Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Maybe it's only the inventors. Da Vinci, Edison and Jobs fit that bill. Deep thinkers and pure artists are pretty different. >> ^peggedbea:

I'm pretty sure kurt vonnegut was at least reasonably kind. He wrote so many books about the value of human kindness.
crispin glover is also unabashedly sensitive and kind and contains all the charm of someone who is not at all charming until they're speaking about something they love. i guess you could argue that he is not a genius, but then i would just tell you to attend a viewing for one of his insane art house films and stick around for the three hour Q&A he'll host when it's finished. genius.
oh i bet neil degrasse tyson is only slightly prickish, and only in the kindest most charming of ways.
>> ^dag:
Just as a thought experiment - can you name one who was well thought of as an all-around nice guy? Edison was an asshole. I've heard that Da Vinci was a real prick.>> ^quantumushroom:
But do geniuses need to be assholes?
No. No they don't.

I'm pretty sure kurt vonnegut was at least reasonably kind. He wrote so many books about the value of human kindness.

crispin glover is also unabashedly sensitive and kind and contains all the charm of someone who is not at all charming until they're speaking about something they love. i guess you could argue that he is not a genius, but then i would just tell you to attend a viewing for one of his insane art house films and stick around for the three hour Q&A he'll host when it's finished. genius.

oh i bet neil degrasse tyson is only slightly prickish, and only in the kindest most charming of ways.

>> ^dag:

Just as a thought experiment - can you name one who was well thought of as an all-around nice guy? Edison was an asshole. I've heard that Da Vinci was a real prick.>> ^quantumushroom:
But do geniuses need to be assholes?
No. No they don't.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Just as a thought experiment - can you name one who was well thought of as an all-around nice guy? Edison was an asshole. I've heard that Da Vinci was a real prick.>> ^quantumushroom:

But do geniuses need to be assholes?
No. No they don't.

*happy memories and *history too.

I like his Thomas Edison reply.

>> ^NinjaInHeat:

As much as I'm loving this rant, Louis is making some inconsistent arguments, especially regarding Apple. He starts by presenting Apple and Microsoft as the 'Tesla and Edison' of our age and saying how lucky we are to have escaped the clutches of Bill's inferior technology and his evil empire, then he goes on to rant about the state of online consumerism today and how we've abandoned certain ideals for the sake of comfort.
Honestly it just feels like ignorance on the subject on his part. In this argument he's making, if anything, the 'Microsoft' era would be the equivalent of the 'local businesses' and Apple would be the Starbucks. Not that I'm suggesting Microsoft is a small business, but from a consumer point of view - the rise of Apple is an exact example of the process he's describing, he even admits it by ranting about iTunes, how we all 'share' our likes, god-forbid we 'exist on the fringes'. Apple IS a big 'fuck you' to anything independent, it's the personification of the 'evil corporate empire' he's talking about. But they make a PC that looks nicer and an OS that works smoother, so fuck all that idealistic shit, let's just buy their products and welcome our new overlords in all things technology-related.
I honestly do not understand how Apple have generated this public image of excellence for themselves, a future in which these types of business practices are common-practice in silicon valley is a scary one...


To me it's not ignorance because he's obviously knowledgeable about the subject matter. The problem is this is a radio show and he's supposed to be off the cuff this isn't a prepared rant or anything like that it's stuff that's in his head rattling around and some of it may be a bit more polished than other parts.

If he say ordered his thoughts into a paper say or a talk and presented a case then it would be much more coherent. We can't expect everyone to be coherent especially when they're going off the trial from accepted dogma. If you tune into a political program and someone says "Iran is evil cause they are doing.." whatever, it's taken as read. Iran is evil, they're being accused of evil things blah blah blah don't need any more information it's accepted, mainstream thought. If however someone comes on and says something like Chomsky's quote "education is a system of imposed ignorance" that's a seriously against the grain statement...it seems to make no sense. You'd need a LOT of examples and well ordered explaination to break down the already ingrained beliefs.

So Louis CK maybe a bit all over the place...that's cause he's not giving a talk or presenting a paper. He's speaking off the cuff on a radio program and I think we can give him a pass because he's doing his job, being entertaining. He's not a professor he's a comedian.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Edison never invented the phonograph. He never invented anything. He hired a bunch of smart people to invent things that he patented.


He didn't invent the light bulb, he didn't invent the movie camera, he didn't invent most of the things he's given credit for; he did one thing: the phonograph.

His was the first sound recording device which took vibrations from the air and
transfered them to a media via a needle--just like records did for generations afterward.

Edison never invented the phonograph. He never invented anything. He hired a bunch of smart people to invent things that he patented.

As much as I'm loving this rant, Louis is making some inconsistent arguments, especially regarding Apple. He starts by presenting Apple and Microsoft as the 'Tesla and Edison' of our age and saying how lucky we are to have escaped the clutches of Bill's inferior technology and his evil empire, then he goes on to rant about the state of online consumerism today and how we've abandoned certain ideals for the sake of comfort.

Honestly it just feels like ignorance on the subject on his part. In this argument he's making, if anything, the 'Microsoft' era would be the equivalent of the 'local businesses' and Apple would be the Starbucks. Not that I'm suggesting Microsoft is a small business, but from a consumer point of view - the rise of Apple is an exact example of the process he's describing, he even admits it by ranting about iTunes, how we all 'share' our likes, god-forbid we 'exist on the fringes'. Apple IS a big 'fuck you' to anything independent, it's the personification of the 'evil corporate empire' he's talking about. But they make a PC that looks nicer and an OS that works smoother, so fuck all that idealistic shit, let's just buy their products and welcome our new overlords in all things technology-related.

I honestly do not understand how Apple have generated this public image of excellence for themselves, a future in which these types of business practices are common-practice in silicon valley is a scary one...

This should have been Tesla's response to Edison electrocuting all of those elephants.

And Thomas Edison gets too much credit. When somebody is the public figurehead of a group, and that group has a coherent personality, then it's meaningful to identify the actions of the group with the figurehead.

The gestalt entity known as Ronald Reagan kicked the supports out from under the California state government, and then went on to do the same to the federal government. I can't think of one aspect of the current financial/political crisis in the US that can't be clearly linked to the reagonite program. Barring everything else, he choose to be the symbol of that, and I'll continue to treat him as such.

>> ^Yogi:
Reagan gets a bad rap

>> ^iwastheturkey:

first!


No, sir. You weren't first, nor was Thomas Edison. *rolleyes*

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I normally insta-downvote animal cruelty, but I didnt downvote this because it serves as a reminder of what a cnut edison was. Admittedly I had seen this before in some documentary film (Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.) and was disgusted.

Everything I've heard about edison since only makes him more of a slimeball, and Tesla more of a genius. Apparently he did this to show how dangerous AC and Teslas ideas were. He didnt give a crap about the elephants criminal record this was about money.

Somebody probably said all that already but I'm too tired to go back and check

>> ^robbersdog49:

Why are people voting for such a distasteful video? I have been shown this before so I'm assuming this is just the film of the elephant dying in agony.
Why would anyone want to watch this? What kind of sick freaks are you?

You think that's bad - I heard Edison once electrocuted an elephant... I'll see if I can sift a video on it...

That wasn't much consolation to Topsy, who was dead, nor to Luna Park, which was eventually destroyed in a horrible fire. Today, nothing remains of either except for Edison's film. If you ask the folks at the Coney Island Museum, they'll show it to you.

I bet that would gather quite the strange looks from someone.

Either way Edison was still a bit of a dick. He was really pissed off after the World's Columbian Exhibition and tried everything he could to discredit the use of AC, including this. There was alot invested into DC power distribution so there was alot to lose.