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kathy
Joined: 20 Jan 2006
Posts: 728
Location: Surfing The Waves
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 Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 5:23 am Post subject: book review / movie review |
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New topic section, as per atm's suggestion. We will see how this goes before setting up a special section for the topic.
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IMAGINE
Truth fears no questions |
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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 3861
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 5:17 am Post subject: |
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Thanks, Kathy.
For starters, has anyone read 'I Am Me, I Am Free, For A Fee' by David Icke?
Okay, seriously my pedigree chums, I envisage this section evolving into a BBC2-type 'After Dark' session populated by luvvies, journalists, hacks, linguists, grammarians and coke-addled drop-outs who can't get their RADA memberships renewed.
So that's all of us covered, right?
I'll kick things off with two of my favourite latest must-reads:
'Blink'
(Malcolm Gladwell)
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/
'The Luficer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into The Forces of History'
(Howard Bloom)
http://www.bookworld.com/lucifer/
I have questions about these tomes but I'll hold back on listing them until there's some feedback.
For those to whom these books are new: Happy mind-expanding reading
atm  |
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bri
Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 3234
Location: Capacious Creek
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| Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 12:33 am Post subject: |
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| check out anything by the Poet's Denise Levertov or Seamus Heaney |
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rustyh
Joined: 17 Sep 2006
Posts: 489
Location: A Wonderful World
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 4:21 am Post subject: |
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Great idea Kathy.
I watched a movie last night called "THE HOST".
It was made in Korea and is a pretty poxy movie but it has an underlying message of how 'government bullshit' is used and abused on the general public.
Think sars, bird flu etc.
The people here at BFN will see what i mean once they have seen it.
Another movie seen recently is "THE PRESTIGE", which gave me an insight into Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.
Rustyh |
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kathy
Joined: 20 Jan 2006
Posts: 728
Location: Surfing The Waves
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| Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:46 am Post subject: |
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Glad you like the thread Rustyh, it was actually ATM who put the idea forward. I don't have time to watch many movies or read at the moment, but hopefully when my life is out of boxes I can get down to reading all the books I stored up for this summer.
| Quote: |
Personal Helicon
By Seamus Heaney
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing. |
I don't actually find Heaney's work very inspiring, my personal opinion.
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IMAGINE
Truth fears no questions |
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Cracrocrates
Joined: 27 Feb 2007
Posts: 269
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| Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:10 am Post subject: |
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| atm wrote: | | 'The Luficer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into The Forces of History' (Howard Bloom) |
I read this a few years ago, and at a time when my bullshit detector wasn't as sensitive as it is now. I don't know what I would think if I re-read it today, but my general feeling WHEN I READ IT YEARS AGO was agreeing with the author UNTIL he went into some long diatribe about Islam being the biggest root of all modern evil. W-T-holy-F ?
Not mentioning the contributions of all religions & divisions & racism to various wars throughout history and applying it to today's problems. Oh no, today's main problem is I-S-L-A-M according to Bloom.
Last time I checked, Islam wasn't the MAIN contributor to WWI & WWII (or even WWIII ).
...
I got two book recommendations I posted in another thread:
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niņo Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis
http://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1859843824
Inventing the AIDS Virus by Peter Duesberg,PhD
http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-AIDS-Virus-Peter-Duesberg/dp/0895263998
...
I could never get past the first few pages of Blink ; I'm sure I'll read it someday in the next twenty years.
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" 'New World Order' ?...same as the Old World Order "
Church of Crac motto:
"The End is Nigh. Give me a Dollar."
--Cracrocrates |
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Peter
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 2467
Location: The Canadian shield
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:01 pm Post subject: Turn out the lights, turn out the lights |
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"Wizard, The life and times of Nikola Tesla." by Marc J. Seifer
I like historical biographies and so far (1/3 in) it is only lacking a bit of "pizazz" regarding his interpersonal relations with Westinghouse, Morgan and Edison. The detail is great as are the technical vulgarizations (no need to understand science per se). Seifer's prose is a bit moribund but he does provide ample insight to help determine the intent of the players.
Once finished, I'll revisit with a 0-10... 
It was a 7. A fun read.
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The grand design, reflected in the face of Chaos.
Last edited by Peter on Sun Nov 11, 2007 8:49 am; edited 1 time in total |
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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 3861
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| Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:59 am Post subject: |
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Cracrocrates
Re: Howard Bloom.
Yeah, I see your point but, his main hypothesis, the 'superorganism' is nothing but mindblowingly revelationary (no religious pun intended).
So he fell for the Islam / Muslim MSM crap. So did Chomsky (yeah yeah, MIT shill and all that but, a leading-edge linguist, no question about it: see my point?).
Re: the MSM Islam / Muslim angle: Didn't we all, at some fleeting moment, fall for it too ? [I did.] Quasi-rhetorical question, BTW.
And Einstein and Darwin's mindblowing revelations are still only theoretical. So, um, where does that leave Howard Bloom or legion other modern theoreticians?
Anyone for a bit of Desmond Morris or Richard Dawkins?
Debate away  .
atm |
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Cracrocrates
Joined: 27 Feb 2007
Posts: 269
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| Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:44 am Post subject: |
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| atm wrote: |
Re: Howard Bloom.
...
So he fell for the Islam / Muslim MSM crap. So did Chomsky
...
Re: the MSM Islam / Muslim angle: Didn't we all, at some fleeting moment, fall for it too ? [I did.] .
....
And Einstein and Darwin's mindblowing revelations are still only theoretical. So, um, where does that leave Howard Bloom or legion other modern theoreticians?
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Yo atm, I may be tossing the crack out with the crackbaby, but I beg to differ on most of your points.
1. I have a hard time trusting an academic (Howard Bloom) who more or less stated in one VEHEMENT chapter that ISLAM=SATAN, while letting all other religious & dogmatic belief systems off the hook. Chomsky never said that shit; Chomsky stated that 9/11 was blowback and Muslims had their reasons because of imperialism and state-sponsored terror from the West. That mofo Bloom spent 20 years doing research on 1 book and didn't bother to look up the body count from 20th century wars & famines, or dismissed all that as not relevant? Is he too P.C. to mention the Lusitania or Gulf of Tonkin? Oh, I guess WWI was for "the greater good" or just one colossal misunderstanding. Bloom is either a closeted or naive academic, or a shill. [Hell, CAR ACCIDENTS are a bigger f'ing problem than ISLAM.]
2. Shit, I thought Muslims did 9/11 too for years too, but I always believed that it was done because of American Foreign Policy, not because, as Bloom implies, that Islam is today's BIGGEST concern.
3. EINSTEIN..I don't know. I do think that he was used as a useful idiot/distraction/created celebrity during WWI because to this day I have a hard time believing that a THEORETICAL physicist is going to be treated by the public & newspapers like a ROCK STAR based on merit, especially around bigger stories like,uh, WORLD WAR ONE. And the Eddington experiment confirming relativity was faked [book recommendation: EINSTEIN'S LUCK by John Waller www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Luck-Greatest-Scientific-Discoveries/dp/0198607199 , which I mentioned in another thread ] Other writers in books I've come across criticized Einstein for plagiarizing other scientists. UNRELATED to Einstein but a book I also recommend is EINSTEIN IN BERLIN by Thomas Levenson, which is more about the horrors of Weimar Germany (with some great photographs of that era) than Einstein.
4. DARWIN ? Yeah, I believed Darwinism in high school & college...until I realized A) his ideas were not all that original, being explored thoroughly by others before him in book format B)his "theories" on evolution/natural selection use circular reasoning...and seem like that Monty Python sketch "this is my theory" Fintan alluded to in an audio when mocking Judy Wood C) Chucky married into an elitist filthy rich family (Wedgwood) that believed in Eugenics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_—_Wedgwood_family "a family contained at least ten Fellows of the Royal Society" ; John Taylor Gatto mentioned Darwin marrying rich in an audio somewhere D) Darwin kept revising his Origin of Species book to the point where different versions contradicted each other [biology teachers tell students to read I think only the first few editions because the latter ones mention the necessity of God or something like that] E) Even with modern molecular bio, no one has a clue what caused either speciation OR how life started in the first place...Origin of Life research is frowned upon in academia, considered a fringe field at best.........................one book I recommend that has a chapters on critiquing Darwin is The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science by Tom Bethell
_________________
" 'New World Order' ?...same as the Old World Order "
Church of Crac motto:
"The End is Nigh. Give me a Dollar."
--Cracrocrates |
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DaftAida
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 62
Location: BabyLondon
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| Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 4:48 pm Post subject: These are A Few of My Favourite things ... |
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William Lyne Space Aliens in the Pentagon and other works (wish I knew how to link stuff to here, or anywhere). Brilliant insight into Tesla (my Hero!) WW11, flying saucers and suppressed Free Energy technology - way to go!
You Tube: America F**ck Yeah! bit late on these but a whole series which helped me let off some steam yesterday - see if you can find the one with the cats - cracks me up!
Zeitgeist: good compo on Google, probably well known here
And some intimacy from the heart on www.monday9amtv.com
And for those on the spiritual grid www.newsforthesoul.com
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L.U.C.K. - Labour Under Correct Knowledge |
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Peter
Joined: 26 Jun 2007
Posts: 2467
Location: The Canadian shield
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| Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 8:56 am Post subject: KC is also a state of mind... |
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Just downloaded and watched Mr. Brooks. I am not a Kevin Costner fan, but he finally found a role that he could handle with his wooden, distant style. The story is fairly solid with adequate performances by the supporting cast. John Hurt does a decent job with his portrayal of a systemic astral entity that urges Earl on to his feats of murderous lunacy. Production values seemed a bit low-rent but despite that spare approach, they didn't get the sombre mood quite right. Not quite surreal enough.
Because I was pleasantly surprised, I will give it a 7.
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The grand design, reflected in the face of Chaos. |
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noplacebo
Joined: 25 Mar 2007
Posts: 227
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| Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:05 am Post subject: |
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| just reread robert heinleins stranger in a strange land, the full version,about double the size of the original , what can i say? , twice as good, thats what, ole jubal harshaws deliciously non pc diatribes are priceless, and he gets to let rip in most of the reinstated pages, i felt like the boy in the old ready break advert with the warm glow encircling him for days,yum-yum. |
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