That Half-Vision Failed Miserably

Post #12,606 by deSitter 10/10/01 10:40:49 AM Reply	That Half-Vision Failed Miserably Why? Because we don't just live on the Earth. This perspective was provided by Apollo, and completely failed to hold the attention of most of humanity. We are the Universe, and the Earth is only our spaceship. Ultimately Sagan was a total failure because he lacked vision. He wasn't a very good scientist either.
Post #12,765 by Ashton 10/10/01 7:51:42 PM Reply	You have to walk before you can run.. The West is characterized as 'adolescent' not only in political, but surely in metaphysical ken. We prize comfort and entertainment (and$) over all else. (Most of us East&West like to watch hard work and its results, of course - not Do it.) I believe Sagan's was at least a small step towards introducing the rather Large ideas of scale and relativity into a closed mind-set -- a mindset which imagines that Everything can be written down in homo-sap words, about Infinities beyond intellectual comprehension. While I 'agree' with your capsule summary = on that Scale! - the statement is incomprehensible to anyone who has never looked beyond childhood / cultural Western 'thought'. Recall the ageless saying re casting Pearls before swine ?? It is a First-principle of all serious inquiry, just as is the tendency, whenever one has experienced a new Aha !!! ..to want to immediately 'spread it around'! Y'know? No one knows.. how genuine fully-Human! Curiosity is to be restored to a culture whose dumbth-level has been measurably increasing for at least a couple of decades - (some would say: since they went with metaphors as-if historical events!) {sigh} No, Carl was hardly a "fully conscious being" [whatever] - but Awe.. is a useful, and a Necessary prelude to ever looking farther than, ~what mommy and daddy told you. It ain't just Muricans who prefer the EZ and simplistic to.. fucking hard work. Carl at least retained Awe! so I say - give him a break! :-\ufffd Ashton
Post #12,766 by wharris2 10/10/01 8:01:44 PM Reply	Re: That Half-Vision Failed Miserably What in hell are you blathering about, you idiot? Who knows how empty the sky is In the place of a fallen tower. Who knows how quiet it is in the home Where a son has not returned. -- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
Post #12,772 by inthane-chan 10/10/01 8:17:28 PM Reply	Well, that really helped him... Ashton, IMO, did a much better job of trying to enlighten him. ^_^ "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #12,812 by deSitter 10/10/01 11:10:54 PM Reply	I Was Explicit and Clear Sagan was a terrible scientist. I remember laughing at Cosmos, esp. his explanation of relativity, which was completely wrong, both technically and philosophically. If "The Ascent of Man" was tender steak, then "Cosmos" was rancid sausage. The idea that the Earth, and we on it, are fragile dandelions wafting through existence, is ridiculous. We and our planet, and the reality that emerges from the implicate order, are very strong and vital. Only stupidity and self-destructiveness can kill us. The question is not how isolated we are, but how unenlightened. Sagan did nothing to enlighten. He was a massive egotist who hid his lack of science talent behind his public persona of Mr. Universe.
Post #12,848 by Ashton 10/11/01 4:15:52 AM Reply	Quite so. But you aren't considering the source and the audience everywhere, now. In the '70s there was a window, a chance to reassess the popular doggerel of the day. Along with the pure mindless exploration and other noise was - much more that was beginning. It still is. But the environment has declined. That window closed, as greed became the hot item du jour in the next decade, and stuck. To demonstrate the paucity of Sagan's philosophy is to demonstrate the paucity of lots else - so it would be resisted and dismissed. You can't get there from here, by assertion. No, I don't know "what works" - but fairly clear about: what doesn't. (Hell, you already know about the priesthood.. in physics! yet.) Cosmos wasn't meant to induce study and hard work - but to entertain, and Sagan was no sage. At least it beat the hell out of a sit-com and probably led to a few.. picking a major besides phys-ed or biz-ad (?) ie. it sucked a lot less than the usual Tee Vee pap. {sigh} A. PS - yeah too - what if Feynman had got the job? (or that someone, even just at Tech, had had the presence of mind to film the lectures. Assholes.)
Post #12,856 by deSitter 10/11/01 7:06:59 AM Reply	Sorry ..to be so bitter, but the world, the people on it, and their institutions amount to mostly a massive brown diarrhea stain.
Post #12,966 by CRConrad 10/11/01 3:46:30 PM Reply	So why don'cha just fucking put yerself out of our misery?!?
Post #12,972 by deSitter 10/11/01 4:12:03 PM Reply	Deal
Post #12,974 by CRConrad 10/11/01 4:13:38 PM Reply	Sure -- as soon as you do.
Post #13,492 by deSitter 10/16/01 1:38:07 AM Reply	Ficken Sie Teutonjunge I'm sticking until I can hook up my heroin connection. Live with it anal-boy.
Post #13,535 by Ashton 10/16/01 4:07:18 AM Reply	No. Wrong choice, street-boy. Good quality MDMA, of correct dose/body weight + no fucking acid-rock or alcohol / quiet music or silence: might give you a chance to cool out, realize your fucked view of the world is as personalized as your DNA -- and maybe gain back some perspective. Maybe. I know a talented ex-CIT engr / then psych type for ~ 20 yrs. who has used brain about such matters. Heroin is what you can't handle, now if ever. FWIW. Probably zilch. A. And WTF do you care what anyone thinks of WTF you 'are'? Gonna let someone else determine your next idiocy, too? If you actually wanted to communicate with anyone, you could e-mail; might not look so much like firing for effect, again.
Post #13,716 by deSitter 10/17/01 1:32:21 AM Reply	You're Too Delicate for Drugs
Post #13,588 by screamer 10/16/01 12:41:41 PM Reply	While you're waiting... could you send me an email. I hope you've still got my address. Maybe we can talk again about what we were talking about last year... It sounds like you could use a serious change... Dan Just a few thoughts, Screamer The Other Man Who Knows Fucking Everything "God is dead" Nietzsche "Nietzsche is dead" God "Nietzsche has an S in it" Celina Jones "Proove to me that I X is" "Milk. The other white meat"
Post #13,738 by CRConrad 10/17/01 10:26:41 AM Reply	Promises, promises... Back in July, it was "I won't be here after August"; a couple days ago, it was "this is my last post here"... All just empty promises. Not very much a man of your word, are you? Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
Post #13,842 by Ashton 10/17/01 6:05:41 PM Reply	People generally don't respect what is given for free. Should we start charging [PayPal] for therapy? Rates determined by 'IF' rating, perhaps.. only one refill without a new IF-assessment. (Well, at least charge those who tend to pay their bills, that is..) Insolence Factor
Post #13,903 by deSitter 10/18/01 12:50:44 AM Reply	Eat Shit, You Hypocrite No wonder the NPR fags and liberal whiners have such a reputation. You're all a bunch of lying, fake, gutless pseudo-intellectual hypocrites. You're just as bad as the would-be no-dick fascists on the other side of the aisle.
Post #13,913 by Ashton 10/18/01 1:51:08 AM Reply	Sticks & stones, Genghis.. sticks & stones. (And that preoccupation with other peoples' gender stuff - they used to call projection.) As to who sucks more: NPR or deSitter? EZ poll results. And you're gonna talk about academics in Hilbert space !? Sheesh. I'm truly sorry that your work was stolen. I'd be pretty pissed, too - but not at every homo-sap around. Get help or go the rest of the way into irrelevance. You're too smart to behave so stupidly - you already knew about your social retard BS, but you haven't done shit to get educated, in most of a year. Wallow in piss-off for all I care. It isn't in your power to cause me to join you, though. I'm not 13 any more. Ashton
Post #14,112 by deSitter 10/19/01 1:37:52 AM Reply	Re: Sticks & stones, Genghis.. sticks & stones. My "work" was not stolen. My "work" is, among other things, the algebraic geometry of plane curves in the matter (x5, x6) plane - that's all in my head and easily recreated. What was lost was hundreds of poems - little statements of the NOW without reference to the - recreatable. Love poems. Poems of passions - lost. Does that mean anything to you? Did you ever see the same sunset twice? Did you ever hold a girl real tight and write it down? My "work" is safe. Not to worry.
Post #13,957 by bepatient 10/18/01 10:31:23 AM Reply	My my... how amazingly adult of you. Shit happens man. You can come in here and tell us all to "fucking rot in fucking hell you liberal, conservative, smart, stupid, repubocrat assholes"...and when your done... Shit is STILL gonna happen. And since you seem to be looking for it...more will CONTINUE to happen to you. My only piece of advice to you... Pick yer ass up...brush yer ass off...and GET ON WITH IT. This feeling sorry fer yourself BULLSHIT because the world is full of ASSHOLES will get you absolutely nowhere...and it will keep you there forever. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]

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