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by Nordic » Fri Oct 05, 2012 9:28 pm
harry ashburn wrote:from nordic.. re: women have hair where god gave them hair...
yuk. I dont really see how we made it as a species. Almost all western men, anyway, recoil at the thought. Why didnt we do so for the past million years? Guess doing it in the dark helps.... women still didn't shave in europe til the '60's. Could I have done it? Probably in my raging hormones youth....
by Nordic » Fri Oct 05, 2012 9:29 pm
by Iamwhomiam » Sat Oct 06, 2012 9:55 pm
by jcivil » Mon Oct 08, 2012 11:39 am
by 82_28 » Mon Oct 08, 2012 2:21 pm
As the novel opens, its protagonist Ragle Gumm believes that he lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual profession consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper competition called, "Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?". Gumm's 1959 has some differences from ours: the Tucker car is in production, AM/FM radios are scarce to non-existent and Marilyn Monroe is a complete unknown. As the novel opens, strange things begin to happen to Gumm. A soft-drink stand disappears, replaced by a small slip of paper with the words "SOFT-DRINK STAND" printed on it in block letters. Intriguing little pieces of the real 1959 turn up: a magazine article on Marilyn Monroe, a telephone book with non-operational exchanges listed and radios hidden away in someone else's house. People with no apparent connection to Gumm, including military pilots using aircraft transceivers, refer to him by name. Few other characters notice these or experience similar anomalies; the sole exception is Gumm's supposed brother-in-law, Victor "Vic" Nielson, in whom he confides. A neighborhood woman, Mrs. Keitelbein, invites him to a Civil Defense class where he sees a model of a futuristic underground military factory. He has the unshakeable feeling he's been inside that building many times before.
Confusion gradually mounts for Gumm. His neighbor Bill Black knows far more about these events than he admits, and, observing this, begins worrying: "Suppose Ragle [Gumm] is becoming sane again?" In fact, Gumm does become sane, and the deception surrounding him (erected to protect and exploit him) begins to unravel.
Gumm tries to escape the town and is turned back by kafkaesque obstructions. He sees a magazine with himself on the cover, in a military uniform, at the factory depicted in the model. He tries a second time to escape, this time with Vic, and succeeds. He learns that his idyllic town is a constructed reality designed to protect him from the frightening fact that he lives on a then-future Earth (circa 1998) that is at war with its colonists on the Moon who are fighting for a permanent Lunar habitation that is politically independent of Earth as well.
Gumm has a unique ability to predict where the colonists' nuclear strikes will be aimed. Previously Gumm did this work for the military, but then he defected to the colonists' side and planned to secretly emigrate to the Moon. But before this could happen he began retreating into a fantasy world based largely upon the relatively idyllic surroundings of his extreme youth. He was no longer able to shoulder the awesome responsibility of being the Earth's lone protector from Lunar-launched H-Bomb attacks. The fake town was thereby created in Gumm's mental image to accommodate his dementia so that he would continue predicting missile strikes in the guise of submitting entries to a harmless newspaper contest and without the ethical qualms involved with being on the "wrong" side of a civil war.
When Gumm finally remembers his true history he decides to emigrate to the Moon after all because he feels that exploration and migration, being as they are basic human impulses, should never be denied a people by any national or planetary government. Vic rejects this belief, referring to the colonists essentially as aggressors and terrorists, and returns to the town. The book ends with some hope for peace, because the colonists are more willing to negotiate than the Earth government has been telling its citizens.
by jcivil » Mon Oct 08, 2012 7:45 pm
by 82_28 » Mon Oct 08, 2012 8:12 pm
by Hammer of Los » Mon Oct 08, 2012 9:03 pm
by JackRiddler » Wed Oct 10, 2012 11:38 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opini ... nted=print
The New York Times
October 9, 2012
Long Live Paper
By JUSTIN B. HOLLANDER
Medford, Mass.
LAST week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared a war on paper textbooks. “Over the next few years,” he said in a speech at the National Press Club, “textbooks should be obsolete.” In their place would come a variety of digital-learning technologies, like e-readers and multimedia Web sites.
Such technologies certainly have their place. But Secretary Duncan is threatening to light a bonfire to a tried-and-true technology — good old paper — that has been the foundation for one of the great educational systems on the planet. And while e-readers and multimedia may seem appealing, the idea of replacing an effective learning platform with a widely hyped but still unproven one is extremely dangerous.
A renowned expert on reading, Maryanne Wolf, has recently begun studying the effects of digital reading on learning, and so far the results are mixed. She worries that Internet reading, in particular, could be such a source of distractions for the student that they may cancel out most other potential benefits of a Web-linked, e-learning environment. And while it’s true that the high-tech industry has sponsored substantial amounts of research on the potential benefits of Web-based learning, not enough time has passed for longitudinal studies to demonstrate the full effects.
In addition, digital-reading advocates claim that lightweight e-books benefit students’ backs and save schools money. But the rolling backpack seems to have solved the weight problem, and the astounding costs to outfit every student with an e-reader, provide technical support and pay for regular software updates promise to make the e-textbook a very pricey option.
As both a teacher who uses paper textbooks and a student of urban history, I can’t help but wonder what parallels exist between my own field and this sudden, wholesale abandonment of the technology of paper.
For example, when cars began to fill America’s driveways, and new highways were laid across the land, the first thing cities did was encourage the dismantling of our train systems. Streetcar lines were torn up. A result, for many cities, was to rip apart the urban core and run highways through it, which only accelerated the flow of residents, commerce and investment to the suburbs.
But in recent years, new streetcar lines have been built or old systems extended in places like Pittsburgh, Jersey City and Phoenix. They are casting aside a newer technology in favor of an older one.
This lesson of technology-inspired extinction can be retold in many other domains of life: the way phonographs nearly disappeared when the music CD was invented; the rejection of bicycles in the middle of the 20th century; the shuttering of Polaroid factories with the advent of digital cameras.
My point is not that these are all pernicious or reversible developments. On the contrary, we have all benefited from new advances in medicine, communications and computing, even those that displaced familiar technologies.
The Polaroid is a wonderful device for what it is, but it will and should remain a technological novelty. On the other hand, few higher-tech formats deliver the lush sound quality of the vinyl record, and younger generations have recently returned to the format.
In other words, we shouldn’t jump at a new technology simply because it has advantages; only time and study will reveal its disadvantages and show the value of what we’ve left behind.
Which brings us back to paper. With strength and durability that could last thousands of years, paper can preserve information without the troubles we find when our most cherished knowledge is stuck on an unreadable floppy disk or lost deep in the “cloud.”
Paper textbooks can be stored and easily referenced on a shelf. Data are as easy to retrieve from paper as reaching across your desk for a textbook. They are easy to read and don’t require a battery or plug. Though the iPad and e-readers have increasingly better screen clarity, the idea that every time a person reads a book, newspaper or magazine in the near future they will require an energy source is frightening.
The digitization of information offers important benefits, including instant transmission, easy searchability and broad distribution. But before we shred the last of the paper textbooks, let us pause and remember those old streetcars, and how great it would be if we still had them around.
Justin B. Hollander is an assistant professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University and the author of “Sunburnt Cities: The Great Recession, Depopulation and Urban Planning in the American Sunbelt.”
by Asta » Wed Oct 10, 2012 5:24 pm
by Nordic » Wed Oct 10, 2012 9:37 pm
by Elvis » Wed Oct 10, 2012 10:29 pm
Asta wrote:Woolly catepillars (or woolly bears, depending on what you call them)
shifting gears now...
Triumph TR6s or Triumph Spitfires, or MGs or Austin America or the Austin Healy
Boat tail Bugattis
the original Mini Cooper
the Datsun Fairlady
Datsun
Datsun Z cars
Wooden boats
Karmen Ghia
Avanti
the car that Maxwell Smart drove, can't remember the name
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/what-did-maxwell-smart-drive/Several readers have written in to refute Ms. Cohen’s claim, citing Agent Smart’s car as a Sunbeam Tiger. Although he did drive a Sunbeam Tiger in a version of the opening credits, he also drove a light blue Karmann Ghia in another version (at the 2:02 mark in the above video), along with a Ferrari, an Opel GT and an Alfa Romeo.
by JackRiddler » Wed Oct 10, 2012 11:08 pm
Nordic wrote:Whoever thinks we should get rid of textbooks is a fucking idiot. Typical of the Obama administration. Where does that logically lead? To get rid of books. Libraries!!
by Hammer of Los » Thu Oct 11, 2012 6:27 am
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