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And as for you mentality - that's a hard one. Discworld of course are his best books (he has done some others), and within that series of books there are different spin-offs. Some are written from the perspective of the witches of discworld, some on the wizards (unrelated to the witches), some on the police, some are randomly based on a few individuals.

My dad started with the book about the police (or The Watch, as they're known in discworld). I let him start from the 1st book and he really didn't enjoy it, too fantasy for him, but fortunately he quickly realises comedy rather than fantasy is his niche. So while the very early books are a good read if/when you love discworld or fantasy, they're not always the best starting point.

I'd recommend therefore the City Watch books, as i did with my dad. They're an easy starting point. In order:
* Guards! Guards! 1989
* Men at Arms 1993
* Feet of Clay 1996
* Jingo 1997
* The Fifth Elephant 1999
* The Truth 2000
* Night Watch 2002
* Monstrous Regiment 2003
* Thud! 2005

I would recommend starting at the start if you mean to go on. The characters become more familiar and often you find the stories more sentimental and humorous if you know the characters. This list includes my top 3 favourite books of his, so definitely a good starting point. The books about Death (the character Death) are very good too.

Is exploiting ignorance a worse injustice than possessing it?
Warren E. Hale

In reply to this comment by mentality:
>> ^MrFisk:
Presidents do not raise taxes--Congress and States do, as well as, County and City.


Ok. So he blatantly lied and manipulated the public into thinking he had control over something that he didn't. Great, I feel so much better about him now.

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In reply to this comment by mentality:
what is the point of me talking to you?

I was just wondering the exact same thing

Have a nice life m8.

In reply to this comment by mentality:
Haha no. The goal of an animation is primarily to produce the visual effect. Hence, why James Cameron will use CGI to animate all the passengers on the Titanic, and not actually hire thousands of extras to do it. With his $200 Million + budget, you know Cameron could have hired the extras if he wanted to. Would you call James Cameron a pointless masturbator? Lol of course not.

Pointless masturbation was your expression. I'm not against CGI in general, I'm just saying in this particular video, using CGI would make a completely unremarkable video, while using Lego blocks made a unique and awesome video.

The whole point of sports in the Olympics is to go faster, better, strong, using human power. The point of an animation is to produce the desired visual effect. Unless the animators specficially set out to break the record for longest stop motion lego video (they did not state that this was their goal), then you cannot possibly compare the two.

I can and have. I say that to me it doesn't matter if any records were broken in the production of the video, since that's not how I measure if the video is good or not. You keep hanging on to the tiny technicalities and thus miss the entire point of what I'm trying to say.

Again, you are avoiding my criticism, by ignoring my question: how would using a car produce the same effect of letting Bolt compete in events and continue his career?

For the last time. The car analogy was simply to illustrate how using a shortcut would invalidate the entire endeavor.

Haha no, the sift is a mob that votes for what it likes. You don't call Digg the regulatory body of the internet, do you? The sift does not care if the animators used non-regulation blocks, or if the animators had assistance while filming, or if they used CG to spice up the effects. Compare that to olympic sprinting, where 0.01 seconds off can be a false start, an extra 0.5 mph wind can invalidate your record, where stepping on a line by half an inch can ruin years of training. That just shows how inappropirate your analogy is.

The sift may not care about regulation blocks, or other made up rules that you use to define athletics for yourself, but there are rules to this here siftage. While I don't consider myself a part of the Digg community, and thus don't care one bit what they vote up or down, I do consider myself myself to be a part of this community, and thus care about what gets sifted up or not.

I can't seem to find a way to explain to you that by using the improvement you've suggested to the video, the creator would have rendered the video itself useless. The original animations were made with computers, or at least electronic devices. Doing it again in CGI is the pointless masturbation you've referenced several posts ago.

I say that to me, the one thing that gives the video any value at all, is that it was made with actual Lego blocks. You can disagree with that if you want, that's how I feel about it.

As for having no regulatory bodies to measure the quality of videos, that's pretty much what the sift is for, no?

In reply to this comment by mentality:
And I have shown you again and again how your point fails, since it doesn't even make sense to compare the objective and clearly defined sport of sprinting with animation; There are no strict rules, regulatory bodies, referees and sanctions for how you do art. And you certianly did not explain how using a car would produce the same effect of letting Bolt compete in events and continue his career.

Either accept my criticism, or refute it with reasoning of your own. Don't just ignore them like you're in denial. All you do is keep on repeating that it is "essential". Just stating it over and over doesn't make you right.

My point was, that just like running on foot was an absolutely essential part of Usain Bolt's record, so was the use of actual Lego blocks to the video. I've already made this point 3-4 times, and have stopped defending it because you keep ignoring it

In reply to this comment by mentality:
Again, you fail to explain how Usain Bolt driving in a car and Usain Bolt running on foot would produce the same effect of allowing him to compete and succeed in a regulated sporting event. But hey, don't bother trying to defend it with reasoning. Just keep on telling me that you feel it is right. +1 for Truthiness.

My twisted logic is intact, and while you can't see why my analogy is relevant, I still feel it is

In reply to this comment by mentality:
>> ^demon_ix:
That's where we disagree
My point of view is, that using Lego blocks for the video was every bit as essential as running on foot is for Usain Bolt.

Absolutely not. It's not a "point of view" issue. Sprinting is a sport that is regulated by governing bodies with history lasting millenia. There are few human endeavors that are so objective and clearly defined. It is nothing like the subjective and nebulous nature of artistic expression. It doesn't even make sense to compare the two.

Your analogy is flawed, but feel free to subscribe to whatever twisted logic and reasoning that feels right to you.

Anyways, thank you for the polite discourse.

That's where we disagree
My point of view is, that using Lego blocks for the video was every bit as essential as running on foot is for Usain Bolt.

In reply to this comment by mentality:
No, you see, his career as a athlete revolves around racing on foot, not to get from start to finish by any means necessary. Therefore, using a car would not achieve the same effect. Now if the effect he was going for was to get to the convenience store faster, and he spent thousands of hours to train for that and never raced, then that would be a waste of time since he could have done it with a car. Your analogy fails in every way.

We disagree completely then. The point of what he made wasn't to make a cool animation "to fully show an understanding of the advantages that stop motion animation offers"... The point was to make a video of 80's video games using nothing but Lego blocks. He achieved it superbly.

What you're suggesting, is using a computer software to replicate Lego blocks and use those virtual blocks to make an identical animation in less time, and while that's more pragmatic, saves time and effort, it's completely losing the actual point of making a video with Lego blocks..... Why still make a video of Lego blocks moving around, when you can make a 3D animation of the actual game characters? And while you're at it, why not program the original games, making a version of Pong, Pac-Man, Super Mario etc? And why not go beyond that and make a better game, and market it? He could make lots of money that way, no?

I actually think my Usain Bolt car analogy is very good, since he could save years and years of rigorous physical training and sacrifice, and go do something useful with his time, since he can get from the start to the finish with ease and more speed in a car. Never mind that the whole point was to do it without a car...

But if you look at it in a "he got a world record, and thus accomplished something" perspective, consider the guy who came in last in that race. He technically accomplished nothing, and I doubt very much he even expected to win vs Usain Bolt. Why race at all then? Why not just give up and lie down? Why spend as much time uselessly training, keeping a diet and so on, when you won't break a world record or win the race?

In reply to this comment by mentality:
Look, I'm not saying what he achieved isn't art, or it's not cool. I'm saying it's a colossal waste of time because he didn't do anything unique to stop motion animation, and didn't make best use of his time.

Usain Bolt did something unique that you can't replicate with a car: break the record for human running speed. Terrible analogy. It looks like you're the one who's missing the point here.

Again: He could have designed his animation better, to fully show an understanding of the advantages that stop motion animation offers, and in the process do everything you said he accomplished: having fun with a hobby AND produce something truly cool and unique with it.

Sure he had fun making it, but by not achieving something more it's pointless masturbation.

I guess I'm not. Thanks for trying to explain it. I'll go back to what I know now .

In reply to this comment by mentality:
>> ^KnivesOut:
You have to extrapolate that there was an order of events. If space-time began to exist at some point, there there was certainly in immeasurable "non-time" BEFORE that point when it began to exist. Things DIDN'T, then they DID. There's your order of events. I'm not saying you can use a stop-watch and compare the two, but there was certainly an order.

No. What we perceive as the big bang can just be a local minimum of universal entropy on the time axis. Imagine a universe on the time axis at the point of local minimum of entropy. No matter which direction you're moving on the time axis, time will be moving forward. There will not be a time before this local minimum. You're not getting the relationship between entropy, the arrow of time, causality and the order of events.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

I replied to your 'debunk' on that thread I think you approached my post from the understanding that i held myth, religion, soul, philosophy whatever, higher than science. And i think this was your error

Not being funny, but you were way off the mark.. please read the reply in an open frame of mind.. it really is sound science that i'm talking

In reply to this comment by mentality:
>> ^dannym3141:

All we have is AN understanding of how the brain works. It may not be definitive, we never made it to claim that we know exactly how it is intended to work.
Therefore how can we know that something damages it rather than enhances it?

Sure we don't know exactly how the bain is intended to work, but we can still know that smashing in your skull with an icepick will damage your brain. Similarly, we know that certain drugs like meth will damage your brain.

That doesn't mean we know how it works. It means we've identified a pattern and a system in place that seems to accurately describe and predict how the thing works.

Science gives us accurate models of how things work. Maybe reality is a lie that God crafted to fool our senses, but that kind of metaphysical argument is the realm useless and neverending bullshit.

How long ago did we think that we KNEW that the earth was the centre of the universe? Is anyone so arrogant as to claim that we know better NOW?

Pssst: science never claimed that the earth was the center. We know better now because our claims are based on actual fact and observation. Science: 1, Philosophy: 0.

How do we know that what we think is true is true?

It is not the goal of science to look into the nature of being. That is the job for religion and philosophy. Stop dismissing science because it cannot answer the unanswerable.