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nomadologist
Guest
Right right. But then Larry sent the orchestra to go play Wagner outside the the other man's house (wasn't he in a wheelchair?) after his daughter toilet-papered Larry's trees on Halloween. Or did his wife set that up for his birthday? Either way it's hilarious.
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Larry first booked the orchestra to play for his wife's birthday but screwed up by attempting to play golf with Geoff as soon as they'd finished.
I think CYE is the funniest TV show ever. And given the frequency with which race crops up, quite apposite.
There was a piece in a UK paper at the weekend on Larry's (real) wife and her global warming campaigning.
I think CYE is the funniest TV show ever. And given the frequency with which race crops up, quite apposite.
There was a piece in a UK paper at the weekend on Larry's (real) wife and her global warming campaigning.
N
nomadologist
Guest
seconded
"i'm a Moose and an Elk",,,
anytime he acts like a gentile ("miss, could get me a gin and tonic"), it slays... hey, wait, maybe S.B. Cohen IS onto something!
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nomadologist
Guest
totally forgot about Moose and Elks hahahhahahah
ah, polemics. how productivist art thou. how much money you reel in. how effective you always are. how ancient is your artform.
ah, polemics. how productivist art thou. how much money you reel in. how effective you always are. how ancient is your artform.
to which he replies with the immortal "I might hate myself but it's got nothing to with my being a jew!"
thirded.
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nomadologist
Guest
This is the most salient thing I've seen in a review of Borat. Derrida, anyone? Differance. yeah.
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Ok, I lied, I looked at Hundredmillion's response.
Now there's a statement that not even I can argue with. Hehe. Looks like you do have a sense of humor. Please use it more, I like it
Whatever happened to the profusion of compliments, to the infinity of boundless flattery formerly parading in the form of abuse? Have you been suddenly denied hyper-privileged access to the enigmatic The All-Purpose Dictionary of Toxic Abuse, a work so obscure and mysterious as to have a provenance that leaves no trace, a text so radically other that unlike Socrates' Comedies or Lovecraft's Necronomicon, you won't even find a reference to it in a Google search?
[Oh but maybe try a Yahoo search instead, as the CEO of this Google rival, the $200m-a-year Terry Semel, was the very guy who authorised the withdrawal of A Clockwork Orange in 1973 when he was Warners' boss, so obviously he's privy to a copy ...]
But enough of that.
Not sure how that changes anything, because nobody possesses an "I" (it is always Other).
gek-opel said:
LoL. My anti-racist "symptoms" are the result of my super-cooled neural networks playing havoc with a copy of themselves, better take some approved medication to correct the clinically diagnosed neuro-chemical imbalance, like maybe some chilled Franciskaner rice beer. Ah! That's better. Way to go Borat (hiccup)!! Chemically balanced empathetic racism now fully restored.
gek-opel said:
On the other hand, if Cohen were to play a black dude pretending to be a white dude dressed up as a black dude doing his best Sacha Baron Cohen impression ...
Borderpolice said:
The earlier Badiou quote aside, let's summarise via this review of Rebecca Goldstein's Incompleteness:
Positivism started as a kind of intellectual housecleaning following World War I. In Vienna, Goldstein writes, "the overall topic was the moral and intellectual death and decay of all that had come before, and the need to construct entirely new methodologies, forms and foundations." The Vienna Circle celebrated empirical science as the basis for those new foundations, but as the ideas of positivism evolved and filtered into such disciplines as literary theory, anthropology and linguistics, science itself became a target of skepticism. Enter, postmodernism. Every form of knowledge came to be analyzed as a set of rules created by flawed human beings whose biases inevitably infected those rules. The relativity, uncertainty and incompleteness of Einstein, Heisenberg and Godel became metaphors for the unreliability of what we once took to be truth.
Einstein, whose famous theory is so often misrepresented in the maxim "Everything is relative," might not have been so ardent a Platonist as Godel, but he was no subjectivist. According to Goldstein, "Einstein interpreted his theory as representing the objective nature of space-time, so very different from our human, subjective point of view of space and time." Both men believed that an objective, abstract reality existed and that the human mind could behold and grasp this reality. As Godel saw it, we achieve this through a faculty called mathematical intuition.
Godel's faith in mathematical intuition put him in opposition to the mathematical equivalent of positivism, a movement called formalism. Formalism, led by the mathematician David Hilbert, believed that mathematics was, in Hilbert's words, "a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper." Or, as Goldstein describes it, "mathematicians, according to formalism, are not in the business of discovering descriptive truths, whether of the real world of things in physical space or the trans-empirical world of numbers and sets ... They are simply in the business of manipulating the mechanical rules of self-enclosed formal systems."
If formalism were correct, then it followed that mathematics could also be overhauled so that every part of it was "consistent" and the entire system was "complete." It could be boiled down to a set of rules or axioms and procedures so basic and ironclad that a machine -- the computers that were just beyond the historical horizon -- could perform it. It could be finally purged of the paradoxes that had been plaguing the field for hundreds of years. Mathematical intuition, the source of ideas that can't be formally proven but possessing what Goldstein calls, "the urgent cogency that compels belief," has no place in such a system.
Godel's theorem undermined the rules of formalism by using those rules to prove that the formalist scheme was doomed. In what Goldstein calls "one of the most astounding pieces of mathematical reasoning ever produced," he demonstrated that in the kind of system that the formalists aspired to, it was possible to make a statement that was both unprovable and yet also true. This works a little like the famous "liar's paradox," in which the statement "This statement is false," can only be true if it is also false and vice versa. But Godel's theorem was not a paradox, precisely because it pointed to the difference between what could be proven and what was true.
It's easy to see why the distinction confuses people. While Godel might seem to be challenging reason itself, he was, to put a finer point on it, actually demonstrating the inherent problem in a particularly limited form of reasoning. He never abandoned his own faith in another, broader form of reason that includes intuition.
Einstein, whose famous theory is so often misrepresented in the maxim "Everything is relative," might not have been so ardent a Platonist as Godel, but he was no subjectivist. According to Goldstein, "Einstein interpreted his theory as representing the objective nature of space-time, so very different from our human, subjective point of view of space and time." Both men believed that an objective, abstract reality existed and that the human mind could behold and grasp this reality. As Godel saw it, we achieve this through a faculty called mathematical intuition.
Godel's faith in mathematical intuition put him in opposition to the mathematical equivalent of positivism, a movement called formalism. Formalism, led by the mathematician David Hilbert, believed that mathematics was, in Hilbert's words, "a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper." Or, as Goldstein describes it, "mathematicians, according to formalism, are not in the business of discovering descriptive truths, whether of the real world of things in physical space or the trans-empirical world of numbers and sets ... They are simply in the business of manipulating the mechanical rules of self-enclosed formal systems."
If formalism were correct, then it followed that mathematics could also be overhauled so that every part of it was "consistent" and the entire system was "complete." It could be boiled down to a set of rules or axioms and procedures so basic and ironclad that a machine -- the computers that were just beyond the historical horizon -- could perform it. It could be finally purged of the paradoxes that had been plaguing the field for hundreds of years. Mathematical intuition, the source of ideas that can't be formally proven but possessing what Goldstein calls, "the urgent cogency that compels belief," has no place in such a system.
Godel's theorem undermined the rules of formalism by using those rules to prove that the formalist scheme was doomed. In what Goldstein calls "one of the most astounding pieces of mathematical reasoning ever produced," he demonstrated that in the kind of system that the formalists aspired to, it was possible to make a statement that was both unprovable and yet also true. This works a little like the famous "liar's paradox," in which the statement "This statement is false," can only be true if it is also false and vice versa. But Godel's theorem was not a paradox, precisely because it pointed to the difference between what could be proven and what was true.
It's easy to see why the distinction confuses people. While Godel might seem to be challenging reason itself, he was, to put a finer point on it, actually demonstrating the inherent problem in a particularly limited form of reasoning. He never abandoned his own faith in another, broader form of reason that includes intuition.
Borderpolice said:
Philosophy and psychoanalytic theory have been doing just this for many decades. But none of that counts, of course. Anyway, must rush, gotta go there and forge in the smitty of the human the real of subjective destitution ...
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nomadologist
Guest
This stuff re Godel and politics sounds fascinating and would make an interesting discussion perhaps if someone started a new thread in the Thought section, esp. as I'm not sure how it invalidates logical principles etc. Please!
You might be right on this point, ahundredmillionlifetimes, even if you are totally wrong/misleading - according to the evidence related so far - re Kubrick's reasons for withdrawing A Clockwork Orange in the UK, and perhaps even Borat's racism.
Chaw's review is interesting. Last weekend I was thinking about how Borat and Don Quixote, the uber "meta-narrative", might be similar/different:
* Don Quixote, a man whose world consists of the contents of epic poems and heroic chivalry novels sets out into the real world where he interacts and behaves as though it were a chivalric romance with humorous and affecting results as he bumbles along offending many and sundry, tilting at windmills etc. It's a commentary on how we imagine the world to be and how it is in fact.
* Borat, a man whose world consists of an imaginary backward lifestyle illuminated by this dream of America supplied by US TV and Hollywood etc, sets out into the real America with humorous and affecting results as he offends many and sundry, tilts at Pamela Anderson etc. It's (presumably) a commentary on how we imagine America and how it is in fact.
* A Clockwork Orange, a ruthless youth whose life etc etc... - you get the drift.
From the Picaresque wiki for those who can't be arsed following the link:
You might be right on this point, ahundredmillionlifetimes, even if you are totally wrong/misleading - according to the evidence related so far - re Kubrick's reasons for withdrawing A Clockwork Orange in the UK, and perhaps even Borat's racism.
Chaw's review is interesting. Last weekend I was thinking about how Borat and Don Quixote, the uber "meta-narrative", might be similar/different:
* Don Quixote, a man whose world consists of the contents of epic poems and heroic chivalry novels sets out into the real world where he interacts and behaves as though it were a chivalric romance with humorous and affecting results as he bumbles along offending many and sundry, tilting at windmills etc. It's a commentary on how we imagine the world to be and how it is in fact.
* Borat, a man whose world consists of an imaginary backward lifestyle illuminated by this dream of America supplied by US TV and Hollywood etc, sets out into the real America with humorous and affecting results as he offends many and sundry, tilts at Pamela Anderson etc. It's (presumably) a commentary on how we imagine America and how it is in fact.
* A Clockwork Orange, a ruthless youth whose life etc etc... - you get the drift.
From the Picaresque wiki for those who can't be arsed following the link:
The genre has classical precedent in the Sanskrit legend Baital Pachisi, in Petronius's fragmentary "Satyricon", and in Apuleius's "The Golden Ass" ... but the modern picaresque begins with Lazarillo de Tormes... The title character Lazarillo is a pícaro who must live by his wits in an impoverished country full of hypocrisy...
In the English-speaking world, the term "picaresque" has referred more to a literary technique or model than to the precise genre that the Spanish call picaresco. The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road... [A]s Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel.
In the English-speaking world, the term "picaresque" has referred more to a literary technique or model than to the precise genre that the Spanish call picaresco. The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road... [A]s Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel.
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nomadologist
Guest
You can laugh at science, but it has a lot more to stand on than you do by way of evidence for its principles and axioms. Anti-science anti-enlightened superstition like yours will be the end of all of us. People like you think pontificating about Borat is more important than AIDS research.
Be glad you don't have any neurological disorders--some people struggle everyday with them. Speaking of tasteless...
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Have you ever heard of the 20th century, and its rejection, in psychology, of such quaint notions?
There's definitely an "I" all right, only it's not yours, it is Other. The myth - constitutive fantasy - of the whole, unified Self (consistent and complete and oh so precious and bootieful) is precisely what has its mathematical correspondence in Godel's undermining of formalism.
That is what you and others have been doing, claiming that he is not responsible for his actions or choices; its the tabloid media that's all to blame - they did it ...
You mean you will "run" Goedel's (sic) ideas by them?? They'll likely wrap you up in a roll of bootieful string (theory).
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Oh for pity's sake! If you're going to digress try to bring back to the thread topic... Otherwise start a new one please... It's basic netiqette, man...
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Laughing at pseudo-science. You're off on your hysterical displacements again. So, er, relativity, uncertainty, incompleteness, quantum theory is "anti-science anti-enlightened superstition" because it rejects the clockwork world of Newtonian mechanics and classical logic? Questioning the pseudo-scientific (mis)application of neuroscience to social problems - because of its confusion of symptoms with causes - is, uh, anti-scientific? Claiming that a racist reading of Borat as possibly caused by a neurological disorder is an instance of enlightened science? It is lumpen-empiricist ideological insanity ...
And films like Borat only serve to make it harder to alleviate AIDS in Africa and elsewhere.
D84 said:
Its also basic netiqette to specify the poster to whom you're actually responding, but I'll assume you're referring here to the many posters in this thread who initiated off-topic posts. So which post are you referring to? Or is this an off-topic question?
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hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Ah yes, but in that case I was trying to make an equivalence (maybe too obliquely) between the offensiveness of the racism in Borat and the offensiveness of the violence in A Clockwork Orange to try to show how offensive content in a work can be justified.
I got the feeling that you guys in the anti-Borat camp were opposed to the film simply because it was racist, libidinising racism etc without looking deeper, if you will.
Over to you!
I got the feeling that you guys in the anti-Borat camp were opposed to the film simply because it was racist, libidinising racism etc without looking deeper, if you will.
Over to you!