The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: Thomas Pain on January 30, 2010, 11:30:19 am
-
hi erryone
i want to suggest a new catagory for TOUAMB DOT COM
it is NPR kind of catagory
lemmie splain
NPR is beacon of light, broadcast many story of informations. quality informations. also canadian equivalent CBCC
So, would be cool have catagory for people start thread of documentary or story that make them go meow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF2ayWcJfxo)
would be a catagory for history, or politics, or sports, or sexay boy bands, anything of the above. only theme would be after you take it in you come away smarter and more edumacated about something worthwile. like it make you go hmmeow
for instance, maybe one of the threads in it wone day would be:
hanging A Nation: The Power Of The A-Bomb (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122946351)
Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State explores the ways in which the bomb helped expand the power of the American presidency and turn the United States into a national security state.
and then if anyone wants to comment on it they can comment and we can discuss it
i volunteer to be moderator of proposed new session. My qualitication is I is certified by American Soceity of qualities as Quality INSPECTOR. so I would be perfect to tell people if they post some crap that isn't quality enough.
-edit-
we can test theory here if you goes liste n to the above link then comment on it here we have interritent discussion here about it. no pugs so help me god. okay if pugs then should be along theme of the link
-
moar quality http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/30/DDM51BLIU1.DTL
In 'The Wave,' ex-teacher Ron Jones looks back
Read less: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/30/DDM51BLIU1.DTL
-
after you take it in you come away smarter and more edumacated about something worthwile. like it make you go hmmeow
At TOUAMB that is every thread.
-
education - it's our motto.
-
NO you all DONT GET IT I have a VISION to which you all are BLIND and I believe that this may well be WILLFULLY SO
COME ON already can't you SEE IT
I can be a DJ OF STUFF THAT DON"{T SUCK I can do that
you're all SCARED of the tremendous POWER of LIGHT
I'll admit your message board isn't too shabby in places but I can bring it TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
I'm not asking to take over your whole message board I'm just asking for ONE SMALL AREA to be devoted to the FUTURE OF QUALITY
you have to do R&D
It's not always clear where R&D is taking you and the payoff may be a ways in the indefinite future but if you don't do R&D then you're just going to NEVER IMPROVE and soon you become IRRELEVANT and your children look at you and ask you DID JESUS MAKE YOU THIS STUPID OR DID YOU HAVE TO WORK AT IT???
Don't disappoint your children, look to the future, don't get stuck in the lazy recliner of the present eating nachos until you're so fat you can't fit out the doorway anymore
COME ON PEOPLE I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU HERE BUT YOU HAVE TO WANT TO MOVE FORWARDS AND ONWARDS AND UPWARDS what's WRONG WITH YOU people don't you have any HOPE for the FUTURE?
Quality. All I'm asking is the opportunity to bring you some quality. It won't displace your existing quality, it won't hurt, you may feel a little prick, but you will feel ooohhh so much better.
-
I just read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance so all this ranting about quality is weirding me out.
-
I'll have to read that book. you're like the second person who's mentioned it in as many days.
but I can't afford to buy books at the moment, so that means the library, which I would have to somehow fit into my planning. I'd have to find my library card. it's a lot to ask. can you like just mail me the book when you're done with it? maybe there should be a touamb book sharing club. media mail via the usps. kinda mail boxs of books around. everyone contributes a book. of course, they would have to be quality books.
-
the mods arent going to fix anything that isnt broke. most times, if one only one person in a group is less than happy, that person has his or her head too far up their own behind.
-
Or, more often, that person isn't actually unhappy at all, but is trying to piss somebody off.
-
Mos def.
-
i'm sure you're too busy to plan a trip to your library what with the no job and two cats. we can do a book club where everybody buys or borrows the book [from the library (if you can fit it in)], i would be up for that.
-
I won an Andy Sumner biography in a raffle today.
-
okay watever i admit i was just trolling obviously no one would ever think anything should be done different touamb is perfection
maybe there should be a thread where other people tell you what you do and don't have time for and make fun of you for being bothered by events in your life oh my god that would be so great
-edit
I forgot to add it should be a requirement in such a thread that every post include the idea that "hey this is touamb/america/etc , so you can either love it or leave it buddy" because I think that is just so enlightened.
-
Actually, on second look at this thread, I do kind of like the idea of a TOUAMB book exchange. I have tons of books lying around waiting for someone besides me to read them. We could sign up for genres and get a random book periodically, or we could do a round-robin, where person A reads a book and sends it to person B, who sends it to person C, and so on. Though I like the idea of just getting a random book in the mail a lot better.
I think, though, we'd have to stipulate that nobody should send out a book they expect to get back. I love you guys, but I'm not sending anyone my dad's vintage copy of War and Peace with his class notes in the margins.
Anyone else up for something like this?
-
Likewise, I will buy anyone who wants one a copy of The Message New Testament Bible. I will even thump it before I put it in the mail for you, if you want.
;)
-
Will you thump it on your rump a bit?
-
Aww, a-cap deleted the post that made mine make any kind of sense.
I wasn't trying to make fun of you, a-cap, though I can see how it might have come off that way. Hope that's not why you decided to delete your post.
-
Aww, a-cap deleted the post that made mine make any kind of sense.
I wasn't trying to make fun of you, a-cap, though I can see how it might have come off that way. Hope that's not why you decided to delete your post.
I decided that there was no way to say what I was trying to say without sounding like the person I didnt want to sound like.
-
I dunno, those of use who know you would have gotten it.
And everyone else can fuck off.
-
*pout* I'm ripping out random pages of the last chapter of every book I send y'all. y'all is mean to me.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Message-Bible/Eugene-H-Peterson/e/9781598594607/
okay that is whack. I don't agree with that at all. Personally I'm an atheist, but I dig that people reads the Bible for religious purposes. But I mean, the Bible is really integral to so much of the world's literary history. Reading the Bible helps one to have an appreciation for the etymology of so many words and ideas and concepts with which so much literature is replete, and so, translating the Bible into modern English will really put some distance between the reader and the concepts as they are expressed and represented in other literature. So, basically, this "message bible" is like a URL shortener for the concepts in the Bible. And we all know that URL shorteners are the inherently evil work for the Devil!
For the record, I have yet to read more than a couple pages of the Bible. And I think I own at least two copies that well-intending friends have pushed on me for religious purposes over the years. Me, I tend to push intellectual ideas onto friends, pushing books at them.
But yeah, this new messenger thing... I suppose it was inevitable, what with the decline of literacy in America. It's simply natural selection at work - the survival and proliferation of the fittest version of the Bible in the current environment such as it is. Ha! isn't that irony for you...
As for book exchange idea, I don't trust to receive random books from people... my experience is people often not open to new ideas.. I knew one person, was in process of reading all of Tom Clancy's books... he got all of them collection at a flea market or something... I dunno how many.. some 50 books or something.
okay, that is ambition, but unfortunately, reading all of Tom Clancy's books doesn't seem like a very good way to spend what little time one has on this Earth. So help me god, if someone send me a Tom Clancy book, I be so pissed off.
-
books may be involved for my random giving tree exploits.
-
I like The Message for its purposes. It's not appropriate for theological study, but no translation is. What it's good for, though, is accessing the basic, general meaning of the work as a whole -- getting the message, as it were -- for someone who doesn't have the interest or inclination to wade through a bunch of high-falutin' language to find out what us Christians are on about. It's much more suitable as a piece of literature than the NIV version, and the translation comes from the original Greek and other assorted languages, not from earlier English works.
All translations are imperfect; I'm a fan of the Muslim concept that one should learn the language of the text if one wants to truly understand it. But since most of us don't speak several ancient languages (Bobby Isosceles excluded), if we're going to read a translation, which would you rather have?
Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces:) that in those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace, in the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him: when he shewed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his excellent majesty many days, even an hundred and fourscore days.
Or:
This is the story of something that happened in the time of Xerxes, the Xerxes who ruled from India to Ethiopia—127 provinces in all. King Xerxes ruled from his royal throne in the palace complex of Susa. In the third year of his reign he gave a banquet for all his officials and ministers. The military brass of Persia and Media were also there, along with the princes and governors of the provinces.
(Book of Ruth, 1:1-3)
-
I dunno.
I sorta enjoy the majesty and the wonder of the stodgier translation. Sorta builds you up toward the idea that this is a really important thing to learn.
Whereas the second kinda sounds like the USA Today covering a summit of global warming that isn't intended to lead to any binding agreements.
Of course, I read things like the Bible and the Koran as interesting cultural artifacts in search of explanations for why society is as it is today and as ripping yarns of early science-fiction that I take with as large a grain of salt as stories of dudes bedding green ladies and shooting blue fellas with zap guns. I am the kind of person who, if I get bored in a Barnes and Noble, starts moving bibles into the Religious Fiction section so maybe I am not the target audience for plain-words translations of religious texts.
Even all that aside, isn't religion just more EFFECTIVE when it has the power of the narration before a Conan The Barbarian movie?
The text you quoted is written like a ninth-grade history text book and a lot of why I didn't get into history was how awfully dull those text books were.
-
Most people don't read Shakespeare because it's too much work. Sure, it sounds Important, but if 75% of the population can't follow the storyline, it's not really doing its job.
I've no objection to people reading the Bible as fiction. It's certainly better than not reading it at all. I'm just saying, not everyone can deal with the bombastic tone of the KJV, and it's nice to have another option.
-
NO you all DONT GET IT I have a VISION to which you all are BLIND and I believe that this may well be WILLFULLY SO
COME ON already can't you SEE IT
I can be a DJ OF STUFF THAT DON"{T SUCK I can do that
you're all SCARED of the tremendous POWER of LIGHT
I'll admit your message board isn't too shabby in places but I can bring it TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
I'm not asking to take over your whole message board I'm just asking for ONE SMALL AREA to be devoted to the FUTURE OF QUALITY
you have to do R&D
It's not always clear where R&D is taking you and the payoff may be a ways in the indefinite future but if you don't do R&D then you're just going to NEVER IMPROVE and soon you become IRRELEVANT and your children look at you and ask you DID JESUS MAKE YOU THIS STUPID OR DID YOU HAVE TO WORK AT IT???
Don't disappoint your children, look to the future, don't get stuck in the lazy recliner of the present eating nachos until you're so fat you can't fit out the doorway anymore
COME ON PEOPLE I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU HERE BUT YOU HAVE TO WANT TO MOVE FORWARDS AND ONWARDS AND UPWARDS what's WRONG WITH YOU people don't you have any HOPE for the FUTURE?
Quality. All I'm asking is the opportunity to bring you some quality. It won't displace your existing quality, it won't hurt, you may feel a little prick, but you will feel ooohhh so much better.
(http://kaiser.dreamhost.com/OT_stuff/howaboutno.jpg)
-
y'all is mean to me.
And you're mean to us. See how that works?
-
To be fair, though I am agnostic, my cultural background is nominally Catholic so that might lead me toward digging the bombastic interpretations.
Still, it is weird to try and imagine the dang ol' Revelation of John in such prosaic terminology.
"You see, there's this dragon..."
-
To be fair, though I am agnostic, my cultural background is nominally Catholic so that might lead me toward digging the bombastic interpretations.
Still, it is weird to try and imagine the dang ol' Revelation of John in such prosaic terminology.
"You see, there's this dragon..."
How blessed the reader! How blessed the hearers and keepers of these oracle words, all the words written in this book!
Time is just about up.
That about says it, I guess.
If anyone is really interested, the whole thing is available online: http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/Message-MSG-Bible/ (http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/Message-MSG-Bible/)
-
I guess here's the thing... okay... you take someone with a USA Today 7th or whatever grade reading level... um... There's just not gonna get a lot out of the Bible or any work. They're not gonna get a lot out of life. Generally, in American society today, literacy is a good indication of one's overall grasp on culture, which is a fancy word for reality. Yes there are exceptions, yes you can be an intellectual and have no common sense, but having common sense and having a sophisticated idea of reality are not the same things and do not have to co-exist... Further, you can also NOT be an intellectual and STILL have no common sense, and also have NO sophisticated sense either, and I think this describes the vast majority of Americans. Culture is the ability to perceive reality beyond the immediate present, beyond your immediate surroundings.
And I think really the Bible is trying to impart some of this culture to the reader... The Bible is about more than myopic common sense, the Bible is about a sophisticated world view... Okay.. so if the reader is totally incapable of grasping some of these more elaborate cultural concepts, then what does the reader take away from the Bible? Answer: The reader takes away a lot of ideas, without taking away the intended context for those ideas. This is how ignorance is cultivated, and ignorance is dangerous as all hell. So I don't think it's doing people any favors to bring something complex down to their simple level.
I think that trying to give people giraffe for free is gonna tend to more often than not end in failure. I think it would be better to attempt to teach people to giraffe, to teach them to be able to read the Bible themselves. I'm not saying that translating the Bible into a more contemporary language would be automatically wrong - there might be some call for that, but it still needs to be a version of *sophisticated* contemporary language, not something that strips out all multisyllabic words and strips each sentence structure down to the comprehension level of a well trained parrot.
There was this one girl I worked with, and we would talk politics sometimes because her ignorance just fascinated me. So I e-mailed her an article once that basically tore Sarah Palin apart, but the article was from Vanity Fair or something, so the writing was too much for her, and she actually interpreted it as endorsing Palin.
I mean, we're talking... there's just so many people out there who have trouble with square peg in square hole kinda concepts. When you try to layer a Biblical or Christian or any kind of education on top of that kind of foundation, who knows what you'll get, who knows what kind of dangerous idiocy it will morph into.
On a different subject:
And you're mean to us. See how that works?
No... I'm just misunderstood. There's not a mean bone in my body. And I'm still waiting for you to approve my facebook friend request.
out of time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvAi-OBEJm0)
-
I also prefer the majesty off the good ol' KJV: It is what I grew up reading. Even if the religion doesn't speak to me the same way it did back in the day that translation brings back fond memories of my Dad reading stories to us kids on Christmas and other holidays.
I hope I didn't offend anyone with my crude joke above. I meant no disrespect.
-
Personally, I'd be quite pleased with EITHER free giraffe OR being taught how to giraffe.
Both sound fun.
-
See, I'm not saying "The Message is good because it brings the Bible to stupid people." I just think it is more pleasant to read. I, a person who LOLs at the jokes in The Taming of the Shrew, prefer the USA Today version of the Bible because the increased clarity of the language makes it easier to focus on the concepts.
Heaven knows that stupid people already have too much access to the Bible for anyone's good. I'm talking about atheists, agnostics, and other people who are not invested enough in Christianity as a religion to be able to pay attention to elaborately poetic translations, and just want to know what the damn thing says without referring to a concordance.
Anyway, like it or lump it. I, personally, find it refreshing.
-
Hm. I guess that's part of what it comes down to, though.
Because you regard it as a mostly-true set of lessons and instructions for life, you enjoy the idea of having those lessons spoke plainly and in a way that can be acted upon.
Which works well for you.
Because I personally regard it as pleasantly decontextualized mythology with some social engineering and some broadstrokes history of the Middle East mixed in, I enjoy the idea of it all sort of being glossed with the epic feeling of pseudo-antiquity that can only come with archaic and/or eggrandizing phrasing.
Which works well for me.
(Also: I would really love a free giraffe. I would love to ride a giraffe down Ventura Boulevard, the animal eating the fronds of palm trees as she went.)
-
Most people don't read Shakespeare because it's too much work. Sure, it sounds Important, but if 75% of the population can't follow the storyline, it's not really doing its job.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Shakespeare's works are universally almost universally regarded as masterworks in the telling of a story in a way an audience, not just a reader, could follow. They 'do their job' better than almost any other. It would be unfair of me to accuse the original Crime and Punishment for not doing its job because it was written in Russian and I couldn't follow it. Shakespeare has evolved from populist to elitist because people's tongues have changed, modern adaptations of Shakespeare's works are very popular.
-
Shakespeare has evolved from populist to elitist because people's tongues have changed, modern adaptations of Shakespeare's works are very popular.
THIS.
This would be my point, in a nutshell.
-
THIS.
This would be my point, in a nutshell.
Ah.
Carry on then
-
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Shakespeare's works are universally almost universally regarded as masterworks in the telling of a story in a way an audience, not just a reader, could follow.
I wonder to what extent a non-English speaker could follow a performance of Shakespeare play? That is, how much information about the plot can you glean from entirely non-verbal cues?
-
Personally, I'd be quite pleased with EITHER free giraffe OR being taught how to giraffe.
I would give this a hundred cans, but it would make Ash whine.
-
I wonder to what extent a non-English speaker could follow a performance of Shakespeare play? That is, how much information about the plot can you glean from entirely non-verbal cues?
I'M GLAD YOU ASKED MATE
French exchange few years back I had a French fellow stay with me. We took him to see Shakespeare. Antony and Cleopatra I think. He couldn't make head nor tail of the words but once I'd explained who the main characters were and what they represented he followed it pretty well, gave me a good summary of the play at the end.
He could have known about it already and just been showing off, though.
-
I'M GLAD YOU ASKED MATE
French exchange few years back I had a French fellow stay with me. We took him to see Shakespeare. Antony and Cleopatra I think. He couldn't make head nor tail of the words but once I'd explained who the main characters were and what they represented he followed it pretty well, gave me a good summary of the play at the end.
He could have known about it already and just been showing off, though.
No, I was thinking you could do just that. Kind of like watching Gilligan's Island on mute.
-
Come to think, a mash-up of Gilligan's Island and The Tempest would basically punish.
"Caliban's Island" maybe.
-
I've no objection to people reading the Bible as fiction. It's certainly better than not reading it at all.
From a belief standpoint it would have been better if I'd never read the bible. My reading of the bible vanquished any faith I previously had in it.
-
I wonder to what extent a non-English speaker could follow a performance of Shakespeare play? That is, how much information about the plot can you glean from entirely non-verbal cues?
I've often had the experience of watching a movie and by the end of the movie still not knowing the names of the characters and moreover not even being able to recognize some of the main characters from one scene to another if there were too many characters who looked alike (e.g. two or more of a similar age, race, and/or hair style.)
It probably didn't help that I grew up in Nigeria for half my childhood, so perhaps my brain calibrated it's self for recognizing Nigerians, then I come to the midwestern U.S. where everyone basically looks like everyone else (white.)
But the main deal there is probably ADHD. and/or Asperger Syndrome.
So how well I can follow Shakespeare in any language? Yeah not real well. I'm getting better at that sorta stuff lately however. medication, you know...
-
I have problems with movies like The Dead Poet's Society, where every character is like, white dude with a neat haircut, who wears nice clothes.
Also, shakespeare has never really been my bag.
-
I really like Shakespeare but it's mainly because I love the puns. How much of a bad person does that make me?
-
Because I personally regard it as pleasantly decontextualized mythology with some social engineering and some broadstrokes history of the Middle East mixed in(...)
This is only peripherally related to the discussion but... Problem with oversimplied views of things is that they treat say the Bible as one thing - one homogeneous, easily summarized thing - easy to grasp, easy to disregard - easy. Which it so isn't. There's more than one Bible in the Bible. It's not even supposed to be a unified, coherent textbook on anything. The description above would kinda match the Old Testament, but would fail miserably to describe the New, for instance. Also, not even one of the items listed in the summary above would necessarily exclude truth from being a part of the proceedings.
...
I know. Here I am, being all logical again =P
-
Verily, I do declare any fellow who doeth not worship the Bard a punk. Your C's, your U's and T's dribble the page as do your P's. Methinks you are well versed in country matters?
-
I really like Shakespeare but it's mainly because I love the puns. How much of a bad person does that make me?
You, sir, are worse than Hitler.
-
I've often had the experience of watching a movie and by the end of the movie still not knowing the names of the characters and moreover not even being able to recognize some of the main characters from one scene to another if there were too many characters who looked alike (e.g. two or more of a similar age, race, and/or hair style.)
Yeah, I have this problem too. I'm constantly asking Pedro, "Wait, who is that? The white guy who hates the hero, or the one who is in love with the hero's sister? Or is that the hero? Why is this movie full of white guys with dark hair in suits?"
This is one of the things that's been nice about all the BBC TV I've been watching lately. The BBC seems to cast a much wider variety of faces and body types than American film. American TV is better than film in this regard, and I tend to watch a lot of the shows I like so I have more of an opportunity to get to know the characters, but I really have trouble following the plots of American films like "The Godfather" because all the men look alike. But then, I guess Hollywood tends to cast men who fall into a very specific "movie star pretty" type, whereas to be a BBC actor, one need not be even remotely attractive in a conventional way.
On a related note, Pedro and I started watching Flight of the Conchords this week (we wanted to wait 'til it wasn't cool anymore I guess) and I have realized that I DEFINITELY can hear the difference between a NZ accent and an Australian one. Sweet mother, that is one fucked-up-sounding accent. I guess I hadn't been exposed to a NZ accent terribly much until recently, but my kids watched The Wiggles all day and then I caught an episode of Torchwood off Netflix Instant and then we popped in the Conchords DVD, so going from Aussie to BBC Wales to NZ was really kind of disorienting.
I was like, "Wot?"
-
ya like dags?
-
...Australian...The Wiggles...
This made me think of Dylan Moran's take on Australia and the Wiggles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZY17y1MVl4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZY17y1MVl4)