This is mostly about the bombs themselves. And about those trained to put them out of commission. The war is just “there”. Why it is there…or whether it is a just war…is not explored much at all. And the extent to which it reflects the actual experiences of those assigned to do the task is not something I really know much about.
For some it might be analogous to a film focusing on a German bomb squad during World War II. There is no political or moral context to speak of at all.
Let alone the part about the money.
One such critique: https://crittheory-mcs.blogspot.com/201 ... ocker.html
Does this actually glorify or glamourize war? I think an argument can be made for that. Sgt. James seems to thrive on it. He’s the cowboy hero sort. He’s the “wild man”. He’s the adrenaline junkie and it is hardly ever made clear that’s not a good thing here. I just see too much of the macho warrior bullshit that any idiot in the military can fall for. I didn’t detect much irony here at all. But sure, I might have missed it.
Like, say, the scene in the cereal aisle of the supermarket when James gets home. The gap between that and what he’d just been through over there. His son and the boy with the bomb sewed into his chest. But all the wild man is thinking about is getting back over there. And Cheney and Bush Inc., were more than happy to oblige him.
The expression “the hurt locker” is a preexisting slang term for a situation involving trouble or pain, which can be traced back to the Vietnam War. According to the movie’s website, it is soldier vernacular in Iraq to speak of explosions as sending you to “the hurt locker”. IMDb
The Hurt Locker
Opening Quote by Chris Hedges: The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.
I missed that myself.
Sanborn: I can’t get it in.
Thompson: What do you mean you can’t get it in? Pretend it’s your dick.
Sanborn: How about I pretend it’s your dick?
Thompson: Well in that case you’ll never get it in.
I forget: did they get it in?
Eldridge: Aren’t you glad the Army has all these tanks parked here? Just in case the Russians come and we have to have a big tank battle?
Sanborn: I’d rather be on the side with the tanks, just in case, than not have them.
Eldridge: Yeah, but they don’t do anything. I mean, anyone comes alongside a Humvee, we’re dead. Anybody even looks at you funny, we’re dead. Pretty much the bottom line is, if you’re in Iraq, you’re dead. How’s a fucking tank supposed to stop that?
Sanborn: Would you shut the fuck up, Owen?
Eldridge: Sorry. Just tryin’ to scare the new guy.
That was once me too. And it didn't take a whole lot to scare them.
James: Well, if he wasn’t an insurgent he sure as hell is now.
Dead is just dead sometimes.
Sanborn: I was in intelligence seven years before I joined EOD. We ran missions in every shithole that you could possibly imagine. So, I’m pretty sure I can figure out a redneck piece of trailer trash like you.
James: Looks like you’re on the right track.
And what track might that be?
Eldridge [after James removes his bomb suit]: What are you doing?
James: There’s enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus. If I’m gonna die, I want to die comfortable.
Hell, they can blow me to Jesus anytime at all.
Sanborn [as James approaches unexploded bomb]: You know, these detonators misfire all the time.
Eldridge: What are you doing?
Sanborn: I’m just saying shit happens, they misfire.
Eldridge: He’d be obliterated to nothing.
Sanborn: His helmet would be left. You could have that. Little specs of hair charred on the inside.
Eldridge: Yeah. There’d be half a helmet somewhere, bits of hair.
Sanborn: Have to ask for a change in technique and protocol, and make sure this type of accident never happens again, you know? You’d have to write the report.
Eldridge: Are you serious?
Sanborn: I can’t write it.
Eldrige: I mean are you serious about killing him.
Writing a report here...while you still can.
James [to Eldridge]: Everyone’s a coward about something.
I'll flip you to see who goes first.
Sgt. James [Speaking to his son]: You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don’t ya? Yea. But you know what, buddy? As you get older…some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.
War is hell?
Quote of the day
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Ludwig Wittgenstein
...deep inside me there's a perpetual seething, like the bottom of a geyser, and I keep hoping that things will come to an eruption once and for all, so that I can turn into a different person.
Me? Into someone who is considerably less fractured and fragmented.
Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?
Unless, of course, your arguments prove and clarify everything.
The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.
No, really, is it a shortcoming?
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.
Okay, but nowadays can one ever be nasty enough?
What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural.
No, the other queer. But point taken...and then some
Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.
If you know what he means.
New thread, perhaps?
...deep inside me there's a perpetual seething, like the bottom of a geyser, and I keep hoping that things will come to an eruption once and for all, so that I can turn into a different person.
Me? Into someone who is considerably less fractured and fragmented.
Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?
Unless, of course, your arguments prove and clarify everything.
The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.
No, really, is it a shortcoming?
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.
Okay, but nowadays can one ever be nasty enough?
What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural.
No, the other queer. But point taken...and then some
Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.
If you know what he means.
New thread, perhaps?
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iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
It’s the American dream: rags to riches. The self-made man. Only on the other side of the law.
All that mindless mayhem chasing after all that money. And all that machismo.
As with the Sopranos we are dealing here with folks that are little more than thugs. They have no class, style or wit. No interest really in anything other than being gangsters. They’ve got power. They get to boss people around. They wear the best suits and buy the most expensive bottles of wine in the most expensive restaurants in town. They’ve got big cars and big boats and big guns. But they’re basically hoodlums, dupes, goons, gorillas. Philistines, vulgarians, rubes.
But not sheep. And that’s where the narrative aims to go. This man basically takes what he wants while most of us only get what we are given. There is something about having this sort of power that is appealing to those who take shit all their lives. But there are many different ways to get it.
That’s why we need Mama Montana to put it all in perspective.
But this is still predicated largely on the sheer stupidity of the government’s “war on drugs”. That and the corruption. There is so much money involved here that folks in the government, the military, the police etc. can readily be bought off. Down there especially. But also up here.
Scarface
Title card: In May 1980, Fidel Castro opened the harbor at Mariel, Cuba with the apparent intention of letting some of his people join their relatives in the United States. Within seventy-two hours, 3,000 U.S. boats were headed for Cuba. It soon became evident that Castro was forcing the boat owners to carry back with them not only their relatives, but the dregs of his jails. Of the 125,000 refugees that landed in Florida an estimated 25,000 had criminal records.
Our political prejudices or theirs?
Immigration Officer: You ever been to jail, Tony?
Tony: Me? Jail? No way. No.
Immigration Officer: Been in a mental hospital?
Tony: Oh, yeah. On the boat coming over.
Not many places left that are not a mental hospital for at least some of us.
Tony: You a communist? Huh? How’d you like it, man? They tell you all the time what to do, what to think, what to feel. Do you wanna be like a sheep? Like all those other people? Baa! Baa!
Immigration Officer: I don’t have to listen to this bullshit!
Tony Montana: You wanna work eight, ten fucking hours? You own nothing, you got nothing! Do you want a chivato on every corner looking after you? Watching everything you do? Everything you say, man? Do you know I eat octopus three times a day? I got fucking octopus coming out of my fucking ears. I got the fuckin’ Russian shoes my feet’s comin’ through. How you like that? What, you want me to stay there and do nothing? Hey, I’m no fuckin’ criminal, man. I’m no puta or thief. I’m Tony Montana, a political prisoner from Cuba. And I want my fuckin’ human rights, now!
And, of course, the right to stomp on the fuckin' human rights of anyone who gets in his way.
Tony: He’s political.
Manny: Yeah. Well, he’s coming in here today, man. Castro just sprung him. This guy, man, was one of the top dogs for Fidel in the early days. But Castro felt like he couldn’t trust him anymore and threw him in jail. But while he was on top, he tortured a few guys to death. And one of the guy’s brother is a rich guy in Miami now, and he wants the favor repaid. That’s where we come in.
Murder: You gotta start somewhere.
Frank [to Tony]: You’re gonna find that when you stay loyal in this business you’re gonna move up. You’re gonna move up fast. Then you’ll find out your biggest problem is not bringing in the stuff…but what to do with all the fucking cash!
Right, like crime pays.
Tony [to Elvira]: You’re good-looking. You got a beautiful body, beautiful legs…a beautiful face, all these guys in love with you. Only you got a look in your eye like you haven’t been fucked in a year!
Roll the dice with that one yourself.
All that mindless mayhem chasing after all that money. And all that machismo.
As with the Sopranos we are dealing here with folks that are little more than thugs. They have no class, style or wit. No interest really in anything other than being gangsters. They’ve got power. They get to boss people around. They wear the best suits and buy the most expensive bottles of wine in the most expensive restaurants in town. They’ve got big cars and big boats and big guns. But they’re basically hoodlums, dupes, goons, gorillas. Philistines, vulgarians, rubes.
But not sheep. And that’s where the narrative aims to go. This man basically takes what he wants while most of us only get what we are given. There is something about having this sort of power that is appealing to those who take shit all their lives. But there are many different ways to get it.
That’s why we need Mama Montana to put it all in perspective.
But this is still predicated largely on the sheer stupidity of the government’s “war on drugs”. That and the corruption. There is so much money involved here that folks in the government, the military, the police etc. can readily be bought off. Down there especially. But also up here.
Scarface
Title card: In May 1980, Fidel Castro opened the harbor at Mariel, Cuba with the apparent intention of letting some of his people join their relatives in the United States. Within seventy-two hours, 3,000 U.S. boats were headed for Cuba. It soon became evident that Castro was forcing the boat owners to carry back with them not only their relatives, but the dregs of his jails. Of the 125,000 refugees that landed in Florida an estimated 25,000 had criminal records.
Our political prejudices or theirs?
Immigration Officer: You ever been to jail, Tony?
Tony: Me? Jail? No way. No.
Immigration Officer: Been in a mental hospital?
Tony: Oh, yeah. On the boat coming over.
Not many places left that are not a mental hospital for at least some of us.
Tony: You a communist? Huh? How’d you like it, man? They tell you all the time what to do, what to think, what to feel. Do you wanna be like a sheep? Like all those other people? Baa! Baa!
Immigration Officer: I don’t have to listen to this bullshit!
Tony Montana: You wanna work eight, ten fucking hours? You own nothing, you got nothing! Do you want a chivato on every corner looking after you? Watching everything you do? Everything you say, man? Do you know I eat octopus three times a day? I got fucking octopus coming out of my fucking ears. I got the fuckin’ Russian shoes my feet’s comin’ through. How you like that? What, you want me to stay there and do nothing? Hey, I’m no fuckin’ criminal, man. I’m no puta or thief. I’m Tony Montana, a political prisoner from Cuba. And I want my fuckin’ human rights, now!
And, of course, the right to stomp on the fuckin' human rights of anyone who gets in his way.
Tony: He’s political.
Manny: Yeah. Well, he’s coming in here today, man. Castro just sprung him. This guy, man, was one of the top dogs for Fidel in the early days. But Castro felt like he couldn’t trust him anymore and threw him in jail. But while he was on top, he tortured a few guys to death. And one of the guy’s brother is a rich guy in Miami now, and he wants the favor repaid. That’s where we come in.
Murder: You gotta start somewhere.
Frank [to Tony]: You’re gonna find that when you stay loyal in this business you’re gonna move up. You’re gonna move up fast. Then you’ll find out your biggest problem is not bringing in the stuff…but what to do with all the fucking cash!
Right, like crime pays.
Tony [to Elvira]: You’re good-looking. You got a beautiful body, beautiful legs…a beautiful face, all these guys in love with you. Only you got a look in your eye like you haven’t been fucked in a year!
Roll the dice with that one yourself.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day
Science
“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” Carl Sagan
In other words, you can't just believe something is true "in your head".
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.” Baruch Spinoza
Ceaseless indeed.
There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
Of course, he's now on his way back to star stuff.
“If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?” Stephen Hawking
Come out, come out wherever you are.
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” John Maynard Keynes
Cue the objectivists, in other words.
“People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.” Neil deGrasse Tyson
Of course, I do what I can here.
“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” Carl Sagan
In other words, you can't just believe something is true "in your head".
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.” Baruch Spinoza
Ceaseless indeed.
There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
Of course, he's now on his way back to star stuff.
“If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?” Stephen Hawking
Come out, come out wherever you are.
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” John Maynard Keynes
Cue the objectivists, in other words.
“People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.” Neil deGrasse Tyson
Of course, I do what I can here.
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iambiguous
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- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Scarface
Tony: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.
Either that or you don't.
If, for example, someone beats you to it.
Mama Montana [to Tony]: You know, all we read about in the papers today are animals like you and the killings. It’s Cubans like you who are giving a bad name to our people. People who come here to work hard and make an honest living for themselves.
Gina: Mama! He is your son!
Mama Montana: Son? I wish I had one! He’s a bum! He was a bum then and he’s a bum now! Who do you think you are, hm? We haven’t heard a word from you in five years. Cinco anos. You suddenly show up here and you throw money at us? You think you can buy me with your money?
Tony: Come on, mama.
Mama Montana: You think you can come in here with your hot-shot clothes and make fun of us?
Tony: Mama, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Mama Montana: No that is not the way I am, Antonio! That is not the way I raised Gina to be. You are not going to destroy her. I don’t need your money. Gracias! I work for my living. I don’t want you in this house anymore! I don’t want you around Gina! So come on, get out! And take this lousy money with you! It stinks!
Home sweet home.
Tony [to Sosa]: I never fucked anybody over in my life didn’t have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don’t break them for no one. Do you understand? That piece of shit up there, I never liked him, I never trusted him. For all I know he had me set up and had my friend Angel Fernandez killed. But that’s history. I’m here, he’s not. Do you wanna go on with me, you say it. You don’t, then you make a move.
Shades of Heat.
Manny: Right now, you happen to be the best thing in his life. The only thing that’s any good, that’s pure. Of course he doesn’t want you mixing with those people…growing up to be like him. He has this father thing for you. Feels like he has to protect you.
Gina: Protect me against what?
Manny: Against guys like that asshole you were dancing with tonight.
Gina: I like Fernando. He’s a fun guy and he’s nice. And he knows how to treat a woman. All right?
Manny: He knows how to treat a woman?
Gina: Yes.
Manny: By taking her to the toilet to make out?
That could be a very good point, right
Frank: Tony, don’t kill me, please!
Tony: I ain’t gonna kill you.
Frank: Oh Christ, thank you! Thank you!
Tony [looking at Manny]: Manolo, shoot that piece of shit!
A technicality?
Tony: You know what capitalism is? Getting fucked!
Right up the ass as often as not.
Tony: You know what your problem is, Pussycat?
Elvira: What’s that?
Tony: You don’t got nothing to do with your life. Why don’t you get a job? Work with lepers. Blind kids. Anything’s gotta be better than lying around all day waiting for me to fuck you.
What have you got "nothing to do" in your life?
Tony: Is this it? That’s what it’s all about, Manny? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking? Snorting? Then what? You’re 50. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits, you need a bra. They got hair on them. You got a liver, they got spots on it, and you’re eating this fuckin’ shit, looking like these rich fucking mummies in here… Look at that. A junkie. I got a fuckin’ junkie for a wife. She don’t eat nothing. Sleeps all day with them black shades on. Wakes up with a Quaalude, and who won’t fuck me ‘cause she’s in a coma. I can’t even have a kid with her, Manny. Her womb is so polluted, I can’t even have a fuckin’ little baby with her!
Or, as Justin might say, "Bummer".
Tony [to the people in the restaurant]: What you lookin’ at? You all a bunch of fuckin’ assholes. You know why? You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin’ fingers and say, “That’s the bad guy.” So… what that make you? Good? You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don’t have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There’s a bad guy comin’ through! Better get outta his way!
Just what the world needs, another Bad Mother Fucker.
Tony: You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend!
Next up: say hello to henry's bazooka.
Tony: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.
Either that or you don't.
If, for example, someone beats you to it.
Mama Montana [to Tony]: You know, all we read about in the papers today are animals like you and the killings. It’s Cubans like you who are giving a bad name to our people. People who come here to work hard and make an honest living for themselves.
Gina: Mama! He is your son!
Mama Montana: Son? I wish I had one! He’s a bum! He was a bum then and he’s a bum now! Who do you think you are, hm? We haven’t heard a word from you in five years. Cinco anos. You suddenly show up here and you throw money at us? You think you can buy me with your money?
Tony: Come on, mama.
Mama Montana: You think you can come in here with your hot-shot clothes and make fun of us?
Tony: Mama, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Mama Montana: No that is not the way I am, Antonio! That is not the way I raised Gina to be. You are not going to destroy her. I don’t need your money. Gracias! I work for my living. I don’t want you in this house anymore! I don’t want you around Gina! So come on, get out! And take this lousy money with you! It stinks!
Home sweet home.
Tony [to Sosa]: I never fucked anybody over in my life didn’t have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don’t break them for no one. Do you understand? That piece of shit up there, I never liked him, I never trusted him. For all I know he had me set up and had my friend Angel Fernandez killed. But that’s history. I’m here, he’s not. Do you wanna go on with me, you say it. You don’t, then you make a move.
Shades of Heat.
Manny: Right now, you happen to be the best thing in his life. The only thing that’s any good, that’s pure. Of course he doesn’t want you mixing with those people…growing up to be like him. He has this father thing for you. Feels like he has to protect you.
Gina: Protect me against what?
Manny: Against guys like that asshole you were dancing with tonight.
Gina: I like Fernando. He’s a fun guy and he’s nice. And he knows how to treat a woman. All right?
Manny: He knows how to treat a woman?
Gina: Yes.
Manny: By taking her to the toilet to make out?
That could be a very good point, right
Frank: Tony, don’t kill me, please!
Tony: I ain’t gonna kill you.
Frank: Oh Christ, thank you! Thank you!
Tony [looking at Manny]: Manolo, shoot that piece of shit!
A technicality?
Tony: You know what capitalism is? Getting fucked!
Right up the ass as often as not.
Tony: You know what your problem is, Pussycat?
Elvira: What’s that?
Tony: You don’t got nothing to do with your life. Why don’t you get a job? Work with lepers. Blind kids. Anything’s gotta be better than lying around all day waiting for me to fuck you.
What have you got "nothing to do" in your life?
Tony: Is this it? That’s what it’s all about, Manny? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking? Snorting? Then what? You’re 50. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits, you need a bra. They got hair on them. You got a liver, they got spots on it, and you’re eating this fuckin’ shit, looking like these rich fucking mummies in here… Look at that. A junkie. I got a fuckin’ junkie for a wife. She don’t eat nothing. Sleeps all day with them black shades on. Wakes up with a Quaalude, and who won’t fuck me ‘cause she’s in a coma. I can’t even have a kid with her, Manny. Her womb is so polluted, I can’t even have a fuckin’ little baby with her!
Or, as Justin might say, "Bummer".
Tony [to the people in the restaurant]: What you lookin’ at? You all a bunch of fuckin’ assholes. You know why? You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin’ fingers and say, “That’s the bad guy.” So… what that make you? Good? You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don’t have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There’s a bad guy comin’ through! Better get outta his way!
Just what the world needs, another Bad Mother Fucker.
Tony: You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend!
Next up: say hello to henry's bazooka.
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iambiguous
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- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
God
“I don't believe in God. I believe in...Al Pacino.” Javier Bardem
That from the flip of a coin.
“God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.” Thomas Jefferson
Next up: principled slaveowners.
“Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning.” Oswald Chambers
Next up: the morning from Hell.
“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.” Victor Hugo
He meant Muhammad of course.
The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a Heaven and a Hell when all I see now is Hell.” Aaron B. Powell
Yeah, goddamn it, what about that?!
“If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees.” Lao Tzu
Cue Eddie Willers?
“I don't believe in God. I believe in...Al Pacino.” Javier Bardem
That from the flip of a coin.
“God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.” Thomas Jefferson
Next up: principled slaveowners.
“Don't forget to pray today because God did not forget to wake you up this morning.” Oswald Chambers
Next up: the morning from Hell.
“A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.” Victor Hugo
He meant Muhammad of course.
The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a Heaven and a Hell when all I see now is Hell.” Aaron B. Powell
Yeah, goddamn it, what about that?!
“If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees.” Lao Tzu
Cue Eddie Willers?
-
iambiguous
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- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Let’s start with the obvious: The Pin is no Tony Montana. We’re talking about a single brick here. It’s just small fish in a small pond. But that doesn’t make the danger any less real for the minnows perceived to have fucked up. Here then [as always] only One Man can straighten it all out.
One Man armed with the script.
But I’ve always been a sucker for this sort of protagonist: the outsider, the iconoclast, the cynical and nihilistic loner. But ultimately he becomes his own worst enemy for expecting the rest of the world to share his point of view. That’s all it is though: a point of view that makes sense to him given the reality of his own life. But why should others living entriely different lives understand it in the same way, let alone go along with it.
So [in part] this is really a film about how not to love someone: on your terms only.
But mostly it’s a complex and convoluted “who did what to whom–and why?” A murder mystery. This time though with a bunch of kids from high school.
Brick
Brendan: Still picking your teeth with freshmen?
Kara: Well, you were a freshman once.
Brendan: Way-once, sister.
Next up: Picking your feet in Poughkeepsie
Laura [on phone]: Who are you? Or I’ll hang up.
Brendan: You don’t know me - I’ll save you some time.
Laura: I know everyone and I’ve got all the time in the world.
Brendan: Folly of youth.
These youth in particular.
Emily: Brendan, I know you’re mad at all these people, cause you think I went away from you and went to them. But you’ve got to start seeing it as my decision, stop being angry because where I want to be at’s different from where you wanna be at.
Next up: dead as a doornail.
Emily: And stop picking on Dode. He’s a good guy. He’s a good friend.
Brendan: So what am I?
Emily: Yeah, what are you? Eating back here alone, hating everybody. I mean, who are you judging anyone? God, I really loved you a lot but I couldn’t stand it, I had to get with people. I couldn’t handle life with you, I had to see what was what.
Less the brick, that more or less sums up, well, me for one.
Brendan: I was going to make up some bit of information or set up some phony deal, anything so you’d let me walk. Then I was going to go to the vice principal and spill him the street address of the biggest dope port in the burgh.
[The Pin’s eyes shoot to Tugger, who doesn’t flinch]
Tug: He knows zip.
Brendan: 1250 Vista Blanca, the ink blotter at the desk in the den in the basement of the house with the tacky mailbox.
Well, almost zip.
Brendan: Your muscle seemed plenty cool putting his fist in my head. I want him out.
The Pin: Looky, soldier…
Brendan Frye: The ape blows or I clam.
See what I mean about the script?
Laura: Do you trust me now?
Brendan: Less now than when I didn’t trust you before.
Now that Emily is dead and gone?
Brendan: Why are you telling me all this? What’s your play?
Laura: You think nobody sees you. Eating lunch behind the portables. Loving some girl like she’s all there is, anywhere, to you. I’ve always seen you. Or maybe I liked Emily. Maybe I see what you’re trying to do for her, trying to help her, and I don’t know anybody who would do that for me.
Brendan: Now you are dangerous.
He either doesn't know the half of it or he knows twice as much as anyone else.
Kara: You better be sure you wanna know what you wanna know.
One of those plots. Like the ones some provide us with here.
One Man armed with the script.
But I’ve always been a sucker for this sort of protagonist: the outsider, the iconoclast, the cynical and nihilistic loner. But ultimately he becomes his own worst enemy for expecting the rest of the world to share his point of view. That’s all it is though: a point of view that makes sense to him given the reality of his own life. But why should others living entriely different lives understand it in the same way, let alone go along with it.
So [in part] this is really a film about how not to love someone: on your terms only.
But mostly it’s a complex and convoluted “who did what to whom–and why?” A murder mystery. This time though with a bunch of kids from high school.
Brick
Brendan: Still picking your teeth with freshmen?
Kara: Well, you were a freshman once.
Brendan: Way-once, sister.
Next up: Picking your feet in Poughkeepsie
Laura [on phone]: Who are you? Or I’ll hang up.
Brendan: You don’t know me - I’ll save you some time.
Laura: I know everyone and I’ve got all the time in the world.
Brendan: Folly of youth.
These youth in particular.
Emily: Brendan, I know you’re mad at all these people, cause you think I went away from you and went to them. But you’ve got to start seeing it as my decision, stop being angry because where I want to be at’s different from where you wanna be at.
Next up: dead as a doornail.
Emily: And stop picking on Dode. He’s a good guy. He’s a good friend.
Brendan: So what am I?
Emily: Yeah, what are you? Eating back here alone, hating everybody. I mean, who are you judging anyone? God, I really loved you a lot but I couldn’t stand it, I had to get with people. I couldn’t handle life with you, I had to see what was what.
Less the brick, that more or less sums up, well, me for one.
Brendan: I was going to make up some bit of information or set up some phony deal, anything so you’d let me walk. Then I was going to go to the vice principal and spill him the street address of the biggest dope port in the burgh.
[The Pin’s eyes shoot to Tugger, who doesn’t flinch]
Tug: He knows zip.
Brendan: 1250 Vista Blanca, the ink blotter at the desk in the den in the basement of the house with the tacky mailbox.
Well, almost zip.
Brendan: Your muscle seemed plenty cool putting his fist in my head. I want him out.
The Pin: Looky, soldier…
Brendan Frye: The ape blows or I clam.
See what I mean about the script?
Laura: Do you trust me now?
Brendan: Less now than when I didn’t trust you before.
Now that Emily is dead and gone?
Brendan: Why are you telling me all this? What’s your play?
Laura: You think nobody sees you. Eating lunch behind the portables. Loving some girl like she’s all there is, anywhere, to you. I’ve always seen you. Or maybe I liked Emily. Maybe I see what you’re trying to do for her, trying to help her, and I don’t know anybody who would do that for me.
Brendan: Now you are dangerous.
He either doesn't know the half of it or he knows twice as much as anyone else.
Kara: You better be sure you wanna know what you wanna know.
One of those plots. Like the ones some provide us with here.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Iris Murdoch from The Sea, the Sea
Sometimes I felt I would die by wishing it when I went to sleep but I always woke up again and found I was still there. Every morning finding I'm still me, that's Hell.
Well, get out of Hell then! The gate's open and I'm holding it!
I can't. I'm Hell, myself.
Tell me that doesn't make all the difference in the world.
Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.
Next up: her posts.
That's how vile i am! I live Ireland, I breathe Ireland, and Christ how I loathe it, I wish I were a bloody Scot, that's how bloody awful it is being Irish!
Surely, she can't possibly mean that. Or what am I missing?
However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after.
Not sure what that means? Figures.
Only the deeper parts of the mind have so little sense of time.
Let's explain that. While we still have the time to, right?
I may add here that one of the secrets of my happy life is that i have never made the mistake of learning to drive a car. I have never lacked people, usually women, longing to drive me withersoever I wanted. Why keep bitches and bark yourself?
You tell me.
Sometimes I felt I would die by wishing it when I went to sleep but I always woke up again and found I was still there. Every morning finding I'm still me, that's Hell.
Well, get out of Hell then! The gate's open and I'm holding it!
I can't. I'm Hell, myself.
Tell me that doesn't make all the difference in the world.
Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.
Next up: her posts.
That's how vile i am! I live Ireland, I breathe Ireland, and Christ how I loathe it, I wish I were a bloody Scot, that's how bloody awful it is being Irish!
Surely, she can't possibly mean that. Or what am I missing?
However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after.
Not sure what that means? Figures.
Only the deeper parts of the mind have so little sense of time.
Let's explain that. While we still have the time to, right?
I may add here that one of the secrets of my happy life is that i have never made the mistake of learning to drive a car. I have never lacked people, usually women, longing to drive me withersoever I wanted. Why keep bitches and bark yourself?
You tell me.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Stephanie loves Howard who loves Lane who loves Peter who loves Stephanie. Stephanie who is already married with kids. And since these are characters invented by Woody Allen their interactions will generate a lot of unrequited ambiguites about “the human heart”.
With two additional characters around to reflect his contempt for pop culture and despairing sense of doom and gloom in confronting the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless and absurd universe.
Here are people who at times are so close…and yet so far removed from really understanding each other. And also groping about to understand things that can only ever be understood obliquely anyway.
For all intents and purposes these 6 people may as well be the only inhabitants on Earth. But even if that were true you can’t make complex things simple. That is basically always Allen’s meaning. Most folks get flustered because they can’t seem to get others to really understand them. But some get flustered all the more because they grasp their own sense of “identity” in the same way. It’s a contraption, a fabrication, a work in progress from the cradle to the grave. Making things simple is just the way most choose to fit all of the existential fragments together.
One thing for sure: He didn’t blink at the end of this film.
Director Woody Allen cast and shot this film twice, without telling the original cast. In the re-shot version, Maureen O’Sullivan, Charles Durning and Sam Shepard were replaced by Elaine Stritch, Denholm Elliott and Sam Waterston respectively.
Movieline Magazine reported that as of 2011, September is Woody Allen’s lowest-grossing movie (at only $486,484). IMDb
I guess he should have used more CGI.
September
Peter [to Lane]: The only point I wanted to make is that some people are survivors and others allow life’s tragedies to annililate them and this is just one of the cruelties of living.
One of hundreds, let's say.
Diane: It’s hell getting older. Especially when you feel 21 inside. All of the things that sustain you throughout your life just vanish one by one. You study your face in the mirrror and you notice that something’s missing. And then you realize it’s your future.
That was back then. Just imagine how much more overwhelming that must all be for him now.
Peter: What branch of physics were you involved with?
Lloyd: Something much more terrifying than blowing up the planet.
Peter: Really? Is there anything more terrifying than the destruction of the world?
Lloyd: Yeah. The knowledge that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s all random…resonating aimlessly out of nothing and eventually vanishing forever. And I’m not talking about the world. I’m talking about the universe. All space, all time just a temporary convulsion. And I get paid to prove it.
Peter: Do you feel so sure about that when you look out on a clear night like tonight and see all those millions of stars? That none of it matters?
Lloyd: I think it’s as beautiful as you do…and vaguely evocative of some deep truth that always just keeps slipping away. But then my professional perspective overcomes me and a see more penetrating view of it…and I understand it for what it truly is…haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.
Peter: Look we shouldn’t be having this conversation. I have to sleep alone tonight.
Lloyd: That’s why I cling to Diane and consider myself very lucky. She is warm and vibrant, holds me while I sleep. That way I don’t have to dream of photons and quarks.
Anyone here want to cling to me?
Stephanie: Stand up.
Lane: I want to kill myself.
Stephanie: Don’t say that.
Lane: I have no reason to get up tomorrow.
Stephanie: Well then, you’re just going to have to make up a reason.
Don't you just hate that?
Lane: Are you and Peter in love with each other?
Stephanie: We just became attracted to each other. These things happen.
Lane: But you knew how much I cared about him.
Stephanie: I didn’t instigate it. It just happened by itself. You know we’re all up here isolated from the world. Unpredictable things happen.
She Came To Stay?
Stephanie: Tomorrow will come and you’ll find some distractions. You’ll get rid of this place, move back to the city, find work, meet someone, fall in love. And maybe it will work out and maybe it won’t. But you’ll find a million petty things to keep ypu going, and distractions to keep ypou from focusing on…
Lane: On the truth.
Stephanie: I don’t know what the truth is…and you don’t either.
And what particular truth might that be?
Stephanie: Do you really want to die?
Lane: No. That’s my problem, I always wanted to live.
I still go back and forth myself.
With two additional characters around to reflect his contempt for pop culture and despairing sense of doom and gloom in confronting the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless and absurd universe.
Here are people who at times are so close…and yet so far removed from really understanding each other. And also groping about to understand things that can only ever be understood obliquely anyway.
For all intents and purposes these 6 people may as well be the only inhabitants on Earth. But even if that were true you can’t make complex things simple. That is basically always Allen’s meaning. Most folks get flustered because they can’t seem to get others to really understand them. But some get flustered all the more because they grasp their own sense of “identity” in the same way. It’s a contraption, a fabrication, a work in progress from the cradle to the grave. Making things simple is just the way most choose to fit all of the existential fragments together.
One thing for sure: He didn’t blink at the end of this film.
Director Woody Allen cast and shot this film twice, without telling the original cast. In the re-shot version, Maureen O’Sullivan, Charles Durning and Sam Shepard were replaced by Elaine Stritch, Denholm Elliott and Sam Waterston respectively.
Movieline Magazine reported that as of 2011, September is Woody Allen’s lowest-grossing movie (at only $486,484). IMDb
I guess he should have used more CGI.
September
Peter [to Lane]: The only point I wanted to make is that some people are survivors and others allow life’s tragedies to annililate them and this is just one of the cruelties of living.
One of hundreds, let's say.
Diane: It’s hell getting older. Especially when you feel 21 inside. All of the things that sustain you throughout your life just vanish one by one. You study your face in the mirrror and you notice that something’s missing. And then you realize it’s your future.
That was back then. Just imagine how much more overwhelming that must all be for him now.
Peter: What branch of physics were you involved with?
Lloyd: Something much more terrifying than blowing up the planet.
Peter: Really? Is there anything more terrifying than the destruction of the world?
Lloyd: Yeah. The knowledge that it doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s all random…resonating aimlessly out of nothing and eventually vanishing forever. And I’m not talking about the world. I’m talking about the universe. All space, all time just a temporary convulsion. And I get paid to prove it.
Peter: Do you feel so sure about that when you look out on a clear night like tonight and see all those millions of stars? That none of it matters?
Lloyd: I think it’s as beautiful as you do…and vaguely evocative of some deep truth that always just keeps slipping away. But then my professional perspective overcomes me and a see more penetrating view of it…and I understand it for what it truly is…haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent.
Peter: Look we shouldn’t be having this conversation. I have to sleep alone tonight.
Lloyd: That’s why I cling to Diane and consider myself very lucky. She is warm and vibrant, holds me while I sleep. That way I don’t have to dream of photons and quarks.
Anyone here want to cling to me?
Stephanie: Stand up.
Lane: I want to kill myself.
Stephanie: Don’t say that.
Lane: I have no reason to get up tomorrow.
Stephanie: Well then, you’re just going to have to make up a reason.
Don't you just hate that?
Lane: Are you and Peter in love with each other?
Stephanie: We just became attracted to each other. These things happen.
Lane: But you knew how much I cared about him.
Stephanie: I didn’t instigate it. It just happened by itself. You know we’re all up here isolated from the world. Unpredictable things happen.
She Came To Stay?
Stephanie: Tomorrow will come and you’ll find some distractions. You’ll get rid of this place, move back to the city, find work, meet someone, fall in love. And maybe it will work out and maybe it won’t. But you’ll find a million petty things to keep ypu going, and distractions to keep ypou from focusing on…
Lane: On the truth.
Stephanie: I don’t know what the truth is…and you don’t either.
And what particular truth might that be?
Stephanie: Do you really want to die?
Lane: No. That’s my problem, I always wanted to live.
I still go back and forth myself.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Death
“No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.” Samuel Beckett
How about now though?
“For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.” Plato
How about now though?
“Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.” James Frey
Ask how easy that's going for me.
“They say even death can't cure an idiot." Tite Kubo
And very, very few pinheads.
“You must know that I am made of death, from head to foot, and it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!” Gaston Leroux
Virtually, as it were.
“Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.” Gregory Maguire
Nope, that never works for me.
“No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.” Samuel Beckett
How about now though?
“For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.” Plato
How about now though?
“Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.” James Frey
Ask how easy that's going for me.
“They say even death can't cure an idiot." Tite Kubo
And very, very few pinheads.
“You must know that I am made of death, from head to foot, and it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!” Gaston Leroux
Virtually, as it were.
“Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.” Gregory Maguire
Nope, that never works for me.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
I guess if you are a genius you can make up your own rules. After all, all it takes is to accomplish something no one else has. And, as a mathematician, all that subjective and subjunctive crap sort of flies out the window. The equation either works or it doesn’t. The problem is either solved or it isn’t. The work is either original or it’s not. After all, it’s not the same as grappling with things like identity and value judgments.
And no matter how beautiful the mind works up at the chalkboard, it’s always a bit more convoluted when the transactions revolve around, say, love or sex. Or mental illness.
In a sense this is like watching Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. What is real and what takes place only in his head? Or, in the case of Chuck Barris, his creative mind?
Aside from all that, I have always been drawn to folks who were convinced that others did not like them. Especially given the extent to which they withdrew into what they loved most.
Six degrees of coincidence…
John Nash is often associated with game theory. So is Melvin Dresher:
Wiki: Melvin Dresher’s research has been referred to and discussed in a variety of published books, including Prisoner’s Dilemma by William Poundstone and A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar.
Dresher died in 1992. Shortly thereafter I began a letter correspondence with his daughter Olivia Dresher. Olivia Dresher is a close friend of Victor Munoz. And Victor Munoz’s alter ego Bianco Luno prompted the creation of my “a thread for mundane ironists” over at ILP.
The film was shot in sequence in order to help Russell Crowe develop a consistently progressing manner of behavior.
The problem that John Nash writes on the blackboard in his lecture is a real one (unlike in other movies, where math on boards is usually either too simple or fake). There is an important theorem in mathematical physics that directly says the answer to this is 1. Later, when he discusses the problem with Alicia Nash, he makes additional restrictions for the solution, without which the problem is much harder, so he is pretty confident she didn’t solve it.
While this film is inspired by the life of John Nash, there were elements from his life that were deliberately omitted: 1) he was married twice, both to the same woman (Alicia Nash); 2) in the past, he had several affairs with both men and women; 3) he was arrested by the police by scandal; 4) He fathered a child out-of-wedlock in his twenties; 5) he believed that through his mental illness the extra-terrestrials spoke him, giving his advanced knowledge by means of cosmic connection with them; 6) he tried to renounce to his American nationality some times, in the belief that the USA government pursued him; and 7) he made numerous anti-Semitic comments during his period of extreme mental illness, most of which equated Jews with world Communism.
The Riemann Hypothesis mentioned throughout the movie is a real and famous problem in mathematics that has gone unsolved (it has not been proved yet) for nearly 150 years. Many other important theories have been proved on the condition that the Riemann Hypothesis holds, hence its importance. In the year 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts listed the Riemann Hypothesis as one of seven “Millennium Prize Problems” and offered a $1,000,000 reward to the person that proves it. IMDb
A Beautiful Mind
Helinger: Mathematicians won the war. Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes… and built the A-bomb. Mathematicians… like you. The stated goal of the Soviets is global Communism. In medicine or economics, in technology or space, battle lines are being drawn. To triumph, we need results. Publishable, applicable results. Now who among you will be the next Morse? The next Einstein? Who among you will be the vanguard of democracy, freedom, and discovery? Today, we bequeath America’s future into your able hands. Welcome to Princeton, gentlemen.
Then this part: https://youtu.be/SkETN-xENAM?si=kSVXh0Kj-xhbRei1
Nash: There has to be a mathematical explanation for how bad that tie is.
Or how bad that joke is?
The imagined Charles: So what’s your story? You the poor kid that never got to go to Exeter or Andover?
Nash: Despite my privileged upbringing, I’m actually quite well-balanced. I have a chip on both shoulders.
Yep, there were two of them.
Nash [looking out upon the students at Stanford]: I cannot waste time with these classes…and these books. Memorizing the weaker assumptions of lesser mortals! I need to look through to the governing dynamics. Find a truly original idea. That’s the only way I’ll ever distinguish myself. It’s the only way that I’ll ever…
The imagined Charles: Matter.
You know, click.
Woman [at bar watching Nash stare at her]: Maybe you want to buy me a drink.
Nash: I don’t exactly know what I am required to say in order for you to have intercourse with me. But could we assume that I said all that. I mean essentially we are talking about fluid exchange right? So could we go just straight to the sex.
[slap!]
The slap heard around the bar. And then some?
Nash: Adam Smith said the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself, right? That’s what he said, right?
Sol: Right.
Nash: Incomplete. Because the best result will come from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself [/i]and[/i] the group.
Fuck it, let's try to pull that off here too.
And no matter how beautiful the mind works up at the chalkboard, it’s always a bit more convoluted when the transactions revolve around, say, love or sex. Or mental illness.
In a sense this is like watching Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. What is real and what takes place only in his head? Or, in the case of Chuck Barris, his creative mind?
Aside from all that, I have always been drawn to folks who were convinced that others did not like them. Especially given the extent to which they withdrew into what they loved most.
Six degrees of coincidence…
John Nash is often associated with game theory. So is Melvin Dresher:
Wiki: Melvin Dresher’s research has been referred to and discussed in a variety of published books, including Prisoner’s Dilemma by William Poundstone and A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar.
Dresher died in 1992. Shortly thereafter I began a letter correspondence with his daughter Olivia Dresher. Olivia Dresher is a close friend of Victor Munoz. And Victor Munoz’s alter ego Bianco Luno prompted the creation of my “a thread for mundane ironists” over at ILP.
The film was shot in sequence in order to help Russell Crowe develop a consistently progressing manner of behavior.
The problem that John Nash writes on the blackboard in his lecture is a real one (unlike in other movies, where math on boards is usually either too simple or fake). There is an important theorem in mathematical physics that directly says the answer to this is 1. Later, when he discusses the problem with Alicia Nash, he makes additional restrictions for the solution, without which the problem is much harder, so he is pretty confident she didn’t solve it.
While this film is inspired by the life of John Nash, there were elements from his life that were deliberately omitted: 1) he was married twice, both to the same woman (Alicia Nash); 2) in the past, he had several affairs with both men and women; 3) he was arrested by the police by scandal; 4) He fathered a child out-of-wedlock in his twenties; 5) he believed that through his mental illness the extra-terrestrials spoke him, giving his advanced knowledge by means of cosmic connection with them; 6) he tried to renounce to his American nationality some times, in the belief that the USA government pursued him; and 7) he made numerous anti-Semitic comments during his period of extreme mental illness, most of which equated Jews with world Communism.
The Riemann Hypothesis mentioned throughout the movie is a real and famous problem in mathematics that has gone unsolved (it has not been proved yet) for nearly 150 years. Many other important theories have been proved on the condition that the Riemann Hypothesis holds, hence its importance. In the year 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts listed the Riemann Hypothesis as one of seven “Millennium Prize Problems” and offered a $1,000,000 reward to the person that proves it. IMDb
A Beautiful Mind
Helinger: Mathematicians won the war. Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes… and built the A-bomb. Mathematicians… like you. The stated goal of the Soviets is global Communism. In medicine or economics, in technology or space, battle lines are being drawn. To triumph, we need results. Publishable, applicable results. Now who among you will be the next Morse? The next Einstein? Who among you will be the vanguard of democracy, freedom, and discovery? Today, we bequeath America’s future into your able hands. Welcome to Princeton, gentlemen.
Then this part: https://youtu.be/SkETN-xENAM?si=kSVXh0Kj-xhbRei1
Nash: There has to be a mathematical explanation for how bad that tie is.
Or how bad that joke is?
The imagined Charles: So what’s your story? You the poor kid that never got to go to Exeter or Andover?
Nash: Despite my privileged upbringing, I’m actually quite well-balanced. I have a chip on both shoulders.
Yep, there were two of them.
Nash [looking out upon the students at Stanford]: I cannot waste time with these classes…and these books. Memorizing the weaker assumptions of lesser mortals! I need to look through to the governing dynamics. Find a truly original idea. That’s the only way I’ll ever distinguish myself. It’s the only way that I’ll ever…
The imagined Charles: Matter.
You know, click.
Woman [at bar watching Nash stare at her]: Maybe you want to buy me a drink.
Nash: I don’t exactly know what I am required to say in order for you to have intercourse with me. But could we assume that I said all that. I mean essentially we are talking about fluid exchange right? So could we go just straight to the sex.
[slap!]
The slap heard around the bar. And then some?
Nash: Adam Smith said the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself, right? That’s what he said, right?
Sol: Right.
Nash: Incomplete. Because the best result will come from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself [/i]and[/i] the group.
Fuck it, let's try to pull that off here too.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Richard Wright from Native Son
I didn’t want to kill! Bigger shouted. But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder….What I killed for must’ve been good!Bigger’s voice was full of frenzied anguish. It must have been good! When a man kills, it’s for something...
...or other?
An organic wish to cease to be, to stop living, seized him. Either he was too weak, or the world was too strong; he did not know which. Over and over he had tried to create a world to live in, and over and over he had failed.
Only now he was, well, running out of time.
For, in other words, anything to matter.
If this state of affairs had lasted for two or three years, we could say that it was unjust; but it lasted for more than two hundred years. Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life.
Let's run this by the strict constructionists..
How constantly and overwhelmingly the advertisements, radios, newspapers and movies play upon us! But in thinking of them remember that to many they are tokens of mockery.
Then they invented the internet. So that, once again, nothing would change.
So far removed are these practices from what the average American citizen encounters in his daily life that it takes a huge act of his imagination to believe that it is true...
See, I told you.
If you think I’m telling tall tales, get chummy with some white cop who works in a Black Belt district and ask him for the lowdown.
And this time don't forget to upload it to YouTube.
I didn’t want to kill! Bigger shouted. But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder….What I killed for must’ve been good!Bigger’s voice was full of frenzied anguish. It must have been good! When a man kills, it’s for something...
...or other?
An organic wish to cease to be, to stop living, seized him. Either he was too weak, or the world was too strong; he did not know which. Over and over he had tried to create a world to live in, and over and over he had failed.
Only now he was, well, running out of time.
For, in other words, anything to matter.
If this state of affairs had lasted for two or three years, we could say that it was unjust; but it lasted for more than two hundred years. Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life.
Let's run this by the strict constructionists..
How constantly and overwhelmingly the advertisements, radios, newspapers and movies play upon us! But in thinking of them remember that to many they are tokens of mockery.
Then they invented the internet. So that, once again, nothing would change.
So far removed are these practices from what the average American citizen encounters in his daily life that it takes a huge act of his imagination to believe that it is true...
See, I told you.
If you think I’m telling tall tales, get chummy with some white cop who works in a Black Belt district and ask him for the lowdown.
And this time don't forget to upload it to YouTube.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
A Beautiful Mind
Helinger: You do realize this flies in the face of a 150 years of economic theory?
Nash: Yes, I do, sir.
Helinger: That’s rather presumptuous, don’t you think?
Nash: It is, sir.
Helinger: Well, Mr. Nash, with a breakthrough of this magnitude, I’m confident you will get any placement you like.
Of course, free will or not, he would increasingly find himself in a world that was not only beyond his control, but much beyond anything that others not afflicted with his condition could ever really hope to understand.
The imagined Parcher: Oppenheimer used to say, “Genius sees the answer before the question.”
Nash: You knew Oppenheimer?
Parcher: His project was under my supervision.
Nah: Which project?
[pause]
Nash: Oh, that project.
They ought to make a film about it.
The imagined Parcher: Nazi engineers were attempting to build a portable atomic bomb. The Soviets reached this facility before we did, and we lost the damn thing.
Nash: The routing orders at the Pentagon, they were about this, weren’t they?
Parcher: The Soviets aren’t as unified as people believe. A faction of the Red Army calling itself Novaya Svobga, “the New Freedom”, has control of the bomb and intends to detonate it on U.S. soil. Their plan is to incur maximum civilian casualties. Man is capable of as much atrocity as he has imagination. New Freedom has sleeper agents here in the U.S. McCarthy is an idiot, but unfortunately that doesn’t make him wrong. New Freedom communicates to its agents through codes imbedded in newspapers and magazines, and that’s where you come in. You see, John, what distinguishes you is that you are, quite simply, the best natural code-breaker I have ever seen.
Nash: What exactly is it that you would like me to do?
Help them to decode hallucinations? While he still can, in other words.
Alicia: The problem you left on the board, I solved it.
Nash: No, you didn’t.
Alicia: You didn’t even look!
Nash: I never said the vector fields were rational functions. Your solution is elegant…though ultimately incorrect.
Next up: rational functions here.
Alicia: I once tried to count all the stars. I actually made it to 4,348.
Nash: You are exceptionally odd.
Coming from him in other words.
Nash: I find that polishing my interactions in order to make them sociable requires a tremendous effort. I have a tendency to expedite information flow by being direct. I often don’t get a pleasant result.
Alicia: Try me.
Nash: All right. I find you attractive. Your aggressive moves toward me indicate that you feel the same way. But still, ritual requires that we continue with a number of platonic activities before we have sex. I am proceeding with these activities, but in point of actual fact, all I really want to do is have intercourse with you as soon as possible.
[pause]
Nash: Are you gonna slap me now?
Quite the contrary.
Helinger: You do realize this flies in the face of a 150 years of economic theory?
Nash: Yes, I do, sir.
Helinger: That’s rather presumptuous, don’t you think?
Nash: It is, sir.
Helinger: Well, Mr. Nash, with a breakthrough of this magnitude, I’m confident you will get any placement you like.
Of course, free will or not, he would increasingly find himself in a world that was not only beyond his control, but much beyond anything that others not afflicted with his condition could ever really hope to understand.
The imagined Parcher: Oppenheimer used to say, “Genius sees the answer before the question.”
Nash: You knew Oppenheimer?
Parcher: His project was under my supervision.
Nah: Which project?
[pause]
Nash: Oh, that project.
They ought to make a film about it.
The imagined Parcher: Nazi engineers were attempting to build a portable atomic bomb. The Soviets reached this facility before we did, and we lost the damn thing.
Nash: The routing orders at the Pentagon, they were about this, weren’t they?
Parcher: The Soviets aren’t as unified as people believe. A faction of the Red Army calling itself Novaya Svobga, “the New Freedom”, has control of the bomb and intends to detonate it on U.S. soil. Their plan is to incur maximum civilian casualties. Man is capable of as much atrocity as he has imagination. New Freedom has sleeper agents here in the U.S. McCarthy is an idiot, but unfortunately that doesn’t make him wrong. New Freedom communicates to its agents through codes imbedded in newspapers and magazines, and that’s where you come in. You see, John, what distinguishes you is that you are, quite simply, the best natural code-breaker I have ever seen.
Nash: What exactly is it that you would like me to do?
Help them to decode hallucinations? While he still can, in other words.
Alicia: The problem you left on the board, I solved it.
Nash: No, you didn’t.
Alicia: You didn’t even look!
Nash: I never said the vector fields were rational functions. Your solution is elegant…though ultimately incorrect.
Next up: rational functions here.
Alicia: I once tried to count all the stars. I actually made it to 4,348.
Nash: You are exceptionally odd.
Coming from him in other words.
Nash: I find that polishing my interactions in order to make them sociable requires a tremendous effort. I have a tendency to expedite information flow by being direct. I often don’t get a pleasant result.
Alicia: Try me.
Nash: All right. I find you attractive. Your aggressive moves toward me indicate that you feel the same way. But still, ritual requires that we continue with a number of platonic activities before we have sex. I am proceeding with these activities, but in point of actual fact, all I really want to do is have intercourse with you as soon as possible.
[pause]
Nash: Are you gonna slap me now?
Quite the contrary.
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
A Beautiful Mind
Nash: Alicia, does our relationship warrant long-term commitment? I need some kind of proof, some kind of verifiable, empirical data.
Alicia: I’m sorry, just give me a moment to redefine my girlish notions of romance. Okay, how big is the universe?
Nash: Infinite.
Alicia: How do you know?
Nash: I know because all the data indicates it’s infinite.
Alicia: But it hasn’t been proven yet.
Nash: No.
Alicia: You haven’t seen it.
Nash: No.
Alicia: How do you know for sure?
Nash: I don’t, I just believe it.
Alicia: Hmm. It’s the same with love, I guess. Now, the part that you don’t know is if I want to marry you.
Any girlish notions of romance here?
Dr. Rosen [to Alicia]: You see, the nightmare of schizophrenia is not knowing what’s true. Imagine if you suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse, had never been. What kind of hell would that be?
I'll let you know if it goes that far.
Alicia [watching Nash convulse from electo-shock treatment]: How often?
Dr. Rosen: Five times a week for ten weeks.
At least he's not a homosexual, right Alan?
Dr. Rosen: You can’t reason your way out of this!
Nash: Why not? Why can’t I?
Dr. Rosen: Because your mind is where the problem is in the first place!
To click or not to click, that is the question.
Nash: Rosen is right about one thing. You shouldn’t be here. I’m not safe anymore.
Alicia: Would you hurt me, John?
Nash: I don’t know.
That can't be good.
Alicia [to Nash after telling Rosen she won’t sign the commitment papers]: Rosen said to call him if you try and kill me or anything.
Hey, a beautiful mind.
Nash: What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. I have made the most important discovery of my career - the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found. I am only here tonight because of you.
[looking at and speaking to Alicia]
Nash: You are the only reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you.
On the other hand, like father like son. Praise the Lord?
Nash: Alicia, does our relationship warrant long-term commitment? I need some kind of proof, some kind of verifiable, empirical data.
Alicia: I’m sorry, just give me a moment to redefine my girlish notions of romance. Okay, how big is the universe?
Nash: Infinite.
Alicia: How do you know?
Nash: I know because all the data indicates it’s infinite.
Alicia: But it hasn’t been proven yet.
Nash: No.
Alicia: You haven’t seen it.
Nash: No.
Alicia: How do you know for sure?
Nash: I don’t, I just believe it.
Alicia: Hmm. It’s the same with love, I guess. Now, the part that you don’t know is if I want to marry you.
Any girlish notions of romance here?
Dr. Rosen [to Alicia]: You see, the nightmare of schizophrenia is not knowing what’s true. Imagine if you suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse, had never been. What kind of hell would that be?
I'll let you know if it goes that far.
Alicia [watching Nash convulse from electo-shock treatment]: How often?
Dr. Rosen: Five times a week for ten weeks.
At least he's not a homosexual, right Alan?
Dr. Rosen: You can’t reason your way out of this!
Nash: Why not? Why can’t I?
Dr. Rosen: Because your mind is where the problem is in the first place!
To click or not to click, that is the question.
Nash: Rosen is right about one thing. You shouldn’t be here. I’m not safe anymore.
Alicia: Would you hurt me, John?
Nash: I don’t know.
That can't be good.
Alicia [to Nash after telling Rosen she won’t sign the commitment papers]: Rosen said to call him if you try and kill me or anything.
Hey, a beautiful mind.
Nash: What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. I have made the most important discovery of my career - the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found. I am only here tonight because of you.
[looking at and speaking to Alicia]
Nash: You are the only reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you.
On the other hand, like father like son. Praise the Lord?
-
iambiguous
- Posts: 11317
- Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm
Re: Quote of the day
Aldous Huxley from Brave New World
No social stability without individual stability.
Let's run that by the ruling class, for starters.
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
Indeed: "Wage slave workers of the world unite!"
Behind Trump?
...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays...
Let's synchronize our atomic clocks.
“The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"
You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.
Besides, what's one more God, anyway?
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
Any volunteers?
To join me.
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
Never again!
Then repeat as necessary.
No social stability without individual stability.
Let's run that by the ruling class, for starters.
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
Indeed: "Wage slave workers of the world unite!"
Behind Trump?
...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays...
Let's synchronize our atomic clocks.
“The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"
You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.
Besides, what's one more God, anyway?
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
Any volunteers?
To join me.
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
Never again!
Then repeat as necessary.