Hard News: Problems
289 Responses
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merely because I do not like geek culture
Bah. That is not an honest description of your posting. You are free to 'dislike'. It is the representation of 'geek culture' as morally and intellectually corrupt and politically incorrect and even a probable cause of the global financial crisis, then demanding its banning and assuming to yourself the right to set the agenda that everyone else must follow in discussion that goes beyond 'dislike'.
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I don't think Paul really did those all those things, Kracklite, although he ought to have let people get on with the conversation they wanted to have, after his initial comment.
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And yet we would all get on splendidly over a few drinks, where the tone would be easier to figure, the corrections and adjustments would come sooner and the mutual good intent would be more apparent.
Hah, bet not. You'd probably argue about whose got the best Scotch. :)
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We do have some good beers in this country, they're just not made by DB, or New Zealand Breweries.
I noticed that the bottle of Steiny that someone else was drinking says on it "New Zealand's Number One Beer" or words to that effect. Are the other products of that organisation New Zealand's #2 - #20 beers?
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You'd probably argue about whose got the best Scotch
I believe Russell can testify to previous evidence of mutual good intent on that front. They're all good, even though we have faves.
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even though we have faves.
See, and after a few there'd be arguments :)
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When you add riders about having outgrown sci-fi and comics, you imply that genre fiction as a whole is generally less legitimate. It's really not.
Not actually what I said, tho, Lucy. What I said was: "Generally speaking, my sci-fi and comic book days are long behind me."
I grew up with two twin passions: music and the normal geek boy stuff - sci-fi, fantasy, etc. As I got older, my interest broadened. And I've realised, that despite all the hype surrounding whatever heartbreaking work of staggering genius has been released this week, most of it sucks.
Benjamin Button? Meh. The Dark Knight? Meh. There will be blood? Meh. Juno? Lost? Firefly? The Sarah Connor chronicles? Give me a break...
I used to have time to spend hours sifting the sludge for the gold. Now I don't. So I tend to wait until the knocking on the door is too loud to ignore. I didn't start watching BSG until late 2008. It's been running since 2003. I didn't start watching 'The Wire' until this year. It's been running since 2002.
So: ""Generally speaking, my sci-fi and comic book days are long behind me." As are my days of searching out new obscure releases from the latest indie/rock/techno act du jour, or whatever. Don't have the time, don't have the money. So someone else can do all the hard work, and i'll live on the word-of-mouth.
@Paul: I can't be bothered trawling back through 11 pages of comments, but I don't recall you doing anything except complain that the conversation was not to your liking.
However, your partly appeared to be inferring that those who are passive observers of politics, and yet still expect change initiated externally are bound to be disappointed, and don't have the right to complain.
So those who only passively participate in a conversation, and yet are disappointed in the direction which the conversation goes are.....what, exactly?
Russell has made a valient attempt to jumpstart a parallel conversation about the state of American politics and the economy. Would you care to chat about that?
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Before even the first world war, a 'geek' named Herbert George Wells read a paper by Ernest Rutherford. He deduced that energy from nuclear reactions could release tremendous amounts of energy which could be turned to military purposes. He wrote a novel called The World Set Free which depicted the first nuclear war. That novel was read by the Hungarian Jewish physicist Leo Szilard in the 1930s, who was at that tine a refugee from Nazism in London. Nobody listened to him. Later, he contacted his friend Albert Einstein who signed a letter to Franklin Roosevelt warning of the dangers of such a weapon in the hands of the Nazis. Thus was born the Manhattan Project.
Th Einstein-Szilard letter wasn't written until 1939, by which time Szilard and Fermi had demonstrated experimentally the feasibility of a chain reaction. Szilard had first conceived of the practical use of nuclear energy in 1933, based, I feel, on his research, not on reading sci-fi. HG Wells also wrote a book describing an attack by invading Martians, which is not a threat we have so far had to deal with. If Wells had written romantic fiction, atomic bombs would still have been invented.
This is one thing that irritates me about "geek culture" - the conflation of entertaining fiction with actual scientific discovery. Like the claim that Arthur C Clarke invented the communications satellite. He didn't, he predicted it. Scientists in the Soviet Union and at NASA made it happen.
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Before even the first world war, a 'geek' named Herbert George Wells read a paper by Ernest Rutherford.
...
Thus was born the Manhattan Project.
Man. Now you've fucked up my day. 'Cause the other way to look at it was that it's Wells' fault, and that's going to take some thought.
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Paul, like Islander I'm a long-time admirer of your work, and like Sacha I wonder about the rather uncharacteristic tone here. So I didn't mean 'piss off', because if I'd meant that, I would have said it. When I said 'have the discussion you want to have', that's what I meant.
I feel like this should be some kind of Godwin-esque interweb law of probability or something. The more any person attempts to anoint themselves the On-Topic Police, the less likely it is that anyone in the thread will remain on-topic.
One day, when I write the book on Stuff I Have Learned About Net Communities, this'll be chapter one: you cannot make a community be something it doesn't want to be. If you try to bend it, you break it.
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What on earth did I miss? Is it lost in the copyright thread somewhere
Somewhere on the internet there's Mark Harris/Robbery slash fic that someone has written, or is thinking about writing. Y'just know it.
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I believe Russell can testify to previous evidence of mutual good intent on that front. They're all good, even though we have faves.
Oh, I've tasted bad whisky. Readers may recall the dread 45 South.
But even that came from the plant that made the Lammerlaw single malt, whose remaining barrels were acquired by Warren Preston and are now being marketed as the not--at-all-bad Milford single malts.
I would however point out that we do have a whole post about whisky to savour today.
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Somewhere on the internet there's Mark Harris/Robbery slash fic that someone has written, or is thinking about writing. Y'just know it.
Eeew.
But I'm told chicks dig that stuff ...
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I don't really see how it is surprising/bad that people are more likely to discuss with reference to cultural artifacts they have in common than, well, whatever the alternative is.
We could be sitting around in 18th century Dublin talking about all the resonances in that one piece that guy Swift wrote - the people who had read it would have common ground, the people who didn't might sit out or go off and get a copy or complain about how we should be discussing something Properly Worthy like Herodotus.
All of this has happened before and will happen again.
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Rich, I'm no satellite expert but aren't you confusing coming up with an idea - which I had always understood was original and well enough developed in this case (unless you have evidence otherwise) - and turning it into reality. There's nothing to build unless someone thinks of it, which doesn't contradict the idea not being very useful on its own.
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@Paul: I can't be bothered trawling back through 11 pages of comments, but I don't recall you doing anything except complain that the conversation was not to your liking.
No, the conversation, about the global economy and so on, was fine. Then someone comes along and wants to talk about a sci-fi TV show, which is hardly relevant to the topic. I expressed my frustration at such.
However, your partly appeared to be inferring that those who are passive observers of politics, and yet still expect change initiated externally are bound to be disappointed, and don't have the right to complain.
I neither inferred nor implied any such thing. My argument was that we would perhaps be in a better place economically and politically if we had paid more attention to history rather than indulging ourselves in flights of fantasy. People seem to think that political allegory is a substitute for political action. People need to be informed and active about what is going on here and now, not in a galaxy far, far away.
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Eeew.
But I'm told chicks dig that stuff ...
Dude, there are *limits*.
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People need to be informed and active about what is going on here and now, not in a galaxy far, far away.
Yeah, but - why are you assuming that everyone here is not informed or active just because *this particular thread* wandered off-topic? The PAS features lots of informed political and current events discussion every day. Assuming that we aren't or can't or won't think about both areas - false dichotomy.
But, you know what? When I go to my next Young Labour meeting, I'll make sure to tell them that I can't be informed or active about politics because I enjoy pop culture too much. I'm sure they'll understand.
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Emma,
thank you. I did not interpret your comment to mean 'piss off.' I merely think I should avoid arguments with people who accuse me of racism, sexism or antidisestablishmentarianism when I comment about TV shows about spaceships. In future I will just stick to the topic, and if the topic is derailed I will go somewhere else.
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hardly relevant to the topic
There's the problem - we may disagree about what is relevant.
Sure, allegory is no substitute for action, but perhaps you're confusing this space with a political organising forum, Paul. It isn't. Nor is BSG mindless fluff.
In the realm of talking about politics, referring to story and allegory to help make sense is as old as the hills in any culture, geeky or otherwise.
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ren't you confusing coming up with an idea - which I had always understood was original and well enough developed in this case
Clarke proposed the idea of communication satellites in 1945. The technology to actually put a satellite in geostationary orbit didn't exist until the early 1960's. I'd argue that once the technology was there, the use would have become obvious (which is clearly unprovable).
I have *invented* the idea of a system that uses AI to listen to conversations in a call centre, understand them and make appropriate entries in CRM systems. Obviously, this requires strong AI, which doesn't exist. I'd consider my idea to be worthless, as when the likes of Dr Pitt invent general AI, it'll be obvious that that's an application.
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Rich, I believe Einstein thought of a few things that weren't able to be followed up for about 50 years. Publish, register or otherwise stand behind your concepts and I'm sure you'll get some credit too when the talking shiny ones take over.
I have been told that we tend to confuse invention and innovation in this country. We're good inventers, but not so good at wrapping around the structure and detail that turns the idea into profitable and scalable actuality.
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Yeah, but - why are you assuming that everyone here is not informed or active just because *this particular thread* wandered off-topic?
I did no such thing. I was talking about our culture generally, not PAS (I agreed that PAS is an oasis, remember). We live in an era in which political leaders lie to us, in which our entire economy is collapsing and political discussion is diverted by talk of spaceships. I cannot help but see a connexion.
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We live in an era in which political leaders lie to us, in which our entire economy is collapsing and political discussion is diverted by talk of spaceships. I cannot help but see a connexion.
I love having the concept of 'panem et circenses' explained to me when I talk about popular culture on the internet. Because it's only happened about, oh, one million times. It's so... refreshing.
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We live in an era in which political leaders lie to us, in which our entire economy is collapsing and political discussion is diverted by talk of spaceships. I cannot help but see a connexion.
But why blame spaceships? Why not blame Paris Hilton, or the All Blacks, or U2? They all distract people from Serious Discussion, after all.
People will *always* be diverted by things that are not politics. Back in the seventeenth century, they could have been arguing about the Divine Right of Kings, and instead they were buggering off to see the latest play by that Shakespeare bloke. And yet the English Civil War still happened. The point isn't not what they're diverted by, or if. You're not going to get anywhere by attacking the diversion; you'll get somewhere by starting a discussion that holds their attention. Yeah, it's harder. It's also, in the long run, more effective.
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