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Who are you anyway ?

Started by Jesrad, July 23, 2008, 12:48:14 PM

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LMNO

I suppose that depends;

How many semi-colons does Bradbury use?

AFK

From my recollection, not many. 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Rumckle

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 24, 2008, 03:39:51 AM
Quote from: Rumckle on July 24, 2008, 03:37:51 AM
That's what the ? mark was for, because beatniks are generally too high to take seriously, except about the brown acid

What?   :lulz:

The Beatnik era was LONG dead when Woodstock hit.

Wrong decade altogether.

fucking history,

-5 points for me
It's not trolling, it's just satire.

East Coast Hustle

Quote from: Nigel on July 24, 2008, 07:22:40 AM
Beatniks wrote pretty much everything worth reading in the 20th century.

wut
Rabid Colostomy Hole Jammer of the Coming Apocalypse™

The Devil is in the details; God is in the nuance.


Some yahoo yelled at me, saying 'GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH', and I thought, "I'm feeling generous today.  Why not BOTH?"

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: East Coast Hustle on July 25, 2008, 05:15:37 AM
Quote from: Nigel on July 24, 2008, 07:22:40 AM
Beatniks wrote pretty much everything worth reading in the 20th century.

wut

:lulz:

Not actually true, but if you take a 20th century lit class it will APPEAR to be true. Also, I was going to add modifiers but then my statement lacked teeth.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


DeMoore

Quote from: Jesrad on July 23, 2008, 12:48:14 PM
Face it: everything that passes through your brain is really someone else's identity-froth, collected and passed on until it got stuck there somehow. It means you're not a specific "someone", but really a mix of other people's identities poured by accidents in that particular blob of greasy neurons in your head. You're not even really living yet. You're not someone, yet. You're not, yet.

I don't this as the problem.  If true living is defined as being a source of unique or different concepts then we're all fucked and have been for a great while.  I would agree (up to a point) that its statistically likely that every possible idea has already passed through the mind of a sentient creature at some point.  I'd also find it likely that one individual, given a normal lifespan, could not possibly come close to thinking of each of those ideas on their own, even with a limitless body of data to expose themselves to.  Furthermore, for each of those idea that our collective species has thought up, how many have we tried?  Of those, how many have succeeded?  How many of the failures were done right?

The problem isn't in being defined by others' ideas; its in being defined by others' RESULTS.  There were plenty of people who thought of powered flight before that first bicycle-powered glider got airborne, and I've seen enough comical attempts to fly to estimate that, of the limited number who got off their asses and tried, most of those thinkers failed miserably.  Its not the people that think of new things that matter, its the ones who are willing to try, and (far more importantly) willing to fail that are really living. 

What I'm trying to say is, if you didn't have an epiphany today, don't sweat it.  If you didn't have a goal, time to evaluate.
"Tonight I go to hell
For what I've done to you
This ain't about regret
Its when I tell the truth"
-The Afghan Whigs, "Debonair"

Dysnomia

Quote from: Jesrad on July 23, 2008, 12:48:14 PM
STOP JUST PERPETUATING THE EXISTENCE OF OTHERS
GET STARTED EXISTING YOURSELF BEFORE YOU DIE

YUO'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!  WHAT IF I WANT TO PERPETUATE THE EXISTENCE OF OTHERS?
It's all fun and games, till someone gets herpes.

http://cdn.smosh.com/smosh-pit/122010/mow-the-lawn.gif

Reverend Loveshade

Quote from: Jesrad on July 23, 2008, 12:48:14 PM
This is a counterthought of a much older post of mine where I called upon the statistically-expected geniuses of the world to Get Up And Do Something Already: with 6 billion people alive, we should have about as many Great Artists / Scientists as there have been during the last several millenia, yet we don't, so I shall blame them for their own inaptitude at living up to my mathematically-backed expectations of them. This text thakes the opposite stand: that we do not have those many geniuses, and why. Maybe playing on those two conflicting views can bring something up in unsuspecting readers ?

Assuming that there are the same percentage of geniuses as in the past, and assuming that not as high of a percentage of them do great work:

In science, things have changed.  As a friend of mine who is a scientist explained it to me, in Albert Einstein's day, a scientist could get money because, "I want to check this out because it looks interesting and we might learn something."

Nowadays, science has turned into a business.  "How will your project help national defense?  Is it going to give us a worthwhile energy source?"   Einstein essentially said, "Well, if this element existed, which it doesn't, and if this process were possible, which it probably isn't, it might do something interesting but I really don't know what."  Had Einstein been forced to answer those questions before getting any money to do the thinking and research that transformed both national defense and energy (atomic bomb/nuclear power), Albert might have been a plumber.
"Threats should not be tolerated. They're demeaning, they're violations to human rights and no one deserves them."

-- navkat, 20 June 2007, principiadiscordia.com

Reverend Loveshade

I just found this quote.  Don't know if the source is accurate or not, but if the quote fits....

"When a man of true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign, that all the Dunces are in Conspiracy against him."

- Jonathan Swift
"Threats should not be tolerated. They're demeaning, they're violations to human rights and no one deserves them."

-- navkat, 20 June 2007, principiadiscordia.com

Nast

 :lulz:

Your bloated sense of self-importance tickles me.
"If I owned Goodwill, no charity worker would feel safe.  I would sit in my office behind a massive pile of cocaine, racking my pistol's slide every time the cleaning lady came near.  Auditors, I'd just shoot."