mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
This is an entirely separate argument. My problem with Russell is that he reads the gospels and concludes that Jesus was a great moral teacher which is not one of the conclusions you can draw, no matter what you think of the reliability of the text or the events it describes.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
> why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness.
No Bertie. He did not leave that option open to us and never meant to. To call him a great moral teacher is to entirely miss the point. He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Nakatomi Space
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Nakatomi Space
I remember reading this post around the same time as I came across the concept of psychogeography, an interesting way of looking at how the exploration of our environments and how they're made up affects our attitude and emotions. Die Hard is a great example of this, so is The Shining. The deliberate disorientation and spatial impossibility of The Overlook conveys deep unease just by being what it is.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: 10 years with Hayao Miyazaki [video]
>only beautiful country where old women still gather acorns by hand, and 80 year-old men who are free to hone their lifelong craft of making tofu.
This is absolutely the atmosphere of My Neighbor Totoro.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)
I feel personally attacked :) Lots of symptoms of ADHD in here too as well as bipolar (I have both and enjoy Lisp too).
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Sixto Rodriguez has died
Saffer here who was privileged to see him live in Johannesburg. RIP man.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
An almost complete set of helicopter flight controls for XPlane out of wood, aluminum, potentiometers and USB controllers. Works exceptionally well for a virtual Huey.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Throw away your first draft of your code
Plan to throw one away. You will anyway.
- Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man Month.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Ask HN: Do you still use a hand held/desktop calculator?
HP12C and HP15C. I also have a 15C emulator on my desktop.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Johannesburg: Video captures moment suspected gas explosion threw buses into air
Methane explosion. If it was LPG gas there would have been a flame. Plus there are no gas lines in that particular block.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands
Hah - I remember this prod. Super Grover ftw! I had done some svgalib work so I had no problem running it as root. In those days I had a Cirrus Logic or a Matrox dual head.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings
That's sad. If only he had known 7 layer Flemish technique. On the other hand, then we wouldn't have his unique style.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings
I will, thanks!
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings
I went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam because I was there and it was on the bucket list. Pictures in a book or on web pages do not do justice to how vibrant the pictures are in real life. Plus, in the days before additional security was required, you could go right up to them (within reason) and check them out up close. They look like they were painted yesterday. Not everyone likes his work but I'm a fan.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: A proto-pizza emerges from a fresco on a Pompeii wall
>From a passage of Virgil’s Aeneid, (book VII, v.128 sgg.) it is possible to understand the position of fruits and other products of the fields, on sacrificial breads that function as “tables”. This reminds us of the moment in which the Trojan heroes who had finished their meal of fruits, chose to eat the bread which they had used as containers (tables). This showed the realisation of the Virgilian Epos, where a prophecy had stated that the Trojans would find a new homeland when they “arrived on unknown beaches, finished all the food,” and their hunger made them “devour also the tables”.
Once upon a time, I did the Aeneid in the original and we came across this meaning of the word 'mensa' as a bread base which was weird because it was the very first Latin word we had all learned: table. And then immediately afterwards in the text one of the warriors makes the joke that they're so hungry they're eating their tables as well. It still blows my mind that I could understand a pun written thousands of years ago and find it amusing.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: Tintin, Hergé and Chang
>Fans of the Adventures of Tintin comics by Hergé will remember the opening scene in Tintin in Tibet. Tintin has dozed off during a game of chess with Captain Haddock in a crowded café. He suddenly yells, “CHANG!!” so loudly that everyone in the restaurant jumps!
Hah. I just reread Tintin in Tibet recently and that panel is genius. Everyone in the restaurant jumps out of their seat with the exception of Professor Calculus who is course too deaf to hear.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: The real lesson of The Truman Show
Oh I agree. The euphoria doesn't last. People need to get on with their lives. None of us have any personal connection to these people nor could we influence their lives even if we tried. It's TV. Switch off or change the channel.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: The real lesson of The Truman Show
>And then there’s the audience: massive, constant, mistaking exploitation for fandom. As Truman struggles to escape—the island, the show, and the life that has been imposed on him—he commandeers a boat. The producers create a storm. He falls off the vessel, struggling in the water, gasping for breath. He could die, before their eyes. The audience at the Truman Bar is rapt. “I got two to one he doesn’t make it,” someone shouts. “Hey, I want a piece of that!” yells another. The exchange is 25 years old. It hasn’t aged a bit.
This comment completely ignores the ending where is clear that EVERYBODY watching him is happy, nay, ecstatic, that he escaped. It's part of the reason why the ending is so uplifting. It turns out that his fandom across the globe with their How Does It End? t-shirts really were rooting for him all along, just like us in the audience.
mav88
|
2 years ago
|
on: The Overhang Problem (2007) [pdf]
These diagrams remind me of Lemmings and the builders that would build staircases over gaps you needed to cross.
