math is elegant

I could devote the rest of my life to mastering poetry and prose and never come half as close as Hitch to so elegantly expressing my shock and amazement that adult human beings not only believe in ridiculous fairy tales, but that they go to war over them.

There's a great interview of him by Marc Maron, which explains where he comes from. From memorry, he had a pretty deprived childhood, and his mother never wanted to work or something - it was pretty rough. I think he sees welfare as a crutch and that's all this is to it.

Doesn't make me agree with him in any way. The suggestion that the problems facing the US derive from a generation of people who were told they're too important is just silly.

As a great person once said: for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong.

Adam's views are a great reflection of this.

related sift is related

http://videosift.com/video/Elegant-Engineering-Vacuum-Motor

The cover (which al-jazeera so 'elegantly' omits to show) pictures Mohamed, "guest editor", saying the following (rough translation): "100 whiplashes if you don't die of laughter!" It plays on the expression "mort de rire", literally "dead from laughter" (and roughly the equivalent to lmao or lol).

As long as Anonymous remains a black flag to random tyrannical/bigoted/corrupt/and diseased humans, be they groups or as an individual, I'll take them--as I'm free to use the banner as much as anyone else here can.

It's about as close as we can get to an "elegant" vigilante working as a third party, without a superhero showing up.

*dead -- "'Elegant Music - Mozart Pian...' This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker. Sorry about that."

Poor old Bill. When you have to say "no comment" you pretty much admit you're in a position of weakness. Microsoft have missed the boat with tablets all because they don't want to give up the money they make from Windows.

I've played with tablets and I might even get one very soon. I definitely see a use for them in terms of casual browsing and general entertainment. I've had many situations where I'm moving my laptop room to room and I know the keyboard is not needed and the mouse positioning is difficult.

Sitting with a touchscreen device that almost anyone can use is a big win and a far more elegant scenario than balancing a laptop awkwardly and wondering how to site the mouse.

I can see even my dad using one which would be a marvelous achievement. And if someone asks me to look up some info I can bring it over very easily.

isdupe this and transfer vote to first one.

One for elegance.

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

But to care about SF, it has to be about how it relates to human beings. In some sense we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who are experiencing the wonder. Otherwise it's dry and boring.

When I think about SF movies without good character, I think of Transformers. Style over substance.

Contact on the other hand had a great central character that let you feel the wonder of what she was experiencing through her eyes. That's vital.

>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^dag:
Hmmm. Examples? I guess Dave Bowman was pretty flat, but HAL as a character definitely wasn't. Deckard in Bladerunner was not flat, very tortured nuanced performance by Harrison Ford. I think I'd have to disagree with you gorillaman. The best SF, like all stories, is character driven.
Well there's Rama, where Clarke correctly focuses on the ship. I feel like people who complain about the humans' characterisation just aren't reading the book right. I read Schild's Ladder recently - the characters have intellectual disagreements but not much else, to the point of lacking differentiated sexes, and it still paints a compelling portrait of future civilisation. I hesitate to mention Ayn Rand's Anthem, but she understood if you detail your protagonist too explicitly then you lose your universality of meaning.
It's not often an author can write SF in its purest form and still get published, so it's easier to find examples where too much emphasis on the human elements detracts from the work. Like Asimov's Foundation, one of my favorites. The characters in that book are downright intrusive on what's otherwise an exploration of events on a galactic scale. After the reader gets his introduction to the wonderful concept of psychohistory, the characters start to drive the plot and everything falls apart. The rest of the book and the subsequent books in the series become just Some Stuff That Happens. Well stuff happens every day, I don't need to read about stuff. Just like Rama's sequels, no good can come from watering down high literature with narratological cliches.
Good SF communicates to the reader a single idea as clearly and elegantly as possible then ends. Characterisation, even plot, are distractions.
It's an educational experience. How would you feel if your maths textbook gave the number two a quirky personality, and the equals sign a terrible secret to hide? That's fine if you just want to be entertained, but not if you want to learn something. I use SF as a kind of zen meditation, projecting my consciousness into a construction of a future I won't visit in person, in order to become enlightened.

>> ^dag:
Hmmm. Examples? I guess Dave Bowman was pretty flat, but HAL as a character definitely wasn't. Deckard in Bladerunner was not flat, very tortured nuanced performance by Harrison Ford. I think I'd have to disagree with you gorillaman. The best SF, like all stories, is character driven.

Well there's Rama, where Clarke correctly focuses on the ship. I feel like people who complain about the humans' characterisation just aren't reading the book right. I read Schild's Ladder recently - the characters have intellectual disagreements but not much else, to the point of lacking differentiated sexes, and it still paints a compelling portrait of future civilisation. I hesitate to mention Ayn Rand's Anthem, but she understood if you detail your protagonist too explicitly then you lose your universality of meaning.

It's not often an author can write SF in its purest form and still get published, so it's easier to find examples where too much emphasis on the human elements detracts from the work. Like Asimov's Foundation, one of my favorites. The characters in that book are downright intrusive on what's otherwise an exploration of events on a galactic scale. After the reader gets his introduction to the wonderful concept of psychohistory, the characters start to drive the plot and everything falls apart. The rest of the book and the subsequent books in the series become just Some Stuff That Happens. Well stuff happens every day, I don't need to read about stuff. Just like Rama's sequels, no good can come from watering down high literature with narratological cliches.

Good SF communicates to the reader a single idea as clearly and elegantly as possible then ends. Characterisation, even plot, are distractions.

It's an educational experience. How would you feel if your maths textbook gave the number two a quirky personality, and the equals sign a terrible secret to hide? That's fine if you just want to be entertained, but not if you want to learn something. I use SF as a kind of zen meditation, projecting my consciousness into a construction of a future I won't visit in person, in order to become enlightened.

@SDGundamX

I apologise for making assumptions about your knowledge of Pat's videos; it seems to be - again - a question of seeing the same thing through different lenses. After rewatching the video and reading your comment, I agree that there are elements of pure insult and sarcasm in this (and surely other of Pat's) video(s). That being said, I cannot agree with you that he's being a hypocrite, because I don't think the caustic sarcasm of the phrase you point out is supposed to be taken seriously, but to mock the similar responses that people like him get for criticising religion.

Btw, what's wrong with insulting religion, when much of religion itself is an insult (and injury) to the basic integrity and morality of humankind? There is another function of rants like Pat's, and that is the cathartic effect* it provides for people who share Hitchens' opinion that "religion poisons everything" and who, like me, are often sick of and enraged at not only religion's rampant influence, but the lenience it receives from moderates and timid atheists.

As for quoting Sagan, I simply used his elegant phraseology to make a parallel point about the danger of silent assent.

*edit: sure beats rioting in the streets and murdering people, don't you think?

>> ^Asmo:

I don't know exactly what it is but most women tend to fall badly... Maybe we're more used to them looking elegant but it's magnitudes more cringeworthy than seeing a guy do the same thing...


Some people would call this chauvinism but I think it's an instinctual reaction to seeing women (potentially) hurt. We're programmed to be protective.

For anyone who isn't offended by that idea, I offer this one:

The moral of this video is, before you start your woman-empowering pole dance routine, be sure you get a man who knows how to use a screwdriver to secure the pole for you.

I don't know exactly what it is but most women tend to fall badly... Maybe we're more used to them looking elegant but it's magnitudes more cringeworthy than seeing a guy do the same thing...

Personally I think it's quite an awesome idea, if they got light and small enough, you could hop on a bus or train with them, and just use them to get to public transport without having to pay parking or worry about it getting stolen. You'd just need some elegant way of covering them to look normal, i.e. Here in Australia people often get in buses with surfboards, however if someone tries to get on a bus with a bike, which takes up about the same amount of room, they get told to go away. So it's often about form, not just function.