Why? Surely, life isn't a math or other contest.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
Did you see the "Unabomber" movie? Look what they did to him.
P.S. Say, is there, like, a music listeners' contest or something?
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Why? Surely, life isn't a math or other contest.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
Did you see the "Unabomber" movie? Look what they did to him.
P.S. Say, is there, like, a music listeners' contest or something?
I recommend it to the math-minded because I suspect many of them will be able to relate to the main character and thereby feel more connected in this world.
Actually he epitomizes a young WOV-er, at least the ones who have a touch of Asperger Syndrome and are better with math / science than with people.
I don't know the reason that some people want to be another Jesus, Einstein, Mother Teresa, or Kung Fu et al.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
I think that it's much better to be a fucked-up mix. Ha.
Anyway, I had the exact same thought, about the Wizard's big hope in life having been to be that kid in the movie. Well, the "Wiz" never even really got going. He's that mathematically challenged. The math version of Asperger's. Well, both versions.
Thanks again Mr. V, I watched it. A coming of age film for the mathematically gifted was the take I got out of it - definitely not a common angle as coming of age films go, which often are focused on regular young folks.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
Back to reality, for a moment.
Who wants to connect to the world depicted in the documentary, "The Planet of the Humans"?
https://yifymovies.tv/movies/planet-of-the-humans-2019/
What always happens with geniuses is that, later in life, they realize that they wasted their lives. Awfully smart, in one way, translates to pitifully stupid, in another.
The notion of judging oneself and one's success or failure in life seems a slippery slope indeed.
With no absolute standards, who is to judge, and using what criteria?
Me, I judge myself as being successful based upon the following:
I have never been arrested and jailed/ imprisoned;
I have raised a family and have heirs;
My ex-wife and current wife both hold me in their good graces;
I've worked at a job that I didn't hate and have made a good living;
My physical and mental health have been good (no depression).
Mr. V, I decided to go down the Rabbit Hole and watched the documentary (made by the same film maker) on which the film you recommended was based. I thought it was terrific and found Jos Gibbons to be an extremely humorous fellow:
https://vimeo.com/280394869
It was thought provoking and elicited empathy, no question.
A person can't really ask for more than that. Good job.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
Reading your words carefully - carefully written words - I get the impression that you are comfortably numb, or thus ready to die.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrOQC-zEog
Quote:
You have taken away my pain, you have anaesthetised me, but you haven’t made me happy. These are lyrics written with the acute awareness of the melancholy that we experience sometimes, late at night. This song has a very clear vision, carved out of pain and the will to survive.
Quote:
Of course, there could be various interpretations of this. In a metaphorical sense, it could mean that the protagonist has been given a ‘fix’ in order that he can adequately address his life, society and relationships, which have become nothing more than a show to him. Society doesn’t care about the effects of drugs, just so long as they serve their purpose.
There’s no pain, but you’re receding. Like a distant ship smoking on the horizon.
Maybe, we go from being another brick in the wall, to comfortably numb.Quote:
The main theme is the distance between our minds and the perception of reality because of artificial relief. In other words, we may not suffer, but that does not make us alive; escaping from life and its problems actually deprives us of something. This is the meaning of the song: life is out there; I prefer to face it and let it hurt me, than lose all sense of feeling.
Depression, in Comfortably Numb, is just a grey waiting room, where everything is reminiscent of death. The absence of pain is not happiness. The doctor in the lyrics takes away the pain to get the show going, but it doesn’t work. It only increases the distance, and even the voice on the record sounds more distant.
Uh .... no.Quote:
Originally Posted by Garnabby
While I do not fear the prospect of dying, knowing as I do that death is inevitable and unstoppable, I do not welcome it nor wish that my death arrive sooner rather than later.
As far as feeling numb, I must say that this sheltering in place is wearing very thin and the lack of in person contact with others, especially family, is difficult to bear; my Covid-19 recommended isolation has led me to return to this board, I suppose, to get a "fix" of human interaction.
My post outlined the subjective factors I include in judging whether I have been "successful," nothing more.
Although I've only explored the USA and Canada, I feel I have seen a lot of the world and its peoples through the movies, documentaries, and youtube videos I've seen: nothing like "seeing the world from the comfort of your home."
Here's a movie I saw a few years ago that just took me away and immersed me, albeit briefly, in their world ... a brilliant film.
"The Eagle Huntress."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfi5JS6HTH0
The Wrecking Crew."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhl-3EOYTkc
I imagine that those people have no idea that you exist, and, much less, care.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
Well, duh: that was un unusually STUPID comment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Garnabby
Of course people in remote Mongolia are unaware of my personal existence.
However, if a movie maker made a film about me and the Mongols watched the movie of me in their yurts, just as I viewed the movie of them on my home theater, then things would even out.
Please consign future flippant remarks to the peanut gallery as "the theory of everything" should have at its heart, at its very foundation, a serious world view.
Garnabbly, if you cannot take things seriously, well, what good are you?
City of Industry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOYAUBTleBw
MrV, I was just trying to help you to keep things in perspective.Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterV
Stuff like people in "yurts", and their eagles, well, doesn't mean much to me. Why should, or ought it? I mean, regardless that I grew up on a farm, actually two farms side-by-side, and, saw all of that stuff, in one form or another - which you seem to relish as unearthly amazing in each of these posts of yours - but, often, in several different ways on a daily or weekly basis. Farmers come to have a natural knack with animals of all sorts big and small, and tame and wild. Try to envisage a 160 pound man, with only a rope, back off and subdue an uncooperative thousand or two pound cattle beast. Any given minute on a farm with anything on it could be your last. Off hand, I recall at least one of likely many that could have been my last save for a quick thinking father and/or what he taught me. But I had other interests. Farming wasn't my thing. Luckily, academics were.
You come off quite the stupid city slicker who tries so hard to compound things with the bit of intelligence you must have. With everything you talk about on the forums. Let me guess. When you travel, do you fly from one McDonald's to the next? Does your wife not let you walk out of the hotel lobby to look around a bit? Life isn't about comfortably waiting to die, from the moment of birth, but, experiencing the great highs, and the lows it took to get there. And, the forever memories. No guts, no glory. But, not the idiotic sort of movies.
A university friend of mine had me out to an introductory martial arts class. The instructor started out, said that he could take any of us as far as we wanted to go with it. That going to China would be going a long way to get ripped off. Anyway, I have zero time to run around trying to pretend that I learned anything about "yurts" and eagles from any movie. Movies should be about Christmas and like so that people don't forget how fucked up they (the movies) are, to begin with.
I have a real and actual theory of everything. I am happy with my progress, over the years, and, am confident that I have effectively completed it. The harder problems, the ones that took the longest to solved got pushed back, on to the end. I guess that this is normal with any long project. As the other problems fall away, there is more time to focus on the harder ones. For sure, I couldn't care less what anyone else says of my theory of everything. Again, the reason that I will post its gist up here, first, is that I want to become comfortable with explaining it, and, to remember to fill in some of the gaps along the way. Which better place? Write whatever you want about me, and my theory. I feel great about it. The pursuit of a lifelong question that no movie could, ever, do justice.
Now back to your typewriter and crosswords. Maybe, go hold hands with the Wizard of Vegas, some more. Another nut-job.
You're full of shit, Garnabby.Quote:
Originally Posted by Garnabby
Lots of North Americans grew up on a farm and NONE of them grew up in the Mongol culture where hunting with eagles was a goal to be aspired toward.
No sir, guys like you are consigned to the earth, like worms, not to the sky, like eagles.
You think you've seen it all?
Pshaw, in the grand scheme of things you've seen nothing.
At least I recognize and admit my limitations; you careen along here like a blind drunk in the dark, slamming into the furniture, raging that although blind you can somehow see things clearly.
You can't, you don't: you're not a god, there are none.
Sorry to disappoint you; no, you will continue to live a meaningless life until it's time for your final dirtnap, then you'll embrace oblivion, as must we all.
Wasn't it Aristotle who wrote, however, that doing one thing well does everything well? Maybe, you might want to try to parse it out. I've already done it somewhere, recently. Might have been on the English forum. Anyway, I know how such phrases take on a lot of "lipstick", over the course of, say, a couple thousand years.
Off hand, aren't there falconers, in the states?
Oh well, I guess not many cared about the specific aspiration here.Quote:
Although humans have practiced falconry for thousands of years, it never really caught on in the US. Estimates put the number of active falconers in the country somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 (up from maybe 1,500 in the mid-20th century), whereas in Dubai alone Sego believes there are as many as 20,000.
No, certainly, I didn't write, or even think, that I've seen it all. As surely, though, not everything interests me. Incidentally, very few things don't cross the mind of someone who works on a theory of everything. I never had to pursue astrology, running out to look at eclipses, wondering when they occurred, stuff like organ donations/transplants. Stuff of other areas which surprises me, now and then when I come across it. It helps to transcribe a given problem into as many different areas of thought as possible. A theory of everything requires that thousands of different straightforward approaches be studied. And, best that one can give up on (pet) finger-holds that begin not to pan out, and, then, adapt to acquire new ones. What I meant by, finding your other. Yes, it sounds that you'd be a horrible theoretical physicist, let alone multi-disciplined. For one thing, you have notions that, I guess, you hate to have even others trounce on. For another, well, you are way too worried about that seat at the table, say, the research grants, etc.
If you think that I think I am a god, of any sort - well, I guess you do - then you are trying way too hard to discount the little I've already pointed out to you. For one thing, when I did the kidney donation to my partner, I had to undergo the usual(?) psychiatric evaluation. I spoke to a psychiatrist, for about two hours, over a wide range of topics. I always like to talk about my theory, so, we talked about it, for a few minutes. After the interview, he asked me about how to track down a particular book authored by Roger Penrose's father. Penrose is a retired famous mathematician/physicist over in England. He was one of Hawking's contemporaries, if I recall, at the other university. His father was an almost equally famous, psychiatrist. (In the interview, we got to talking about Penrose tilings, a rather recent discovery of Penrose's. I must have related this to some element of my theory that was fresh in my mind.) The interview occurred nearer the end of the year and a half long screening process for potential donors. A couple of weeks later, at another test of some sort, I asked my donation-assigned nephrologist about the psych test. He told me, "he [the shrink] said that you passed with flying colors."
You're actually a fairly shallow thinker, MrV. Why would I be disappointed about an eternal "dirtnap" if such were, indeed, the case, ie, if this were my finding in corroboration with the findings of others? Again, it's important to be able to accept any and all proved findings, no matter how much at odds with one's intuition, opinion, mindset, culture, work investment, and experience and training. No doubt, a grueling mental and physical process over many years. Namely, a brain that can repeatedly rewire itself.
No, MrV, you're not full of shit, but only because there's nothing there worth doubting.
Not historically accurate but it is entertaining.
Of course that is subjective but I like these sort of movies.
At least it is Free.
If you are having trouble viewing, just click the name Cromwell in the upper left corner.
Free with ads from Youtube Movies.
"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
- Alec Guinness - King Charles
Cromwell (1970) - Richard Harris, Alec Guinness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER6xGlAZjVs