Curse you to heck. I didn’t even listen to the thing, but that stupid song is stuck in my head anyway, just from reading about it.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Only Nine Days Left
Until Yuri’s Night. It will also be the twenty-seventh anniversary of the first Shuttle launch.
Looking at the map, the only Florida party I see is up in Cocoa Beach. Between Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, you’d think that south Florida would be able to come up with something.
Want To Poke Anti-War Hollywood In The Eye?
Go here.
News You Can Use
And just in time for Easter, too. Crucifixion is bad for your health.
Space Visionary
I don’t remember the first book I read by Arthur Clarke, or my age when I read it, but I would imagine that it was less than ten. But I do remember that, whatever book it was, it spurred me to go find more.
I’ll Second That
Derb again:
At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It’s not clear they understand this. They’ve been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative. The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.
I wouldn’t shed a tear if there was never another Olympics. Not that I care that much, one way or the other, because I don’t care about the Olympics, but I think that it demeans the event to hold it in dictatorships. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe we ought to have a democratic Olympics. Any country could send a team, but it would never be hosted in a place like China. Or most countries in the Middle East (not that there’s much prospect for that).
I’ll Second That
Derb again:
At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It’s not clear they understand this. They’ve been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative. The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.
I wouldn’t shed a tear if there was never another Olympics. Not that I care that much, one way or the other, because I don’t care about the Olympics, but I think that it demeans the event to hold it in dictatorships. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe we ought to have a democratic Olympics. Any country could send a team, but it would never be hosted in a place like China. Or most countries in the Middle East (not that there’s much prospect for that).
I’ll Second That
Derb again:
At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It’s not clear they understand this. They’ve been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative. The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.
I wouldn’t shed a tear if there was never another Olympics. Not that I care that much, one way or the other, because I don’t care about the Olympics, but I think that it demeans the event to hold it in dictatorships. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe we ought to have a democratic Olympics. Any country could send a team, but it would never be hosted in a place like China. Or most countries in the Middle East (not that there’s much prospect for that).
More Clarke Thoughts
From John Derbyshire:
It is plain from his life and his work that Clarke was deeply in love with the idea of space. In 1956 he went to live in Sri Lanka so that he could spend his spare time scuba diving, the nearest he could get to the silence, weightlessness, and mystery of space. That profound imaginative connection with the great void is one of the things that separates science fiction writers and fans from the unimaginative plodding mass of humanity — the Muggles. Clarke had it in spades. The other thing he dreamt of, and wrote about, constantly was alien civilizations: how incomprehensibly magical they will appear to us when we encounter them, and how they will deal with us.
He mentions Bradbury in his remembrance. Some thought of them as four: Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury. I never did. I like Ray Bradbury, both as an author, and personally (I met him occasionally when I lived in LA), but I never considered his work science fiction, at least not hard science fiction. It was more in the realm of fantasy and poetry to me (and of course, Fahrenheit 451, which was a political dystopia).
[Late morning update]
Bruce Webster agrees:
I’m not sure I’ve ever met, talked to, or read of an engineer or scientist who was inspired to become such because of something Bradbury wrote. I’m not saying they’re not out there — I just think it’s a very small number, especially when compared to Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.
Yes. I enjoyed some (though not all) of Bradbury’s work, but I was never inspired by it. It just seemed too far from an attainable reality to me.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Even Bradbury himself agrees:
First of all, I don’t write science fiction. I’ve only done one science fiction book and that’s Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. It couldn’t happen, you see? That’s the reason it’s going to be around a long time–because it’s a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.
No DiCaprio In This One
National Socialists chose the second part of their name for no particular reason – it’s anti-capitalist propaganda. The movie begins not on the dock, or on board, or in a boisterous café by the quay; no, it starts off in the White Star boardroom, where the eeeevil investors are figuring out the best way to manipulate the stock. Yes, that’s correct: insider trading sunk the Titanic. The head of White Star – a tall, dashing, cynical, cunning, selfish Bruce Ismay (snort) pushes the captain to reach New York in record speed to boost the stock, which had gyrated up and down prior to departure, and had been subject to large block purchases by other characters on the ship – oh, don’t ask. The interiors looks nothing like the Titanic, but the special effects aren’t bad, and it’s impressively shot. It’s just all wrong. Every frame is just saturated with a strong dose of Wrong.
Forgot the best part: the hero is a German. He’s a fictional officer who tries to warn everyone about the ice. He’s cool, composed, devoted to duty, and scornful of the capitalists. At least the Soviets had that Russian-soulfulness thing going, so their movies would be soaked with sloppy emotion and Slavic hymns; the Nazis were tin-eared thick-thumbed boors when it came to art. God help us if they’d won; I cannot imagine their sitcoms.
I just got my copy of Jonah’s book