Discordopedia, the Erisian encyclopedia with five tons of flax, is open for business. Actually, it's open for people to start adding content, and that may take some doing.
Anyway, an update on the mossy coconut: it has a completely new set of leaves, so it really doesn't look anything like what the picture up there shows. Also, I've been watering the thing like crazy, to keep the moss from drying out any more than it has already.
I miss the Show with Ze Frank, but brooding won't help anything. Oh well.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
(Intellectual) history repeats itself
These days, we like to pride ourselves on our ability to understand things more clearly than people of past generations. Removing sexism and racism from our literature and academia is certainly no small feat, but many issues seem to keep recurring as if no one had taken them seriously before.
The example I was thinking of is popular culture and its adverse effects on intellectuals. Thinking people, it seems, have always felt like a minority struggling against the blissfully ignorant stupid people. Robert Anton Wilson said that "the strongest conspiracy on the planet is the conspiracy of the stupid," and the truth behind that is almost hilarious when you think about it. All the talk about government conspiracies is made up of three parts: (1)the real conspiracy, which in my opinion is neither as powerful as some claim nor is it non-existent, (2)the joke conspiracy, which lampoons reality and reminds us to think twice before we believe what we're told, and (3)the conspiracy which is not an organized group that rules the world, but rather the sum total of human ignorance.
Believing that the majority of problems in the world is caused by general ignorance and stupidity is not a new one. Henry David Thoreau wrote "The whole ground of human life seems to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and valleys, and all things to have been cared for." Way back in the 1850's, people already knew that we were repeating ourselves. Thoreau talks about the Classical Greek writers and their seemingly incredible wisdom, and even more incredibly the fact that most people live in profound ignorance of them.
What the intellectuals want more than anything else, I think, is for everyone to be as smart as they are. They have wanted this for a long time, probably ever since being a reclusive scholar in an ivory tower ceased to be cool. Of course, they gathered in those ivory towers in the first place because they wanted to be with like-minded people, but that's beside the point.
The point is, if you've had any truly revolutionary ideas or thoughts, from yourself or from someone else, you should be proud of them, but also remember that someone else has probably thought of them already. Don't shirk history and old writings because they're old; accept the fact that those old books and ideas have persisted for a very good reason. Intellectuals of the past knew that they could not change the world around them in their own lifetimes, so they wrote down what they had learned in the hopes that others would use them to accelerate their own mental growth. We have, knowingly or not, inherited a legacy of fabulous intellectual wealth, and this "Information Age" we live in gives us the power to access as much of it as we choose. There is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants, since it would be an insult to those same giants if we say "No thanks, I'll reach enlightenment and save the world on my own, if you don't mind."
The example I was thinking of is popular culture and its adverse effects on intellectuals. Thinking people, it seems, have always felt like a minority struggling against the blissfully ignorant stupid people. Robert Anton Wilson said that "the strongest conspiracy on the planet is the conspiracy of the stupid," and the truth behind that is almost hilarious when you think about it. All the talk about government conspiracies is made up of three parts: (1)the real conspiracy, which in my opinion is neither as powerful as some claim nor is it non-existent, (2)the joke conspiracy, which lampoons reality and reminds us to think twice before we believe what we're told, and (3)the conspiracy which is not an organized group that rules the world, but rather the sum total of human ignorance.
Believing that the majority of problems in the world is caused by general ignorance and stupidity is not a new one. Henry David Thoreau wrote "The whole ground of human life seems to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and valleys, and all things to have been cared for." Way back in the 1850's, people already knew that we were repeating ourselves. Thoreau talks about the Classical Greek writers and their seemingly incredible wisdom, and even more incredibly the fact that most people live in profound ignorance of them.
What the intellectuals want more than anything else, I think, is for everyone to be as smart as they are. They have wanted this for a long time, probably ever since being a reclusive scholar in an ivory tower ceased to be cool. Of course, they gathered in those ivory towers in the first place because they wanted to be with like-minded people, but that's beside the point.
The point is, if you've had any truly revolutionary ideas or thoughts, from yourself or from someone else, you should be proud of them, but also remember that someone else has probably thought of them already. Don't shirk history and old writings because they're old; accept the fact that those old books and ideas have persisted for a very good reason. Intellectuals of the past knew that they could not change the world around them in their own lifetimes, so they wrote down what they had learned in the hopes that others would use them to accelerate their own mental growth. We have, knowingly or not, inherited a legacy of fabulous intellectual wealth, and this "Information Age" we live in gives us the power to access as much of it as we choose. There is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants, since it would be an insult to those same giants if we say "No thanks, I'll reach enlightenment and save the world on my own, if you don't mind."
Thursday, April 5, 2007
This is not Sparta, but I know a place...
I watched the 300 last week, and I must say, it was one helluva movie. It was sort of like as if the battle at Helm's Deep in the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers had been extended into a 90-minute movie. Except for the fact that the bad guys were Persians, not Uruk-Hai. And it was set in ancient Greece, not Middle Earth. And the Spartans organized in phalanx warfare, not medieval warfare. Also, it was way more violent.
In fact, forget the analogy altogether. It was a neat movie, all right? Do not bring little kids to see it, however. Some people brought a little kid into the movie, and after the first battle scene he started crying. At first, I was ticked off because it ruined the mood, but then I was even more ticked off when I wondered "Why are you bringing a kid to see this movie? Not only is it rated R, the title of the movie is written as a stylized blood spatter on the poster and in the previews." If a young kid didn't cry during that movie, I'd think there was something wrong with them. At least the people behind us had the good sense to take the kid out of the theater.
I liked how the movie was unapologetic about the viciousness of the Spartans. Regardless of whether or not the Spartans were that brutal (although I'm inclined to believe they were), nobody wants to watch a film about the battle of the three hundred Spartans against Persia's massive army if it's going to go off on wussy tangents about clemency towards the enemy and making peace. The 300 was dramatic, theatrical, and heart-pounding. I walked out feeling exhausted. The only real flaw was the shallowness of the political intrigue, but I suppose it can be difficult to write those sort of scenes when making a movie out of a graphic novel.
Moving on, I'd like to draw your attention to this thing called Vaporstory. It's a "collaborative fictional encyclopedia," which basically means they're writing a fictional world into existence. I like the people there (all 16 of them), but this thing desperately needs help. The whole place seems to be having trouble maintaining its focus, and it suffers from a lack of solid content from which to build. Anyone who has tried to write a fantasy or science fiction story or tried to invent a Dungeons & Dragons campaign from scratch probably understands the problem: it's easy to come up with names of people and places, but very quickly you realize how hard it is to make it more than a name. To make a believable fictional world, people and things have to interact like real people and things would. This is why I don't like Final Fantasy; everything is just completely made up and the story seems to happen independently from the setting(s). There's no sense of realism or sustainability in the entire fictional universe.
So, if you would be so kind, please visit Vaporstory and make some contributions. Don't worry about clashing with what's already written, just fill in the empty spaces. This is especially good for anyone who knows a bit of history and/or socioeconomic stuff.
In fact, forget the analogy altogether. It was a neat movie, all right? Do not bring little kids to see it, however. Some people brought a little kid into the movie, and after the first battle scene he started crying. At first, I was ticked off because it ruined the mood, but then I was even more ticked off when I wondered "Why are you bringing a kid to see this movie? Not only is it rated R, the title of the movie is written as a stylized blood spatter on the poster and in the previews." If a young kid didn't cry during that movie, I'd think there was something wrong with them. At least the people behind us had the good sense to take the kid out of the theater.
I liked how the movie was unapologetic about the viciousness of the Spartans. Regardless of whether or not the Spartans were that brutal (although I'm inclined to believe they were), nobody wants to watch a film about the battle of the three hundred Spartans against Persia's massive army if it's going to go off on wussy tangents about clemency towards the enemy and making peace. The 300 was dramatic, theatrical, and heart-pounding. I walked out feeling exhausted. The only real flaw was the shallowness of the political intrigue, but I suppose it can be difficult to write those sort of scenes when making a movie out of a graphic novel.
Moving on, I'd like to draw your attention to this thing called Vaporstory. It's a "collaborative fictional encyclopedia," which basically means they're writing a fictional world into existence. I like the people there (all 16 of them), but this thing desperately needs help. The whole place seems to be having trouble maintaining its focus, and it suffers from a lack of solid content from which to build. Anyone who has tried to write a fantasy or science fiction story or tried to invent a Dungeons & Dragons campaign from scratch probably understands the problem: it's easy to come up with names of people and places, but very quickly you realize how hard it is to make it more than a name. To make a believable fictional world, people and things have to interact like real people and things would. This is why I don't like Final Fantasy; everything is just completely made up and the story seems to happen independently from the setting(s). There's no sense of realism or sustainability in the entire fictional universe.
So, if you would be so kind, please visit Vaporstory and make some contributions. Don't worry about clashing with what's already written, just fill in the empty spaces. This is especially good for anyone who knows a bit of history and/or socioeconomic stuff.
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