Random Thoughts XI: Listen to the Whispers

[Arakhor]

What happens if you remove all of the sponges from the ocean? Does the sea level rise?

No, because you still need to wring them all out first.

 

[amadeus]

[table=head]
Castaway|Reunion Specials|Status
Gilligan (Bob Denver)|Appeared|Deceased
The Skipper (Alan Hale Jr.)|Appeared|Deceased
Mr. Howell (Jim Backus)|Appeared|Deceased
Mrs. Howell (Natalie Schafer)|Appeared|Deceased
The Professor (Russell Johnson)|Appeared|Deceased
Mary Ann (Dawn Wells)|Appeared|Deceased
The Movie Star (Tina Louise)|Declined|Living
[/table]

Coincidence?

I didn't even know we had tables now.

 

[Takhisis]

We always had tables. *puts on sunglasses* Now, please, look into the lighty flashy stick.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

[table=head]
Castaway|Reunion Specials|Status
Gilligan (Bob Denver)|Appeared|Deceased
The Skipper (Alan Hale Jr.)|Appeared|Deceased
Mr. Howell (Jim Backus)|Appeared|Deceased
Mrs. Howell (Natalie Schafer)|Appeared|Deceased
The Professor (Russell Johnson)|Appeared|Deceased
Mary Ann (Dawn Wells)|Appeared|Deceased
The Movie Star (Tina Louise)|Declined|Living
[/table]

Coincidence?

I didn't even know we had tables now.

According to the behind-the-scenes information that's come out, Tina Louise was not really a very nice person, at least not to the fans. And for some reason she thought she was the star of the show, in spite of the name "Gilligan" in the title.

 

[amadeus]

According to the behind-the-scenes information that's come out, Tina Louise was not really a very nice person, at least not to the fans. And for some reason she thought she was the star of the show, in spite of the name "Gilligan" in the title.

Yes, I recall a story of Louise complaining to CBS executives only to have them ask her if she had seen the title of the show.

Even during the show’s run though she wasn’t a big draw; Dawn Wells got on average three times as much fan mail.

I actually met Bob Denver once. I think by that time all the pot had fried his long-term memory, though.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yes, I recall a story of Louise complaining to CBS executives only to have them ask her if she had seen the title of the show.

Even during the show’s run though she wasn’t a big draw; Dawn Wells got on average three times as much fan mail.

I actually met Bob Denver once. I think by that time all the pot had fried his long-term memory, though.

The only actor I've met is Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor). I did meet a couple of Star Trek writers who had parts as extras in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" (Bjo Trimble and David Gerrold). I've heard that Gerrold could be cranky with some fans, but he was nice to me when we had a couple of minutes' chat at his autograph table.

 

[Samson]

We have 3 terms, that have been used in very similar ways:

• Right on
• Politically correct
• Woke

As you can see from the google ngams below, the peak usage of these words are roughly separated by 20 years. My hypothesis is that this is an example of the common phenomenon that what is cool for your parents is deeply uncool for you. Therefore if you do not like woke, you only have to wait a few years and it will be uncool.

Spoiler Ngrams :

In support of this thesis, I present a speech from 1998 railing against political correctness in the exact way that some rail against woke today. I will not link to it as it is hate filled fascism, but a search will find it:

The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted “victims” groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the college, they face formal charges – some star-chamber proceeding – and punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.​

 

[Arakhor]

Well, naturally. People have been railing against things they don't like in much the same language for decades.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted “victims” groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the college, they face formal charges – some star-chamber proceeding – and punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.​

William Lind is, among other things, a proponent of the theory of "Cultural Marxism." According to Wikipedia...

Cultural Marxism is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims Western Marxism as the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.[1][2][3] The conspiracists claim that an elite of Marxist theorists and Frankfurt School intellectuals are subverting Western society with a culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and promotes the cultural liberal values of the 1960s counterculture and multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness, misrepresented as identity politics created by critical theory.

The conspiracy theory of Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media and white supremacist terrorists.

In the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report "Reframing the Enemy" (2003), Bill Berkowitz said that Lind was the principal promoter and popularizer of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, which claims that a coterie of Jewish-German philosophers, the Frankfurt School, had seized control of American popular culture, and have been systematically subverting Christian churches and ethics within the U.S. The conspiracists’ preoccupation with the Jewishness of most Frankfurt School intellectuals is seen as confirming that Cultural Marxism is an antisemitic canard.[20] The SPLC reported that in 1999 Lind wrote, "The real damage to race relations in the South came, not from slavery, but [from] Reconstruction, which would not have occurred if the South had won [the civil war]."

The manifesto of Anders Breivik is built around Lind's theory on cultural Marxism and contains 27 pages taken directly from his writings.

I was about to say that this guy can't die soon enough, but obviously the damage has been done.

Fiction
Lind also wrote Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War, in which a group of "Christian Marines" leads an armed resistance against cultural Marxism as the American federal government collapses.

Sounds like a sequel to The Turner Diaries.

What a douchebag.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Hey, does anybody remember the term "ZOG"? This 'cultural Marxism' thing sounds like that, but dressed in a suit and tie and pretending to be intellectual.

 

[Ferocitus]

Hey, does anybody remember the term "ZOG"? This 'cultural Marxism' thing sounds like that, but dressed in a suit and tie and pretending to be intellectual.

Sounds like Enver Hoxha's analysis of monarchy.

 

[Kyriakos]

@Ferocitus , there is an article by Apostolos Doxiades where he tries to present some isomorphisms between progressions in maths and in literature. But I have found that most literary stories actually have front and center some elements which are only there if you fail in a math attempt:
There has to be some obstacle, to create tension. This can be negated later in the story (or in the very end), but the writer has to actually support it prior to that point. In math, of course, no one takes credit for being stopped by something, and more importantly they don't themselves see to it that the obstacle is formidable.
Then again there is a subtype of plot where the protagonist simply has to either follow a route known to the reader to be false (the protagonist is either misguided or ignorant), or (which in my view is far more elegant) be attacking the problem from an angle which can never yield a result, with that knowledge not being trivial in the story (the reader can't foresee it).

And most of my own published stories are of that type. An example of a (non-published) story where that happens would be the one in the This is the Way game ^_^

It is interesting that in this way math can be almost the inverse of literature, but it should be expected to some degree, due to the more trivial, first dynamic mentioned: the writer builds up the obstacle as the sceleton of the story, while the mathematician never consciously creates nor supports their nemesis.

 

[amadeus]

"We are excited to have an executive with Aaron's strategic leadership abilities ...”

Read off a PR thing. I emphasized the word strategic because if I’m not sure if I should infer that there is an ability in un-strategic leadership and what that would entail.

 

[Samson]

"We are excited to have an executive with Aaron's strategic leadership abilities ...”

Read off a PR thing. I emphasized the word strategic because if I’m not sure if I should infer that there is an ability in un-strategic leadership and what that would entail.

Without any context, I can see this making sense. One may be very good at managing the day to day operations of a team/company, which could be described as tactical leadership. One could also be good at visualising where the team/company should be in the medium to long term, and positioning them to achieve that. This could be described as strategic leadership.

 

[amadeus]

@Samson I think that is a fair point. I'm doing some reading on "executive consultants" and "strategic leadership coaching" and have concluded the following: it is buzzword baloney that moves large sums of money from suckers to shysters.

 

[Kyriakos]

Without any context, I can see this making sense. One may be very good at managing the day to day operations of a team/company, which could be described as tactical leadership. One could also be good at visualising where the team/company should be in the medium to long term, and positioning them to achieve that. This could be described as strategic leadership.

Going by that, the hypostrategic (neologism I have seen used a lot with military stuff; eg an airplane capable of hitting you with missiles from half the globe away is hypostrategic, while the usual long-range missile is strategic) leadership of a company should be seeing past an actual end of this era ^_^

 

[Samson]

Going by that, the hypostrategic (neologism I have seen used a lot with military stuff; eg an airplane capable of hitting you with missiles from half the globe away is hypostrategic, while the usual long-range missile is strategic) leadership of a company should be seeing past an actual end of this era ^_^

Does that make sense? Would not hypostrategic mean "less strategic", whereas hyperstrategic would mean more strategic?

Do not get me started on why we use greek for these prefixes, as in english at least they are close to indistinguishable. I bet people have died because someone misheard hyperglycemic as hypoglycemic or some such term.

 

[Kyriakos]

Does that make sense? Would not hypostrategic mean "less strategic", whereas hyperstrategic would mean more strategic?

Do not get me started on why we use greek for these prefixes, as in english at least they are close to indistinguishable. I bet people have died because someone misheard hyperglycemic as hypoglycemic or some such term.

I think the "hypo" here is meant as "even further away from" the battlefield. In that "strategic" is further away from the battlefield that "tactical". Basically it seems to be a metaphor about depth, with depth usually being below the surface

(I am not sure if this is used in english, btw; I have heard the term in greek)

Maybe the metaphor can have two focal points, if one can say that the Tripods in WOTW were hypostrategic, being inactive for so long (centuries?) and obviously hidden below the ground.

 

[Kyriakos]

A nice monster I drew Symmetries always are found in live things.

More monsters in this (rather lonely at the moment...) thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fun-geometry-stuff.671176/

 

[shadowplay]

Been a little under the weather. I drifted off this afternoon and had a really convincing dream Queen Elizabeth's actual given name is Howard.

I should probably check my temperature.