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Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

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Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#21

Post by redis_mlc »

johnnyforeigner wrote: post #20
samplatt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate happened, I think. Difficult to maintain optimism on the ultimate destiny of consciousness when the science is telling you there's an extinction event on your doorstep.

Living through the Cold War brought us a constant and very close awareness of the potential for a nuclear extinction event so I don’t think it’s climate change. If anything it was scarier then because there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error in a highly complex socio-technical system. I’m of the opinion that much of the change in our culture was driven by a concerted pushback on…

> there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error

Agreed, I was there and watched the "Duck and Cover" films in school. That only stopped when leaders realized that surviving the initial blast was one thing, and surviving a month later for most urbanites was unlikely.

> So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan ... happiness and satisfaction comes only through the pursuit of financial success

I don't see a coherent argument here.

You can ignore Thatcher, since she was the head of a bankrupted, hapless country (Britain had food rationing for 9 years after WW2.)

Reagan was one of the most powerful leaders in world history. He wanted a strong America, both domestically and overseas. Can't really argue with that. We don't like people who utter words like "Evil Empire" [see Prof. Victor Davis Hanson], but somebody has to say it. Just be glad Reagan was on our side.

Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#22

Post by milliondollar »

jkaptur wrote: post #8

> What NASA needs most, he says, is some imaginative PR... The astronauts he has met could provide reams of picturesque copy; they are hard-drinking, fast-living, generally “wild and weird.” The editor of Rolling Stone was certainly paying attention! It sounds like they sent Tom Wolfe to cover Apollo just a short time after publishing this. His book, The Right Stuff, would cement the image of those first American ast…

The author was also a minor player in new journalism circles. He wrote "boys on the bus", an account of working with Hunter S Thompson to cover the 1972 presidential campaign.

Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#23

Post by chasontherobot »

redis_mlc wrote: post #21
johnnyforeigner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living through the Cold War brought us a constant and very close awareness of the potential for a nuclear extinction event so I don’t think it’s climate change. If anything it was scarier then because there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error in a highly complex socio-technical system. I’m of the opinion that much of the change in our culture was driven by a concerted pushback on…

> there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error Agreed, I was there and watched the "Duck and Cover" films in school. That only stopped when leaders realized that surviving the initial blast was one thing, and surviving a month later for most urbanites was unlikely. > So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan ... happiness and satisfaction comes…

Whose side was Reagan on? He certainly wasn't on the side of a lot of gays, blacks, or the other minorities his administration threw in jail, poisoned, or just let die through inaction.

Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#24

Post by markdown »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #18
dilippkumar wrote: post #12

> Eyles and some of his fellow Consciousness IIIers regard computer programming as a fine craft that might some day be elevated to the status of an art. “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s…

Whytheluckystiff wrote some Ruby code that can only be described as good poetry (including at least one project used in production in some places, the Camping web framework) circa 2005. I'm sure some people write poetry-level code today (obviously the folks at shadertoy.com, but they're writing in a classical style, and I'm sure someone's writing code poetry that could not have been written before 2020).

> Whytheluckystiff

Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Is that the guy who ragequit and deleted all his tutorials/guides?

Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#27

Post by eitland »

> “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s sort of discouraging.”

Today computer languages are mostly easier to learn than a totally new human language I guess.

I still thought this one was quote-worthy.

Also: is it just me or was writing in some ways better before?

Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#28

Post by jhbadger »

eitland wrote: post #27

> “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s…

Way easier. It is hardly noteworthy for a programmer to know a half dozen programming languages well, but a person who knows a half dozen human languages well is.

Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#29

Post by mft_ »

redis_mlc wrote: post #21
johnnyforeigner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living through the Cold War brought us a constant and very close awareness of the potential for a nuclear extinction event so I don’t think it’s climate change. If anything it was scarier then because there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error in a highly complex socio-technical system. I’m of the opinion that much of the change in our culture was driven by a concerted pushback on…

> there was a sense that extinction could come simply from a single random error Agreed, I was there and watched the "Duck and Cover" films in school. That only stopped when leaders realized that surviving the initial blast was one thing, and surviving a month later for most urbanites was unlikely. > So, through things like the Moral Majority and the efforts of Thatcher and Reagan ... happiness and satisfaction comes…

> You can ignore Thatcher, since she was the head of a bankrupted, hapless country (Britain had food rationing for 9 years after WW2.)

She became Prime Minister in 1979. Britain was probably over the nine years of food rationing by that time... 34 years after the war ended...

Re: Weird-Looking Freak Saves Apollo 14 (1971)

#30

Post by SonOfLilit »

markdown wrote: post #24
SonOfLilit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whytheluckystiff wrote some Ruby code that can only be described as good poetry (including at least one project used in production in some places, the Camping web framework) circa 2005. I'm sure some people write poetry-level code today (obviously the folks at shadertoy.com, but they're writing in a classical style, and I'm sure someone's writing code poetry that could not have been written before 2020).

> Whytheluckystiff Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Is that the guy who ragequit and deleted all his tutorials/guides?

As far as I understand, he quit his public life when someone hunted down and published his real name and address. He removed his website and github, which contained his various writings, some of which had names with "tutorial" or "guide" in them but all of which were at least 80% works of literature and at most 20% works of technical documentation. Not sure I would call it "ragequitting".

Virtually all his works were archived by fans and can be read for example here: https://viewsourcecode.org/why/

A few years ago he published a sort of absurdist goodbye (as a live-updating printer spool) which Steve Klabnik collected into a 95-page PDF here: https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE

His blog contained many small snippets of code that were definitely meant to be consumed as poetry, they are easy to spot because of all the colors and shapes and sometimes animations:

https://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/

But my own experience of learning from him how to experience code as poetry mostly involved around using Camping in production for some small side projects and needing to explore some bits of its code because of practical reasons:

https://github.com/camping/camping

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