The first Robot Wars (that I know of anyway) was a live, ticketed event in 1994 at the Herbst Pavilion in San Francisco. It was fun and the t-shirt didn't suck. What I remember most was the intermission "entertainment" by Survival Research Laboratories which was this giant steel robot-thing. It spewed flame from a pulse jet (or so I was told, I don't know squat about pulse jets) and it was unbelievably loud. They did this indoors and I swear I felt my organs moving around. Really. I went to the other side of the pavilion some 200 feet away with my hands clamped over my ears and it was all I could do to remain conscious. Anyway, check out the history of Robot Wars.
This is an excellent example of DVD's potential. Plus, it is one of the rare non-pr0n discs that uses the multiple angle feature.
Swiped from Amazon:
Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
Color, DTS Surround Sound, Box set, Dolby
7 camera angles during "Vrooom Vrooom"--the full band plus an angle for each of the six band members--plus 7 Dolby Surround mixes to choose from, highlighting each instrument.
Two camera angles available during "Frame by Frame," "Three of a Perfect Pair," "Indiscipline," and "People"
"21st Century Schizoid Band" - A revolutionary interactive musical game, where the player may compile their own version of "21st Century Schizoid Man" by choosing one of four rhythm sections, vocal tracks and soloists from any of various incarnations of King Crimson
"Tony's Road Movies" behind-the-scenes footage from bass player Tony Levin
Excerpts of written commentaries by Robert Fripp
Another nice bit is in the Criterion Robocop (or was it Starship Troopers?) DVD where you can use the multiple angle feature to view original storyboards while the movie is running.
Finally, I haven't seen it (yet) but I suspect there may be fun stuff in the Residents' "Icky Flix" DVD.
Who won in "Silent Running" on the Valley Forge? Bruce Dern or the "robot"? I haven't seen that movie in a long time but I recall a pool (some odd "futuristic" version) playing robot.
The MPAA, like most pop culture censorship, was a response to Congressional pressure. The previous censorship entity, the Hayes Office, began in the 1930s and ushered in a truly wretched state of affairs. The films of the '20s are often adult (in the non-pr0n sense) in a way that wasn't seen again for years if ever. The MPAA is actually a far more moderate institutioin than what it replaced. And the reason it comes into being is to avoid more draconian measures being imposed. (Not that they aren't gutless wonders but it could be, and has been, worse.) This same basic theme was repeated in the 50s with the Congressional hearings that resulted in the "voluntary" Comics Code Authority censoring comic books, the 80s with music lyrics (listen to Frank Zappa's "Mothers of Prevention"), the 90s with video games, and now with the Internet. It is a badge of honor to be singled out for such treatment. It means the medium has arrived.
A frame of motion picture film may contain more information than is supposed to be shown on the theater screen. The projectionist(*) is then supposed to frame the projected image correctly so the stuff that is in the intended aspect ratio (note: NOT stuff "intended" to be seen since mistakes make it in frame all the time). I believe (don't know; still haven't bought them) that in the DVD releases of many of the Kubrick films the aspect ration is slightly off and you can see things that would not have been shown in the original release.
* Projectionist is a lost art and the machines don't always do a good job.
Re:That's not what they mean by "unique."
on
Who Owns Your Body?
·
· Score: 1
What share do you think would be "fair" for you to receive? Your contribution was to just be you. Presumably not terribly difficult. During a medical procedure that you consented to, certain bits of your body were removed (again with your consent). After the medical procedure (which hopefully left you better off than you were before the procedure) the left over bits that were removed from you were now waste to you. What were you going to do with them after all? The bits were used in medical research. The medical research may even benefit you again in the future.
Do you also think you should be compensated for any commercial uses made from your contributions to the sewer system? Those bits from your body may not be as potentially lucrative as biotechnology patents but they have commercial uses.
All sarcasm aside, I think the issue is whether or not gene patents ought to be allowed at all. The source of the genetic material is a much less interesting issue. I also think the characterization of the medical researchers (and yes, I am deliberately characterizing these persons as "medical researchers" over yor term "doctors") as "profiteering opportunists" is misleading. It is not as if there is a market for little bits of you that they are trying to corner. A great deal of work needs to be done before any profit could be realized.
I am also curious about what you think would constitute "abuse" of a patent that had its root in a bit of flesh removed from your body with your consent. (BTW, I keep saying "consent" because that would be the only way to get the bits. If they didn't get your consent, they would have "battered" you [not like an onion ring, like getting punched] and you could sue.) Please expand on that if you get a chance.
The Constitution (Sorry, US centric) gives the right to the PURSUIT of happiness, not the right to it. THere is a difference.
There is a difference. In documentation anyway. The Constitution says nothing about happiness. There is no "right" to happiness or even the pursuit thereof. You are thinking of the Declaration of Independence. A lovely document but of no legal signifigance.
The Preamble to the Constitution states: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Not voting can be a serious political statement. Unfortunately, I think most people who don't vote do so out of laziness rather than for respect of a principle. If there are no candidates you can support in an election, you shouldn't hold your nose and pick one. But you should go to Polling Place and cast a blank ballot. By doing that, you are making an affirmative choice not to vote. Anything else looks like laziness.
"Fair use" is a copyright doctrine. There is no fair use of a trademark. This isn't to say that it is always illegal to use a trademark without permission (e.g. product comparision advertising). Also, the statement "non-profit falls under fair use" implies that non-profit use of other people's IP is always OK. This is not true.
The first time I saw "Brazil" in the theatre, I was a couple of minutes late. I missed the fly falling into the teletype machine and changing "Tuttle" to "Buttle". When the police came to take Buttle away, I was at least as confused as he was. In retrospect, it tremendously enhanced the effect of the film.
Is it being good to the environment? Whose environment? Is that merely poluting less? Or ground vs. air vs. water polution? Is it forcing environmental standards on countries that never had the chance we had to polute in the first place? Is it killing rivers with toxic runoff while producing chips that consume less power?
Is it being good to workers? Which workers? People horribly underpaid by our standards but possibly well paid by theirs? Is it IT workers who routinely work insane hours yet often refuse to collectively bargain? Is it the anonymous person who empties my trash can?
Is it the shareholders?
Paper or plastic?
Obviously there are no easy answers. Framing the question in terms of "social responsibility" sets up a bogus dichotomy. You have to do DD and figure out what is important to you and what company best meets that standard. No shortcuts, sorry.
There are places in the US (notably Georgia) where the word "coke" is used generically for soda of all flavors. But anyone who orders Coca-Cola brand soda at a restaurant in the US has probably had this experience: Patron: I'd like a Coke please. Waitron: We don't have Coke. Is Pepsi OK? Patron: Sure. or No. The reason for this is that Coke works very hard at preventing the word "Coke" from becoming generic. One way they do this by sending an operative into a restaurant that they know serves Pepsi. The operative orders a Coke. If the waitron merely brings a glass of brown fizzy sugar water without offering the non-Coke disclaimer, the contents of the glass are kept and analyzed. If it turns out to be Pepsi, the restaurant will be used as an example. The Coca-Cola Company may instigate a full infringement suit that the restaurant couldn't possibly afford to litigate. The Coca-Cola Company may not settle but press it all the way to the end. This would be done as an implicit threat to every other restaurant. The message is: Don't Fuck With Coke. And the restauranteurs know this. So when you order Coke and they don't have it, you hear the "is Pepsi OK" magic words. I don't think Coke's march toward genericness has gone as far as you think it has. Coke has been much more aggressive for much longer than either the Kleenex or Band-Aid mark holders have been. But if you were to try and use "Kleenex" and "Band-Aid" in a publication without the capital letters, you will hear from their attorneys. More to the point, "Coke" the trademark has not lost it's distinctiveness in the sense meaningful here: the legal sense. If it had, I could market my own brand of brown sugar water and call it "Coke." A mark is either distinctive (to varying degrees) or generic. That's it. I don't think anyone really believes that "Coke" applied as a brand (as opposed to using it as a noun in the steel industry) is in any way generic.
I think the classic example is "celophane" which was a patented DuPont (I think) invention and when the patent expired they lost the brand "celophane" as well because the courts deemed that there was no substitute word. DuPont should have called the stuff "Celophane" brand transparent wrapping material or something similar.
Conflicts are not the issue with trademarks. Confusion is. The Coca-Cola Company owns a great many properties, real and intelectual, and does a great many things. One of the things The Coca-Cola Company does is manufacture a soft drink they brand Coca-Cola. This soft drink is also branded as Coke. The Coca-Cola Company owns trademarks to protect these brands. These include "Coca-Cola" (tm) and "Coke" (tm).
The Coca-Cola Company is probably the best commercial branding enterprise ever created. By spending untold millions (billions?) over the years marketing Coca-Cola the soft drink, The Coca-Cola Company has created a very strong association in the public between the trademark brands and the products. Be honest now: when someone says "coke" do you think soda or coal? In truth, it doesn't matter what you (or any specific individual) think. It matters what the hypothetical "average person" thinks. If you market a product branded Coke (e.g. Coke-brand cedar shoe inserts) and the "average person" would think that your product was manufactured by The Coca-Cola Company, then you have created Confusion over the mark and the courts will slap you down (remedies available to owners of trademarks whose marks are violated are extremely far reaching). It doesn't matter that The Coca-Cola Company doesn't (I presume) manufacture or market any cedar shoe products. If people are confused you are violating The Coca-Cola Company's mark.
Trademarks are unique in US IP law. Unlike patents and copyrights, a trademark need never expire. The protections offered by the law are far reaching. However, the protections are not automatic.
A copyright lasts until it expires, no matter what the "author" does (short of explicitly transfering the work to the public domain). A patent is still a patent whether or not the patent holder enforces it. But trademarks are different. They need to be regularly renewed. The owner of the mark must proactively police the mark. If they do, they can develop very strong trademarks that mae their brands powerful money making machines. See "Coke" for a good example. If they don't the mark "loses distinctiveness" and becomes generic. This means the mark dies. See "aspirin" which used to be "Aspirin" and owned by the original Bayer.
Trademarks holders that don't police their marks lose their marks. And a mark holder cannot decide to let certrain "benign" infringements pass. If they do they risk losing the mark entirely. The only available options are licensing the mark or forbiding its use. And if you decide to license it you create a huge number of potential headaches for yourself. What if the licensed product maims somebody? After all, they trusted your mark as an indicator of quality. Blah blah blah.
So when somebody registers coke.ch, The Coca-Cola Company has to go after them. And besides, who is he kidding? coke.ch? Why not cocaineabuse.ch or something like that? "Coke" the mark is powerful because The Coca-Cola Company made it powerful. They are entitled to reap the benefits of the powerful mark and have an affirmative duty to protect the mark.
I think advances in public health, particularly clean water supplies and childhood immunizations, are the pinacle achievement of the 20th century. They will provide the foundation for the unimaginable feats of the 21st.
I misunderstood your post. I thought you were asking about Hobbes generally.
As for why a "liberal minded person should take account of Hobbes," they should do it if it is relevant. Hobbes' work addresses the role of governments in human society. If a person is going to discuss the role of governments on an aspect of human society, especially if they argue their is no role for government, they should be aware of Hobbes' ideas (if not necessarily Leviathan itself) and discuss them.
I don't think you mean it this way but you seem to be arguing that if you don't agree with what someone is saying you don't need to pay any attention to what they say. What matters is how influential their argument is. If it well expressed or popularly believed or raises troubling questions about your own argument, it needs to be addressed. Whatever the drawbacks to Hobbes' political philosophy, his ideas are worthy of consideration. If you say government = bad than you should address those ideas.
Hobbes was a philosopher (not the tiger) who wrote this long, long book called _Leviathan_. The 1 sentence summary of the work is that people are so inherently rotten and willing to do bad to one another that even the worst government is better than no government at all. Hobbes would have thought spam was inevitable. See http://www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/l eviathan-contents.html Hobbes' big quote (not from Leviathan I don't think) was "Life is nasty, brutish, and short." Not a real fun guy at the company softball game.
Slashdot Mirror
From the culture that brought you "Benny Hill" . . .
The first Robot Wars (that I know of anyway) was a live, ticketed event in 1994 at the Herbst Pavilion in San Francisco. It was fun and the t-shirt didn't suck. What I remember most was the intermission "entertainment" by Survival Research Laboratories which was this giant steel robot-thing. It spewed flame from a pulse jet (or so I was told, I don't know squat about pulse jets) and it was unbelievably loud. They did this indoors and I swear I felt my organs moving around. Really. I went to the other side of the pavilion some 200 feet away with my hands clamped over my ears and it was all I could do to remain conscious. Anyway, check out the history of Robot Wars.
This is an excellent example of DVD's potential. Plus, it is one of the rare non-pr0n discs that uses the multiple angle feature.
Swiped from Amazon:
Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
Color, DTS Surround Sound, Box set, Dolby
7 camera angles during "Vrooom Vrooom"--the full band plus an angle for each of the six band members--plus 7 Dolby Surround mixes to choose from, highlighting each instrument.
Two camera angles available during "Frame by Frame," "Three of a Perfect Pair," "Indiscipline," and "People"
"21st Century Schizoid Band" - A revolutionary interactive musical game, where the player may compile their own version of "21st Century Schizoid Man" by choosing one of four rhythm sections, vocal tracks and soloists from any of various incarnations of King Crimson
"Tony's Road Movies" behind-the-scenes footage from bass player Tony Levin
Excerpts of written commentaries by Robert Fripp
Another nice bit is in the Criterion Robocop (or was it Starship Troopers?) DVD where you can use the multiple angle feature to view original storyboards while the movie is running.
Finally, I haven't seen it (yet) but I suspect there may be fun stuff in the Residents' "Icky Flix" DVD.
Rosebud was a sled. Whoops! Forgot to warn you. Sorry about that.
Who won in "Silent Running" on the Valley Forge? Bruce Dern or the "robot"? I haven't seen that movie in a long time but I recall a pool (some odd "futuristic" version) playing robot.
The MPAA, like most pop culture censorship, was a response to Congressional pressure. The previous censorship entity, the Hayes Office, began in the 1930s and ushered in a truly wretched state of affairs. The films of the '20s are often adult (in the non-pr0n sense) in a way that wasn't seen again for years if ever. The MPAA is actually a far more moderate institutioin than what it replaced. And the reason it comes into being is to avoid more draconian measures being imposed. (Not that they aren't gutless wonders but it could be, and has been, worse.) This same basic theme was repeated in the 50s with the Congressional hearings that resulted in the "voluntary" Comics Code Authority censoring comic books, the 80s with music lyrics (listen to Frank Zappa's "Mothers of Prevention"), the 90s with video games, and now with the Internet. It is a badge of honor to be singled out for such treatment. It means the medium has arrived.
A frame of motion picture film may contain more information than is supposed to be shown on the theater screen. The projectionist(*) is then supposed to frame the projected image correctly so the stuff that is in the intended aspect ratio (note: NOT stuff "intended" to be seen since mistakes make it in frame all the time). I believe (don't know; still haven't bought them) that in the DVD releases of many of the Kubrick films the aspect ration is slightly off and you can see things that would not have been shown in the original release.
* Projectionist is a lost art and the machines don't always do a good job.
What share do you think would be "fair" for you to receive? Your contribution was to just be you. Presumably not terribly difficult. During a medical procedure that you consented to, certain bits of your body were removed (again with your consent). After the medical procedure (which hopefully left you better off than you were before the procedure) the left over bits that were removed from you were now waste to you. What were you going to do with them after all? The bits were used in medical research. The medical research may even benefit you again in the future.
Do you also think you should be compensated for any commercial uses made from your contributions to the sewer system? Those bits from your body may not be as potentially lucrative as biotechnology patents but they have commercial uses.
All sarcasm aside, I think the issue is whether or not gene patents ought to be allowed at all. The source of the genetic material is a much less interesting issue. I also think the characterization of the medical researchers (and yes, I am deliberately characterizing these persons as "medical researchers" over yor term "doctors") as "profiteering opportunists" is misleading. It is not as if there is a market for little bits of you that they are trying to corner. A great deal of work needs to be done before any profit could be realized.
I am also curious about what you think would constitute "abuse" of a patent that had its root in a bit of flesh removed from your body with your consent. (BTW, I keep saying "consent" because that would be the only way to get the bits. If they didn't get your consent, they would have "battered" you [not like an onion ring, like getting punched] and you could sue.) Please expand on that if you get a chance.
There is a difference. In documentation anyway. The Constitution says nothing about happiness. There is no "right" to happiness or even the pursuit thereof. You are thinking of the Declaration of Independence. A lovely document but of no legal signifigance.
The Preamble to the Constitution states: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
I know that spelling criticisms are a low blow. But I love this sentence from section 3.7 of his FAQ:
"There seems to be a widespread, but fellatious, belief that denying incoming pings will render your host invisible to the outside world."
Do you need special hardware for that belief?
Not voting can be a serious political statement. Unfortunately, I think most people who don't vote do so out of laziness rather than for respect of a principle. If there are no candidates you can support in an election, you shouldn't hold your nose and pick one. But you should go to Polling Place and cast a blank ballot. By doing that, you are making an affirmative choice not to vote. Anything else looks like laziness.
Click for the FCC .PDF on slamming.
and for a more general FCC page on slamming
try this.
"Fair use" is a copyright doctrine. There is no fair use of a trademark. This isn't to say that it is always illegal to use a trademark without permission (e.g. product comparision advertising). Also, the statement "non-profit falls under fair use" implies that non-profit use of other people's IP is always OK. This is not true.
The first time I saw "Brazil" in the theatre, I was a couple of minutes late. I missed the fly falling into the teletype machine and changing "Tuttle" to "Buttle". When the police came to take Buttle away, I was at least as confused as he was. In retrospect, it tremendously enhanced the effect of the film.
Is it being good to the environment? Whose environment? Is that merely poluting less? Or ground vs. air vs. water polution? Is it forcing environmental standards on countries that never had the chance we had to polute in the first place? Is it killing rivers with toxic runoff while producing chips that consume less power?
Is it being good to workers? Which workers? People horribly underpaid by our standards but possibly well paid by theirs? Is it IT workers who routinely work insane hours yet often refuse to collectively bargain? Is it the anonymous person who empties my trash can?
Is it the shareholders?
Paper or plastic?
Obviously there are no easy answers. Framing the question in terms of "social responsibility" sets up a bogus dichotomy. You have to do DD and figure out what is important to you and what company best meets that standard. No shortcuts, sorry.
There are places in the US (notably Georgia) where the word "coke" is used generically for soda of all flavors. But anyone who orders Coca-Cola brand soda at a restaurant in the US has probably had this experience: Patron: I'd like a Coke please. Waitron: We don't have Coke. Is Pepsi OK? Patron: Sure. or No. The reason for this is that Coke works very hard at preventing the word "Coke" from becoming generic. One way they do this by sending an operative into a restaurant that they know serves Pepsi. The operative orders a Coke. If the waitron merely brings a glass of brown fizzy sugar water without offering the non-Coke disclaimer, the contents of the glass are kept and analyzed. If it turns out to be Pepsi, the restaurant will be used as an example. The Coca-Cola Company may instigate a full infringement suit that the restaurant couldn't possibly afford to litigate. The Coca-Cola Company may not settle but press it all the way to the end. This would be done as an implicit threat to every other restaurant. The message is: Don't Fuck With Coke. And the restauranteurs know this. So when you order Coke and they don't have it, you hear the "is Pepsi OK" magic words. I don't think Coke's march toward genericness has gone as far as you think it has. Coke has been much more aggressive for much longer than either the Kleenex or Band-Aid mark holders have been. But if you were to try and use "Kleenex" and "Band-Aid" in a publication without the capital letters, you will hear from their attorneys. More to the point, "Coke" the trademark has not lost it's distinctiveness in the sense meaningful here: the legal sense. If it had, I could market my own brand of brown sugar water and call it "Coke." A mark is either distinctive (to varying degrees) or generic. That's it. I don't think anyone really believes that "Coke" applied as a brand (as opposed to using it as a noun in the steel industry) is in any way generic.
I think the classic example is "celophane" which was a patented DuPont (I think) invention and when the patent expired they lost the brand "celophane" as well because the courts deemed that there was no substitute word. DuPont should have called the stuff "Celophane" brand transparent wrapping material or something similar.
Conflicts are not the issue with trademarks. Confusion is. The Coca-Cola Company owns a great many properties, real and intelectual, and does a great many things. One of the things The Coca-Cola Company does is manufacture a soft drink they brand Coca-Cola. This soft drink is also branded as Coke. The Coca-Cola Company owns trademarks to protect these brands. These include "Coca-Cola" (tm) and "Coke" (tm).
The Coca-Cola Company is probably the best commercial branding enterprise ever created. By spending untold millions (billions?) over the years marketing Coca-Cola the soft drink, The Coca-Cola Company has created a very strong association in the public between the trademark brands and the products. Be honest now: when someone says "coke" do you think soda or coal? In truth, it doesn't matter what you (or any specific individual) think. It matters what the hypothetical "average person" thinks. If you market a product branded Coke (e.g. Coke-brand cedar shoe inserts) and the "average person" would think that your product was manufactured by The Coca-Cola Company, then you have created Confusion over the mark and the courts will slap you down (remedies available to owners of trademarks whose marks are violated are extremely far reaching). It doesn't matter that The Coca-Cola Company doesn't (I presume) manufacture or market any cedar shoe products. If people are confused you are violating The Coca-Cola Company's mark.
Trademarks are unique in US IP law. Unlike patents and copyrights, a trademark need never expire. The protections offered by the law are far reaching. However, the protections are not automatic.
A copyright lasts until it expires, no matter what the "author" does (short of explicitly transfering the work to the public domain). A patent is still a patent whether or not the patent holder enforces it. But trademarks are different. They need to be regularly renewed. The owner of the mark must proactively police the mark. If they do, they can develop very strong trademarks that mae their brands powerful money making machines. See "Coke" for a good example. If they don't the mark "loses distinctiveness" and becomes generic. This means the mark dies. See "aspirin" which used to be "Aspirin" and owned by the original Bayer.
Trademarks holders that don't police their marks lose their marks. And a mark holder cannot decide to let certrain "benign" infringements pass. If they do they risk losing the mark entirely. The only available options are licensing the mark or forbiding its use. And if you decide to license it you create a huge number of potential headaches for yourself. What if the licensed product maims somebody? After all, they trusted your mark as an indicator of quality. Blah blah blah.
So when somebody registers coke.ch, The Coca-Cola Company has to go after them. And besides, who is he kidding? coke.ch? Why not cocaineabuse.ch or something like that? "Coke" the mark is powerful because The Coca-Cola Company made it powerful. They are entitled to reap the benefits of the powerful mark and have an affirmative duty to protect the mark.
I think advances in public health, particularly clean water supplies and childhood immunizations, are the pinacle achievement of the 20th century. They will provide the foundation for the unimaginable feats of the 21st.
m
1923 Diphtheria
1926 Pertussis
1927 Tuberculosis (BCG)
1927 Tetanus
1935 Yellow Fever
1955 Injectable Polio Vaccine (IPV)
1962 Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)
1964 Measles
1967 Mumps
1970 Rubella
1981 Hepatitis B
Taken from:
http://www.who.int/gpv-dvacc/history/history.ht
I couldn't agree more. Especially about Plato. His metaphysics is sublime but his political philosophy is awful. I much prefer Rawls.
I misunderstood your post. I thought you were asking about Hobbes generally.
As for why a "liberal minded person should take account of Hobbes," they should do it if it is relevant. Hobbes' work addresses the role of governments in human society. If a person is going to discuss the role of governments on an aspect of human society, especially if they argue their is no role for government, they should be aware of Hobbes' ideas (if not necessarily Leviathan itself) and discuss them.
I don't think you mean it this way but you seem to be arguing that if you don't agree with what someone is saying you don't need to pay any attention to what they say. What matters is how influential their argument is. If it well expressed or popularly believed or raises troubling questions about your own argument, it needs to be addressed. Whatever the drawbacks to Hobbes' political philosophy, his ideas are worthy of consideration. If you say government = bad than you should address those ideas.
Hobbes was a philosopher (not the tiger) who wrote this long, long book called _Leviathan_. The 1 sentence summary of the work is that people are so inherently rotten and willing to do bad to one another that even the worst government is better than no government at all. Hobbes would have thought spam was inevitable. See http://www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/l eviathan-contents.html Hobbes' big quote (not from Leviathan I don't think) was "Life is nasty, brutish, and short." Not a real fun guy at the company softball game.