Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: That's Entertainment!, in reply to Joanna,
LOL, what a blast from the past. Couldn't help but guffaw at the awesome grand prize, I fine example of which I recently saw covered in slime, dumped in the Whau Creek.*
Lockwood made some suss judgments too, on some wrong answers. But it didn't affect the outcome. Is that really our Tom?
*4 channels! But we only had 2 to watch!
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Deborah,
That's heartening to see in a big publication.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I did. But I'm pretty sure, when the time comes, and drug policy shifts towards good sense, that Garth George will not really find life no longer worth living. Or if he does, it won't be because of that. "Over my dead body" claims are so often given for things that people wouldn't really be prepared to die for.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I hope I’m dead and gone before drugs are legalised.
That's one hell of a dangerous thing to wish for.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to recordari,
No, Islander read it, not me! Yes, Banks is pretty amazing. I found The Algebraist to be pretty bizarre and interesting as a view of what the culture of an immortal species would be like. Kind of funny to think that a lot of immortals would just be Bertie Wooster style dickheads, spending their lives in something highly reminiscent of the World of Warcraft "endgame". Their interest in other species was rather like how the very highest level characters seemed to deal with lowbies - they could be helpful, or complete wankers who could gank you with a potato peeler naked (Southpark reference here). But no matter what, the most likely thing is that you couldn't really be of any concern to them for an awfully long time. The attack of an aggressive and powerful enemy was barely sufficient to rouse them from watching their equivalent of chariot racing, and only made local news on their planet. The defense was mounted by the equivalent of Open Source nerds, the only people who cared enough to bother.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Jackie Clark,
The description of the "normal" resonates scarily with me. That's definitely how I feel much of the time, especially on here!
Yes, word. The story Islander refers to describes something that happens to people quite a lot, although not on such an extreme scale.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Sacha,
Well to claim to be post modern, is a pretty big call, and suggests an end to modernity. I don't see that happening myself, which is half of what I found uncompelling about it.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Sacha,
upending modernism seems significant enough
For the 40th time in 3000 years? I'm being unfair, of course, the modern version draws on many new thoughts from social sciences and trends in art etc. I guess that's hinting at my point here - to me postmodernism seems like electronica (seemed to happen around the same time too), a vast conglomeration of many interests delivered in a particular way, that to readers not deeply initiated seems all rather same-same, derivative, and scarily ubiquitous (a false perception). To the initiated, it's a whole world unto itself, with a core of belief they believe is new, and a wide range of difference on the specifics. Who is really to say that it's not new? It's a perennial question - "what is true novelty". And I'm well aware that people living within a time are not especially capable of judging those times with accuracy. To be able to is a mark of genius.
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to Sacha,
To be fair, he's well beyond clever.
That's the only thing that really gives me pause in pronouncing the "end of X" where X is some human endeavor. The idea that we are unable to see the future and genius can strike at any time. Music could be revolutionized next year by something totally unforeseen, as could some branch of science, and we'll reflect that actually the period we lived through just had a dearth. I kept feeling this way about philosophy when I studied it, that the trend at the time toward postmodernism was profoundly depressing, because it seemed to me that it had happened many times before (and was well aware of this), and it was quite sad that there seemed to be no new ideas in that tradition. Perhaps there will be some genius (or school of geniuses) whose thought is so profound and new that they won't look out of place in the philosophical pantheon. One thing is for sure, humans have been predicting the end of days since the beginning of days, and they've been wrong every time so far.
Edit: Also, the idea that nothing ever looks so secure and unassailable as the colossal empire that has stood the test of time, days before it topples to a barbarian horde.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to webweaver,
An informed choice allows some people to choose to say no and gives them strength to resist peer pressure
It also gives the peer group power the ability to actually intervene where that would work. Recognizing people in trouble isn't something that's just automatic.
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