71–80 of 208 posts
The article makes reference to Tim O'Reilly's excellent Frank Herbert . That book is well worth reading by anybody who wants to better understand Frank Herbert, and is available for free at https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/ .
With recent events I’ve been thinking about Dune lately. Once you start to compare what happens in dune to what is happening now, it's rather unpleasant. Prescience allows for the complete domination of humanity, but to some degree we already working on pre-prescience. Privatized intelligence companies have grown as part of our corporate surveillance state. These companies, like palantir, act as “truthsayers,” divini…
*as some variant of Paul archetype rises and returns the branch to a coherent timeline.
I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" at the Riverside Theatre on Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee in 70mm in the summer of 1962, the year it was released. I was overwhelmed ("blown away" as a term of art didn't exist back then but would be an apt description). I was SO thrilled when, after nearly two hours, the screen said "There will now be an intermission." Never heard of such a thing back then for a movie! I note that the film…
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True, but the references in Star Wars to spice (spice mines of Kessel in the original, a reference to striking spice miners in Attack of the Clones) is pretty much only from Dune. Unless they were mining oregano or something.
The Dutch East Indies was literally "mining" spice ( cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric ) from SE Asia for European consumption and packing ship with gold bullion in exchange. There were many actual "spice wars" fought in the region to wipe out competing crops, to build alliances, and later betray those local allies, etc.
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> The Dutch East Indies was literally "mining" spice ( cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric ) Only ginger and turmeric are found below soil, and even then you wouldn't usually describe farmers as "literally mining for potatoes."
The airquotes on "mining" would signify to some that literal mining with excavators, screens, crushers, etc was not intended rather an operation that was literally on the scale of mining with an economic return on par with gold mining a rich vein. Others might disagree. English is a fun language. What cannot be disputed is the significant increase in national wealth brought home by the Dutch operations in what was kn…
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> Would this not be the same as asking; "Are you 14 years old?" "between x and y" normally includes the endpoints. For example, if someone asks you to pick a number between 1 and 10, everyone would pretty much agree that 1 and 10 are acceptable choices.
The ambiguity of such questions drove me up the wall as a child. My mother has a story about how I would ask about future events as "the day after the day after the day after the day after the day after today", which in my mind was much clearer than "in X days" why it wasn't clear how rounding occurred. Clearly, this set me up for a career involving off-by-one errors.
First episode:
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The airquotes on "mining" would signify to some that literal mining with excavators, screens, crushers, etc was not intended rather an operation that was literally on the scale of mining with an economic return on par with gold mining a rich vein. Others might disagree. English is a fun language. What cannot be disputed is the significant increase in national wealth brought home by the Dutch operations in what was kn…
However, using the word "literally" is a poor choice. "Figuratively" would be better, or even just leave out "literally" and allow "mining" to be interpreted by the reader.
As a native english reader, writer and speaker of some six decades I grasp the tension in the use of ' literally "airquoted" ' and embrace it.
I also enjoy Riddley Walker, the first edition of Clockwork Orange (sans lexicographic annexure), and the outrageously provocative shock value of the opening sentence of Burgess's panoramic saga Earthly Powers.
Your opinion is noted and respected.
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Compared with what, for god's sake? Explosions, mad Arabs, trekking across the horrible desert, dim British superiors doing the dim British thing, dubious Turkish sexual practices, etc. This is boring??? Though I must admit O'Toole does camp it up a bit too much.
Camps it up too much?! Exactly the right amount. Except the negotiation scene with Auda. He always seemed a touch too sarcastic in his delivery there, and it makes Auda seem foolish, which makes the scene worse. Like that one awkward cut in the middle of Jaws, this bugs me every time I watch it. Made even worse because the scene’s also wonderful, but that flaw… frustrating. But god, the rest? It makes him otherworldl…
Actually, this has made me put "Pillars of Wisdom", which I never read before, on my Kindle to-read list.