Farmers bathe the land with chemicals. Many have the simpleton’s philosophy that, if a little fertilizer is good, a lot must be better.
Who Lies Sleeping?
Marienbad Abstracts Piped from Yahoo! Pipes
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Abstract
These abstracts are taken from the actual AskWhy! pages and piped here via Yahoo! Pipes. They allow you to get a flavour of each page to see whether it might be of interest without having to load every one. An aid to browsing the website! The Heading in each case is a link to the page.
AskWhy! Marienbad Abstracts
Abstracts from each page on the Marienbad Heresy directory of the AskWhy! main website.
L’année dernièr à Marienbad
The timeless and recurrent theme of L’Année dernière à Marienbad (“Last Year in Marienbad”), a 1961 French movie directed by Alain Resnais, starring Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff, script by Alain Robbe-Grillet. A textual simulation of Last Year in Marienbad.
The Novel in Modern Literary Criticism
Essays on literary criticism drawing on Parthian Words by Storm Jameson. Is the novelist’s art dead? Are novelists merely survivals? Has modern technology, the new media, and the cynical opportunism and self indulgence of the age killed off empathy, the heart of the novelist’s understanding?
Mark of the Rose Kreuz
Extracts from Chivalrous Mark of the Rose Kreuz
AskWhy! Polti Plot Generator
Gozzi, the author of Turandot, according to Goethe, had found 36 tragic, by which he meant dramatic, situations, but he never published them. In 1921, George Polti, a French academic in his fifties, claimed to have rediscovered these 36 plots. He maintained they correspond to the no more than 36 emotions, which he believed humans can experience. To obtain the 36 varieties, the ties of friendship or kinship between the central characters was determined, then their degree of consciousness or free will, and knowledge of the end towards which they were moving. To alter the degree of discernment between the two adversaries, another character has to enter (introduced by Sophocles), having a subtle role, who makes one of the adversaries his instrument. As the perception of the used adversary diminishes so that of the extra character increases.
AskWhy! Marienbad Muser Plot Generator
Gozzi, the author of Turandot, according to Goethe, had found 36 tragic, by which he meant dramatic, situations, but he never published them. In 1921, George Polti, a French academic in his fifties, claimed to have rediscovered these 36 plots. He maintained they correspond to the no more than 36 emotions, which he believed humans can experience. PoltiPlot is presented elsewhere but here is a refinement, an indulgence. Polti in Marienbad! It serves the same purpose, but is set Last Year in Marienbad, also simulated in these pages.
Marienbad Lottery Number Generator
Computer generation of random numbers. Pursuing our random theme, numbers this time, here are UK Lottery numbers generated by a very simple script. Anything produced at random seems senseless, except when it is senselessness produced randonly for God, then, by a miracle, it makes sense to Christians. When a lottery selection matches those produced randomly by the lottery companies, then it makes sense to the winner, but not to a million or so losers. Of course, if you win the lottery at odds of a few million to one against, then it seems like a miracle! A computer can pick random numbers quite well. What it cannot purposely do is pick the same random numbers that the machine of the lottery company selects. At least by using fresh random numbers each time you enter, you do not feel trapped by a list of birthdays or lucky numbers. That is what you should never do, but what the owners of casinos and lotteries want you to do. 'Course, if you do win, you could send us your old notes!
Who Wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen?
Computers so far have not shown themselves great at making up plots, though they can put them together in a random fashion to stimulate human creativity. They are, though, potentially good at deciding who has written what, by analysing the works of human authors. Now with electronic scanning, OCR, word counting, statistical methods and neural networks it is all more feasible than it once was. Robert Matthews and Tom Merriam did it, and explained it in New Scientist. Here is a slightly abbreviated edition of their paper, included here as relevant to the theme of computers and text.
Wesley Elsberry’s Weasel Program
Wesley R Elsberry has written a nice example of Richard Dawkins’ “Weasel” program to show that his ID detractors at the so-called Discovery Institute continue to lie and cheat to give false information to those Christians who disbelieve in evolution. This program proves very simply that they are liars.
Impeach Bush and Blair
Write a letter demanding the impeachment of the war criminals Bush and Blair. This public domain perpetual blog gives you 15463 random, editable, anti-war, pro-democracy e-mails that you can send. Refresh to renew.
Last uploaded: 14 October, 2009.
Moses and Exodus
