to know this is a universal constant, like the speed of light. You can take a population of Mongolian shepherds or New York subway commuters or MIT engineering undergrads or Mexico City sanitation workers and come up with exactly the same ratio. A universal constant.
I know that outsourcing is just a rational outgrowth of globalization, that we privilleged American techies need to grow up and adapt to it. Even when my wife lost her job at a "family friendly employer" for taking a leave of absence to watch her father die, I knew this. I also knew this when I had no choice but to stay with the same employer and eventually work with the woman brought over from India to replace my wife. Dog tired from staying up all night while my wife cried for her losses, I still had enough sense to realize that this other woman was not a demon, that she too had a family. I saw which side of that ratio she fell on, but I'm not ashamed to admit I was still damn glad to leave that place.
I've gotten racist comments (thankfully, very rare) from elders in my wife's family because I'm caucasian. She's gotten harassed in the street in some neighborhoods (thankfully, even rarer) because she's Japanese.
With all that said, I think I've earned the freaking right to make a mild jibe, especially when I see executives outsource core engineering functions, betray their workers and stockholders (I am both) by mortgaging their company's future just to save a few nickels in the here and now. You want to pontificate? Try the parent post to mine or look around and find something overtly racist. You seem to be looking for it really hard, seeing it even when it's not there.
The real irritating thing is that I agree with most of what you've said: Isolationism and paranoia are screwing this country. Sticking our heads in the sand while bitching and moaning will not get those jobs back, primarily because they're not even in India anyomre, but on a bus to Vietnam or the Ukraine or China. I know that the tide can not be stopped, and that we can't take it personally, and that we must adapt: I'm going to a orientation session tomorrow (9AM on a Saturday: what was I thinking?) for my second Masters' degree. What are you doing this weekend?
</rant>
There. I've gotten it off my chest. I'm sure that I appear to be the exact opposite of what I claim to be. Instead of the enlighted, easygoing guy I'm sure I've come off as a petty, small minded jerk. Your comments (Tell yourself: It's just a joke... It's just a joke...) have pushed me onto the other side of the ratio. But you know what? I just don't care.
By the way. I call Godwin's Law on you for digging up White Supremacy. You loose.
You really should go and take a peek at the Gates foundation website. They really are going off and trying to put some of that money to good use and with very little fanfare, too. I agree that you can't simply prop up impovrished populations with aid and ignore higher issues, but the simple fact is that in an environment with massive infant mortality, starvation, or AIDs inspired civil wars, no one is going to get *any* education. I honestly believe the Gates'es mean well and are taking a very practical approach to philanthropy.
His approach to the software business, however, is another matter entirely.
Very good points, all around. I know I'm drawing a lot of negetivity with my post, but I'm glad to be able to discuss these things.
Thank you for replying.
Absolutely not. See my other response here
Good point, although I want to make sure you understand I do not object to the Infothela effort. It's well worth throwing some money around and try new things, especially in areas that have all the basics (water, vaccines, etc) already handled. As I said, I'm a little dubious about the long term prospects for this, but it's great that someone's at least trying. After all, if you wait until everyone in the world has all their substience problems solved before spending anything on education or other "higher level" efforts, you'll never get around to it. (Didn't Jesus say "The poor will always be amongst you"?)
On the other hand, I want to make sure us technophiles don't lose sight of what this project does: provide higher level needs to people who, while they will make good use of it, are not starving or dying for it. It's wonderful that the Indian government is supporting this, but I for one make sure the bulk of my charity dollars go to places where they'll be even more effective.
"By using computers, I can improve my knowledge," Sharma, whose parents plan to pull her out of school at 15, said in Hindi, before joining a class on Web cameras. "And that will help me get a job when I grow up. (Emphasis mine)
Now, she didn't specify whose job she wanted, but...
As to who thinks there are better places to put resources, none other than Bill and Melinda Gates think so. Two of the high profile efforts are and AIDS vaccine and TB efforts, although there's plenty more fronts they're throwing financing at.
I remember an interview with him (can't find it online) where he recalled being at a meeting with dozens of people pitching high tech solutions to Third World problems and him rejecting almost all of them in favor of vaccines. He said it was silly to start laying down fiber optic cable (this was a few years before WiFi) in an area where you couldn't draw clean water from a well.
Now, don't get me wrong. Any effort that conveys health information or basic education to people who need it is, by definition, a Good Thing (TM). Also, this is an indigenous effort of Indians (presumably the Indian government) helping their own, not someone outside trying to find the best place to spend their money. One would assume (and the photos of healthy people in TFA certainly imply) they've already got their vaccination, clean water, and hunger plans already in place, so they might as well experiment with alternate education efforts.
Still, I have to wonder about the long term viability of this project. With India's struggling masses, you have to wonder if the money might be better spent elsewhere.
Then we switched over to a trouble report tracking program instead of doing everything on paper. The thing was implemented in house and made to run on the VAX'es. Suddenly everything slowed to a crawl, both development and trouble tracking. Since managers were the primary users of the tracking software, we knew it would have visibility. There was much rejoicing when the company bought a DEC Alpha...
...and put only the tracking software on it. No development work was allowed at all on teh new machine.
SIGH. The salad days of youth...
If it can fly autonomously (not possible yet if you have to add more equipment like balance or barometric sensors and blow the thing's payload - but you can put the brainpower in the base station), it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. It could fly point to point in a warehouse on a security patrol, recharging at stops along the way. Automated inspections (attics, structual beams in large buildings, etc) could be done in detail with less strain on a manual pilot - you building inspector just watches the monitor and doesn't bother trying to fly the thing.
The big thing, of course, is adapting this technology to be used outside. Think of a swarm of these released from roadside base stations to check freeway bridges, dams, or structures, minutes after an earthquake. Or a version that works in fluid (really, a submarine) checking ship hulls for damage - on infestations of foreign organisms like zebra mussels - as they steam into port.