Helping you with historical methods and solving problems that are useless
(570 – 632 AD) Prophet of Islam.
(also: quotes of muhammet)
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: quotes of muhammet)
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
hollywood big shots enjoy making movies (or at least, they keep doing it; who knows if they enjoy it). but scripts take a lot of time to write, and sometimes it saves time to simply take a pre-existing work of fiction and modify it for the big screen. however, sometimes the source material does not pass through such modification unscathed.
the movie-fication process often takes pains to shorten, lengthen, doll up, ugly up, or in other ways mutilate the source material. e.g.:
* apocalypse now: the original book, 'heart of darkness,' is set in 19th-century Africa instead of vietnam.
* a clockwork orange: alex is cured of his violent tendencies in the end
* forrest gump: gump goes into space with a monkey and a porn star
* jurassic park: the lawyer wasn't a bad guy but hammond was
* starship troopers: the movie and the book both examine the message of "the army is way cool, and better soldiers make better citizens." the book honestly expects the reader to agree with this message, while the movie is laughing in your face for thinking it for even a second.
* who framed roger rabbit?: is about comic strip characters, not animated cartoons, and the killer is like a magic genie or something.
* every stephen king book: doesn't suck. well, not all of them.
the movie-fication process often takes pains to shorten, lengthen, doll up, ugly up, or in other ways mutilate the source material. e.g.:
* apocalypse now: the original book, 'heart of darkness,' is set in 19th-century Africa instead of vietnam.
* a clockwork orange: alex is cured of his violent tendencies in the end
* forrest gump: gump goes into space with a monkey and a porn star
* jurassic park: the lawyer wasn't a bad guy but hammond was
* starship troopers: the movie and the book both examine the message of "the army is way cool, and better soldiers make better citizens." the book honestly expects the reader to agree with this message, while the movie is laughing in your face for thinking it for even a second.
* who framed roger rabbit?: is about comic strip characters, not animated cartoons, and the killer is like a magic genie or something.
* every stephen king book: doesn't suck. well, not all of them.
a means of selecting political leaders in which candidates perform for the amusement of the citizenry and attempt to suppress their objectionable characteristics, in exchange for which eligible citizens award them points in the form of little slips of paper with the candidates' names written on them. the points are then tallied to determine the winner and everyone goes home unhappy
elections are generally seen as mercifully less exciting than the previous system of violent uprisings and revolutions
elections are generally seen as mercifully less exciting than the previous system of violent uprisings and revolutions
One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only. The Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians — who are Hogmies.
(also: humans)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: humans)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(1460s –1524) Portuguese explorer, first European to reach India and establish a route for imperialism.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: vasco da gama quotes)
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: vasco da gama quotes)
A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama of Thibet; the Moogum of M'bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt; the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.
All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.
—Dumbo Omohundro
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.
—Dumbo Omohundro
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(n.) a corrupted term deriving from bantu by way of haiti. according to folklore the zombie is a hollowed-out shell of a human being, utterly devoid of any semblance of free will, just like (insert-adherents-of-unpopular-political-movement here).
if there is any truth to the stories of zombies, it may derive from the shamanic use of pufferfish toxin to place individuals in a state of excited catatonia. whereas this is a topic best analyzed by historians, and therefore boring, the concept has influenced a number of popular horror movies in which masses of zombies are presented as a stand-in for consumerism or man's inhumanity to man or some nonsense.
irish rock band the cranberries once expressed interest in the contents of a zombie's head
if there is any truth to the stories of zombies, it may derive from the shamanic use of pufferfish toxin to place individuals in a state of excited catatonia. whereas this is a topic best analyzed by historians, and therefore boring, the concept has influenced a number of popular horror movies in which masses of zombies are presented as a stand-in for consumerism or man's inhumanity to man or some nonsense.
irish rock band the cranberries once expressed interest in the contents of a zombie's head
Time travel is increasingly regarded as a menace. History is being polluted.
One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history- the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.
The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own father or mother.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
Note: The term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
The Encyclopedia Galactica has much to say on the theory and practice of time travel, most of which is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't spent at least four lifetimes studying advanced hypermathematics, and since it was impossible to do this before time travel was invented, there is a certain amount of confusion as to how the idea was arrived at in the first place. One rationalization of this problem states that time travel was, by its very nature, discovered simultaneously at all periods of history, but this is clearly bunk.
The trouble is that a lot of history is now quite clearly bunk as well.
Here is an example. It may not seem to be an important one to some people, but to others it is crucial. It is certainly significant in that it was the single event which caused the Campaign for Real Time to be set up in the first place (or is it last? It depends which way round you see history as happening, and this too is now an increasingly vexed question).
There is, or was, a poet. His name was Lallafa, and he wrote what are widely regarded throughout the Galaxy as being the finest poems in existence, the Songs of the Long Land.
They are/were unspeakably wonderful. That is to say, you couldn't speak very much of them at once without being so overcome with emotion, truth and a sense of wholeness and oneness of things that you wouldn't pretty soon need a brisk walk round the block, possibly pausing at a bar on the way back for a quick glass of perspective and soda. They were that good.
Lallafa had lived in the forests of the Long Lands of Effa. He lived there, and he wrote his poems there. He wrote them on pages made of dried habra leaves, without the benefit of education or correcting fluid. He wrote about the light in the forest and what he thought about that. He wrote about the darkness in the forest, and what he thought about that. He wrote about the girl who had left him and precisely what he thought about that.
Long after his death his poems were found and wondered over. News of them spread like morning sunlight. For centuries they illuminated and watered the lives of many people whose lives might otherwise have been darker and drier.
Then, shortly after the invention of time travel, some major correcting fluid manufacturers wondered whether his poems might have been better still if he had had access to some high-quality correcting fluid, and whether he might be persuaded to say a few words on that effect.
They travelled the time waves, they found him, they explained the situation- with some difficulty- to him, and did indeed persuade him. In fact they persuaded him to such an effect that he became extremely rich at their hands, and the girl about whom he was otherwise destined to write which such precision never got around to leaving him, and in fact they moved out of the forest to a rather nice pad in town and he frequently commuted to the future to do chat shows, on which he sparkled wittily.
He never got around to writing the poems, of course, which was a problem, but an easily solved one. The manufacturers of correcting fluid simply packed him off for a week somewhere with a copy of a later edition of his book and a stack of dried habra leaves to copy them out on to, making the odd deliberate mistake and correction on the way.
Many people now say that the poems are suddenly worthless. Others argue that they are exactly the same as they always were, so what's changed? The first people say that that isn't the point. They aren't quite sure what the point is, but they are quite sure that that isn't it. They set up the Campaign for Real Time to try to stop this sort of thing going on. Their case was considerably strengthened by the fact that a week after they had set themselves up, news broke that not only had the great Cathedral of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery, but that the construction of the refinery had taken so long, and had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion production to start on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable.
So a lot of history is now gone for ever.
One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history- the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.
The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own father or mother.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
Note: The term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
The Encyclopedia Galactica has much to say on the theory and practice of time travel, most of which is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't spent at least four lifetimes studying advanced hypermathematics, and since it was impossible to do this before time travel was invented, there is a certain amount of confusion as to how the idea was arrived at in the first place. One rationalization of this problem states that time travel was, by its very nature, discovered simultaneously at all periods of history, but this is clearly bunk.
The trouble is that a lot of history is now quite clearly bunk as well.
Here is an example. It may not seem to be an important one to some people, but to others it is crucial. It is certainly significant in that it was the single event which caused the Campaign for Real Time to be set up in the first place (or is it last? It depends which way round you see history as happening, and this too is now an increasingly vexed question).
There is, or was, a poet. His name was Lallafa, and he wrote what are widely regarded throughout the Galaxy as being the finest poems in existence, the Songs of the Long Land.
They are/were unspeakably wonderful. That is to say, you couldn't speak very much of them at once without being so overcome with emotion, truth and a sense of wholeness and oneness of things that you wouldn't pretty soon need a brisk walk round the block, possibly pausing at a bar on the way back for a quick glass of perspective and soda. They were that good.
Lallafa had lived in the forests of the Long Lands of Effa. He lived there, and he wrote his poems there. He wrote them on pages made of dried habra leaves, without the benefit of education or correcting fluid. He wrote about the light in the forest and what he thought about that. He wrote about the darkness in the forest, and what he thought about that. He wrote about the girl who had left him and precisely what he thought about that.
Long after his death his poems were found and wondered over. News of them spread like morning sunlight. For centuries they illuminated and watered the lives of many people whose lives might otherwise have been darker and drier.
Then, shortly after the invention of time travel, some major correcting fluid manufacturers wondered whether his poems might have been better still if he had had access to some high-quality correcting fluid, and whether he might be persuaded to say a few words on that effect.
They travelled the time waves, they found him, they explained the situation- with some difficulty- to him, and did indeed persuade him. In fact they persuaded him to such an effect that he became extremely rich at their hands, and the girl about whom he was otherwise destined to write which such precision never got around to leaving him, and in fact they moved out of the forest to a rather nice pad in town and he frequently commuted to the future to do chat shows, on which he sparkled wittily.
He never got around to writing the poems, of course, which was a problem, but an easily solved one. The manufacturers of correcting fluid simply packed him off for a week somewhere with a copy of a later edition of his book and a stack of dried habra leaves to copy them out on to, making the odd deliberate mistake and correction on the way.
Many people now say that the poems are suddenly worthless. Others argue that they are exactly the same as they always were, so what's changed? The first people say that that isn't the point. They aren't quite sure what the point is, but they are quite sure that that isn't it. They set up the Campaign for Real Time to try to stop this sort of thing going on. Their case was considerably strengthened by the fact that a week after they had set themselves up, news broke that not only had the great Cathedral of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery, but that the construction of the refinery had taken so long, and had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion production to start on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable.
So a lot of history is now gone for ever.
the final prayers of the day before driving home from church
To get the sense of something written, if it has any.Commonly, it has not.
(also: reading)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
(also: reading)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)
time with the only goal to make yourself/others happy.
some people have hard time keeping these two groups in ballance.
some people have hard time keeping these two groups in ballance.
sign-up or face the consequences!
“"observers" must obey the call.”
join