you are indeed a unique fellow with a breadth of interests : the Iranian constitution, the laws of war, pornography, science fiction, annoying dncphil, and now poetry. What, if any limits are there to the intellectual boundaries of our Venice Beach polymath?
Anywayz, the Yeats quote made me think of a thread topic which we could launch that might prove to be of interest to our plyamates: most cliched poetry quotations dragged into a political discussion. [Actually, this was suggested to me several years ago by my sister with her useless degrees in Literature. And i did sort of attempt it. It already went nowhere].
Let me throw my straightjacket into the ring here with a excerpt from Mathew Arnold's "Dover Beach" [long a bane of students in the US, is this poem studied anymore in US high schools?], itself one of the real time-honored poetry cliche-quotations re the political sphere.
" And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
Love that 'darkling plain" thing. Confuses the shit out of everyone. And didn't the original source material for "Vertigo" contain the French word for "darkling'?
And those ignorant armies clashing by night: can that have been in the back of Norman Mailer's mind when he wrote "Armies of the Night"? And what about the 1952 movie "Clash By Night"?
And speaking of ignorant armies, where might we find a place where ignorant armies clash, not just by night, but on a 24/7/365 basis?
-- Modified on 5/23/2010 6:25:52 AM
-- Modified on 5/23/2010 6:27:41 AM
Artificial life has been developed in a laboratory.
I thought this would be the appropriate time for the great philosophical discussion now that we have gone from theoretical, to actual creation of life by artificial means.
Or have we?
(note to charlie445: I'm using the term "god" for the purpose of discussion. I don't believe in supernatural deities either.)
Mankind will self destruct before they can duplicate Nature.. however surrogates will be available long before this century is over.IMO
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=57630556
... apparently, the stupidest country music song titles in recorded human history generate far more enthusiasm and dialog.
Shameful, and typical of today's totally fucked up system of values and priorities.
But I shouldn't be surprised. When the environmental disaster that has resulted from the Gulf oil spill garners a mere 30 seconds worth of soundbytes, but Lindsey Lohan being a no show for her court appearance got a full 10 minutes of air time on the Los Angeles local morning news, complete with talking head analysis of her problems.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
That's why reality TV and talk radio are so popular.
Besides, everybody has some sort of fantasy about Lindsay Lohan. Teens want to BE her, women want to HATE her and guys who like spinner types that are freaky want to FUCK her.
Me? I just want her fuckin' money . . . . . .
Some of them get migraines if they ever have to use two cells in their brains.
The notion of critical thinking has been relegated to ancient history.
blue cell in a bacterium is questionable if it is life. NOw I ain't no microbiologist but can the cell, replicate itself i.e. procreate? That question is not answered. The article looks like something from the NaTIONAL Enquirer. I do thank you though, for attempting to elevate the conversation above stupid country music titles and Lindsey Lohan's foibles.
-- Modified on 5/22/2010 12:04:06 AM
it is a worthy topic of discussion. Perhaps not the ideal forum?
As for LL, there was an extra frission of interest due to recent revelation of her supposed connection to a bi-sexual domme.
Notwithstanding the various articles talking about how Dr. Venter has created “artificial life,” I’m not entirely sure from what I have read that any life had been created.
It would seem more accurate to say he has composed his own form of DNA and inserted this into a cell which has had its own DNA removed. The artificial DNA then controls the existing living cell. When it reproduces, the new cell copy has the ungodly artificial DNA.
Michael Crichton foresaw a variation of this technology years ago when he posited that dinosaur DNA could be extracted from mosquitoes frozen for eons in amber, transplanted into living cells, and then the cells would reproduce as T Rex.
On the other hand, when a cell reproduces on its own and bears the artificial DNA, then you could get into a real semantical quagmire as whether the reproduction is “life.”
So perhaps the real reference here is not Crichton but Yeats:
“but now I know... That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
-- Modified on 5/22/2010 10:21:32 PM
you are indeed a unique fellow with a breadth of interests : the Iranian constitution, the laws of war, pornography, science fiction, annoying dncphil, and now poetry. What, if any limits are there to the intellectual boundaries of our Venice Beach polymath?
Anywayz, the Yeats quote made me think of a thread topic which we could launch that might prove to be of interest to our plyamates: most cliched poetry quotations dragged into a political discussion. [Actually, this was suggested to me several years ago by my sister with her useless degrees in Literature. And i did sort of attempt it. It already went nowhere].
Let me throw my straightjacket into the ring here with a excerpt from Mathew Arnold's "Dover Beach" [long a bane of students in the US, is this poem studied anymore in US high schools?], itself one of the real time-honored poetry cliche-quotations re the political sphere.
" And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
Love that 'darkling plain" thing. Confuses the shit out of everyone. And didn't the original source material for "Vertigo" contain the French word for "darkling'?
And those ignorant armies clashing by night: can that have been in the back of Norman Mailer's mind when he wrote "Armies of the Night"? And what about the 1952 movie "Clash By Night"?
And speaking of ignorant armies, where might we find a place where ignorant armies clash, not just by night, but on a 24/7/365 basis?
-- Modified on 5/23/2010 6:25:52 AM
-- Modified on 5/23/2010 6:27:41 AM
in Arnold’s poem.
For me, “darkling” is so associated with John Keats’ musing on death that it seems derivative when I read anyone else using it:
"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die….
And how in the world did you pick up that “the original source material for "Vertigo" contain the French word for "darkling'? Okay, that one stumped even Wikipedia which reports that “Hitchcock originally hired playwright Maxwell Anderson to write a screenplay, but rejected his work, which was entitled Darkling I Listen.” But this of course comes right out of Ode to a Nightingale. So I’m not seeing the French connection, unless the underlying novel itself uses the poem as source material.
On a more prosaic matter, it is Manhattan Beach, the birthplace of beach volleyball, not Venice Beach. Only on Manhattan Beach is my DNA mixed in deeply with the sand.
no, it's the resort to poetry which caught my eye. I don't think Yeats had any conception of recombinant DNA technology not yet devised, so it struck me as a stretch, but an interesting one. perhaps among the regulars only dncphil was capable of such a reference. but what the heck.
And the premise of the post was poetic citations relevant to current politic topics. Well, it fell flat again. Guess i'll try it one more time around Sept 2013 before throwing in the towel.
ignorant armies clash by night - does that remind you of anything?
Several years ago i posted something using Dover Beach, your excursion into poetry reminded me of that earlier fallen-flat-on-it's-face attempt at something different.
I looked in wiki too before posting, and there was no mention of it. Now, i could be wrong, but if you get hold of the "Vertigo" DVD, the one with all the bonus features, somewhere in there I'm pretty sure that it is mentioned that the source material, translated from the French, contains that magnificent word darkling, which has puzzled generations of students. Perhaps your version is correct, and I simply misunderestimated my powers of recall and misremenbered the whole thing.
would be a great individual post. But beware - I used this device in my post against off shore oil drilling last month ("Buy the shores of Gitchee Gumee, buy the shining deep sea water") and virtually no one even picked up the reference, except forr Jerseyflyer.
I even had to suffer the indignity of one poster telling me that Gitchee Gumee was not the ocean. So I have dialed back my use of poetic references a bit. On the other hand, my epic poem about your buddy Priapus was well received by all but the man himself.
i'll have to do a search, i recall it only very vaguely i missed that one. Priapus53 has been quiet lately.
i do remember the 'Hiawatha' excursion; having nothing relevant or interesting to add, I remained silent. for once.
your use of Yeats' poem can do double duty, as this is often cited re political travails:
....Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Pondert that last line EVERY SINGLE TIME you log into this forum.
'Things Fall Apart' is also the title for a well-known novel by the Nigerian-born author Chinua Achebe.
I continue to see a need for a board devoted to literature and poetry. Think of all the traffic it would generate. LMAO.
Life already exists. We are now manipulating molecules in ways that suit the needs of the capitalist class.
As this "god" thingy creature is imaginary, it was already made in man's image. A cursory reading of the bible shows that the magic sky man is invested with man's faults.