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Grand unified books thread

Started by Syt, March 16, 2009, 01:52:42 AM

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CountDeMoney

#3285
February 14, 2017, 06:45:34 AM
Quote from: garbon on February 14, 2017, 03:14:12 AM
Well he is right.

The fuck did I say?  NOT IN THE WAY I WANT.

Fucking vaccines, man.

garbon

#3286
February 14, 2017, 07:14:37 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on February 14, 2017, 06:45:34 AM
Quote from: garbon on February 14, 2017, 03:14:12 AM
Well he is right.

The fuck did I say?  NOT IN THE WAY I WANT.

Fucking vaccines, man.

If anyone is being aspie here, it is you, Mr. I have a special way that I like to highlight.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Eddie Teach

#3287
February 14, 2017, 11:58:41 AM
Seedy is right. Reading books on your phone isn't natural.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

garbon

#3288
February 14, 2017, 12:06:45 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on February 14, 2017, 11:58:41 AM
Seedy is right. Reading books on your phone isn't natural.

Books aren't natural. :o
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Habbaku

#3289
February 14, 2017, 12:16:43 PM
Reading is pretty unnatural...
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.
-J. R. R. Tolkien

Eddie Teach

#3290
February 14, 2017, 12:28:02 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 14, 2017, 12:06:45 PM
Books aren't natural. :o

Then why do they grow on trees?  :sleep:

To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Razgovory

#3291
February 20, 2017, 02:55:42 PM
Been reading a set of fantasy novels called the age of unreason, where Newton made Alchemy work.  Somewhat weakly written, and has a big flaw in depicting Ben Franklin as the main character.  Novel version of Ben Franklin doesn't feel like the real Ben Franklin who had a strong, but extremely subtle personality.  Novel Franklin is a headstrong boy constantly getting in arguments.  Real Franklin avoided contradicting people if at all possible, instead learning at a young age how to manipulate people.  Other historical characters show up like Issac Newton (who is suitably weird), Blackbeard the Pirate, Louis IVX, Maria Teresia, Emperor Francis Stephen, Emperor Kark VI, Charles the 12th, Voltaire, Cotton Mather and a few others who I haven't noticed.

I've never read the Baroque cycle, but I can't help but think it might have a better treatment of the historical characters.   
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

The Brain

#3292
February 20, 2017, 04:16:13 PM
Does Charles XII kick so much ass?

Women want me. Men want to be with me.

garbon

#3293
February 20, 2017, 05:55:21 PM
Quote from: The Brain on February 20, 2017, 04:16:13 PM
Does Charles XII kick so much ass?



Probably impossible to imagine, even in fiction.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

The Minsky Moment

#3294
February 20, 2017, 11:38:34 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on February 14, 2017, 11:58:41 AM
Seedy is right. Reading books on your phone isn't natural.

That's why they sell kindles.
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
--Joan Robinson

CountDeMoney

#3295
February 20, 2017, 11:48:52 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 20, 2017, 11:38:34 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on February 14, 2017, 11:58:41 AM
Seedy is right. Reading books on your phone isn't natural.

That's why they sell kindles.

Kindle is just a smartphone without a phone app.  Sucks.

Razgovory

#3296
February 21, 2017, 10:11:10 AM
Quote from: The Brain on February 20, 2017, 04:16:13 PM
Does Charles XII kick so much ass?

Actually, yes.  Yes, he does.  He is a total badass in the novel.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Admiral Yi

#3297
February 21, 2017, 12:15:34 PM Last Edit: February 21, 2017, 01:35:10 PM by Admiral Yi
From a NYT review of Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra.  "Today's political struggles through the prism of the Rousseau-Voltaire debates."

QuoteRousseau, the graceless outsider, could see straight through Voltaire's cosmopolitan suavity--and he shredded him.

More to the point, he understood the underlying pathologies of the rising capitalist civilization that Voltaire championed.  The market society, Rousseau warned, would dangerously unmoor individuals.  He saw how humans aspired to surpass one another in wealth and status, which meant they were capable of great cruelty.  The modern world weakened religion and the family, the emotional buffers that created comfort.  Without these supports, individuals came to depend on the opinions of others for their sense of self-worth, which inflicted terrible cases of insecurity, envy, and self-hatred.  This, in Mishra's argument, remains the nub of the world's problems: "An existential resentment of other people's being, caused by an intense mix of envy and humiliation and powerlessness, ressentiment, as it lingers and deepens, poisons civil society and undermines political liberty, and is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism and toxic forms of chauvinism."

CountDeMoney

#3298
February 21, 2017, 01:35:50 PM
Rousseau :wub:

Eddie Teach

#3299
February 21, 2017, 01:56:00 PM
Henri :frog:
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?
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