You only one you own is yourself and 1/8th of a person. I said 1/8th of a person because that's all that monkeyboy equals to.
=þ
- Thread starter myke
- Start date
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To be honnest I'd be quite surprised if anyone wanted to own me.
(high maintenance costs plus little practical use out side of the bedroom)
(high maintenance costs plus little practical use out side of the bedroom)
I crap all over the house. You wouldn't want to own me.
rip, your jokes have gotten less funnier by the second comrade...
I know, I think I have joker's block.
This one's for comrade Jorvik. 
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast
the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
(Josef Stalin)
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast
the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
(Josef Stalin)
Goddamn communists. I'm glad something like that will never happen here in America.
Wait a minute...
Wait a minute...
Well the democracy bit died in florida the other year....so whats next? :
apparently some people are more equal than others in that state. :rolleyes
apparently some people are more equal than others in that state. :rolleyes
ahaha and arnold is my governor...
Lets raise one for Arnold.
What a beast.
What a beast.
he was cool till he came a polotion
Yeah damm those polotions.
they should take their pol's and go @$#%#%^&*#% them selves
by the way.......what's a Polotion?
Come on now people, lets get back to the original topic that was posted over a year ago....
Hell no.
Nah.
Nag Nag Nag is all I see in that.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to
stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile,
but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt:
(1918)
Nag Nag Nag is all I see in that.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to
stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile,
but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt:
(1918)
"The man who would be a warrior considers it his most basic intention to keep death always in mind, day and night, from the time he first picks up his chopsticks in celebrating his morning meal on New Year's Day to the evening of the last day of the year. When one constantly keeps death in mind, both loyalty and filial piety are realized, myriad evils and disasters are avoided, one is without illness and mishap, and lives out a long life. In addition, even his character is improved. Such are the many benifits of this act."
-Daidoji Yuzan
-Daidoji Yuzan
I just did an interview for Feed Magazine. When I read their intro to it, I was interested to see that they made reference to my ``curious speeches.'' I'll take that as a compliment. Why I take it as a compliment is the subject of this speech. That's assuming this speech actually has a subject, which is still in doubt. Hey, at least it has a title. That's something.
By the way, I'm planning to leave some amount of time at the end for Q and A, so you should start thinking about the Q part while I'm talking.
When I was invited to talk here, it occurred to me that most of the people here would be more interested in Linux than in Perl, so, in the interests of universal harmonic convergence, I thought I should talk about both Perl and Linux. To do that, I had to figure out what Perl and Linux have in common. Besides the obvious, of course.
Obviously, both Perl and Linux owe a lot to Unix culture, but this is well documented. If I merely pointed out the obvious commonalities, I'd have to talk the whole time about things you can find out from the manuals. (Or should I say, things you ought to be able to find out from the manuals? Whatever.)
I'm not here today to teach you how to use Perl or Linux. I'm not here to teach you what Perl or Linux are.
I'm here to talk about why Perl and Linux have both been so successful. Note that I'm measuring success here not so much in terms of numbers of users, but in terms of satisfaction of users.
So I started thinking about deeper connections between Perl and Linux, and that led me to think more about the deeper reasons for writing software. And that led to the subject of this talk. I'm going to start off talking by about postmodernism. After that, I'll switch to talking about postmodernism. And at the conclusion, I'll return to the subject of postmodernism.
However, since this talk is itself a postmodern work of art, I'll be dragging in all sort of other cool things along the way, so maybe you won't fall asleep.
Nowadays people are actually somewhat jaded by the term ``postmodern''. Well, perhaps jaded is an understatement. Nauseated might be more like it. But, anyway, I still distinctly remember the first time I heard it back in the '70s. I think my jaw fell and bounced off the floor several times. To me it was utterly inconceivable that anything could follow modern. Isn't the very idea of ``modern'' always associated with the ideas ``new'' and ``now''?
The idea was so inconceivable to me that it took me at least ten seconds to figure it out. Or to think I'd figured it out. As a musician, the pat answer occurred to me almost immediately. I was familiar with the periods of music: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern. Obviously, if there were to be a period of music following the Modern, it would have to be called something other than Modern. And postmodern is as good a name as any, especially since it's a bit of a joke on the ordinary meaning of modern. Obviously the Modern period was misnamed.
But, as I said, that was the pat answer. The Modern period was not misnamed. True, the ordinary word ``modern'' is associated with ``new'' and ``now'', but the historical period we call Modern chose to associate itself with the ``new'' and the ``now'' in such a deep way that we actually see the breakdown of the whole notion of periods. The Modern period is the period that refuses to die. The world is now an odd mix of the Modern and the postmodern. Oddly, it's not just because the Modern refuses to die, but also because the postmodern refuses to kill the Modern. But then, the postmodern refuses to kill anything completely.
For example, it's been several decades now since a certain set of Bible translations came out, and you'll notice a pattern: the New English Bible, the New American Standard Bible, and the New International Version, to name a few. It's really funny. I suspect we'll still be calling them ``new this'' and ``new that'' a hundred years from now. Much like New College at Oxford. Do you know when New College was founded. Any guesses? New College was new in 1379.
A couple of days ago I was discussing all this with my daughter on the way to school. As usual, I turned on the radio to hear the news, and Heidi immediately started surfing all the music stations. Since this is one of the perils of fatherhood, I only said, ``I have to talk about postmodernism on Wednesday. What should I say?''
She said, ``Like, it's all about how you don't have justify everything with a reason anymore. You can just put in stuff because you like it, you know, because it's cool. With Modern stuff you always had to justify everything.''
I said, ``I still feel like I have to justify Perl all the time to a lot of people.''
She settled on a station with some interesting music, and said, ``This is Dave Matthews' Band. The thing that's really cool about him is that he, like, went out and found all these different artists who have different styles, and combined them all in ways you've never heard before.''
I said, ``Isn't it interesting how postmodernism has become so much a part of our culture that it's sort of fading into the woodwork?''
Heidi frowned and said, ``Dude, dad, it's not like it's some kind of a fad. Postmodernism is deeper than that--it really is the culmination of everything that went before it. Like, it's all about coming full circle. It's not like we're going to stop wanting to do that next week.''
I said, ``I suspect you're right. After all, the various earlier periods of music were measured in centuries.''
``It's not just music,'' she said.
``Well, of course not,'' I replied, ``all these things go together, but some disciplines change at different rates. The reason I'm giving this talk on Wednesday is because I think there's still a big streak of Modernism running through the middle of computer science, and a lot of people are out of touch with their culture. On the other hand, I'm not really out to fight Modernism, since postmodernism includes Modernism as just another valid source of ideas. In fact, Perl contains lots of modern ideas from computer science. Along with all the rest of the ideas in there.''
Heidi said, ``You wanna know something really funny. In my IMP class, our class slogan is, 'There's more than one way to do it.'''
``You're kidding,'' I said. [I should also say that that IMP stands for Interactive Math Program, which is a math curriculum in which you sort of learn everything at once. In sort of a postmodern way.] Anyway, I said, ``You're kidding.''
``No,'' she said, ``That's why IMP is better for math students like me--we learn better when we can see the big picture, and how everything fits in. The old way of learning math never gave you any context''.
While I was digesting this, and thinking about how it applied to computer science, she went on, ``Well, it's like, you know, we have this saying at school, when somebody gets uptight about something, we say: 'Tsall good. If someone is depressed, we say: 'Tsall good.'''
``But you don't actually think everything is good, do you?''
``No, of course not.''
``Are you saying that everything has good elements in it?''
``No, Dad, I think when we say that, we're saying that, overall, things are good. Like, look at the big picture, don't just focus in on the two or three bad things that are happening to you right now.''
I report this conversation to you not just because I think my kids are cute and smart, but also because I think it's important that we know where our culture is going, and because it's our kids that will shape our culture in the future. I don't think I could have defined postmodernism better than Heidi. Look at the big picture. Don't focus in on two or three things to the exclusion of other things. Keep everything in context. Don't go out of your way to justify stuff that's obviously cool. Don't ridicule ideas merely because they're not the latest and greatest. Pick your own fashions. Don't let someone else tell you what you should like. 'Tsall good.
That's all well and good, but I ask you, if it's all good, why, in every other breath, does my daughter say ``That sucks.''?
There's a mystery here, and if we can fathom it, perhaps we'll learn a thing or two. I think that what's going on here is that our culture has undergone a basic shift, one that is actually healthy. It used to be that we evaluated everything and everyone based on reputation or position. And the basic underlying assumption was that we all had to agree whether something (or someone) was good or bad. Most of us actually used to believe in monoculturalism. Although even back then, we didn't really practice it. And in fact, you could argue that the whole point of Modernism was to break our cultural assumptions. We could argue all day long about whether postmodernism came about because Modernism succeeded or because it failed. As a postmodern myself, I take both sides. To some extent.
This would bother a Modernist, because a Modernist has to decide whether this is true OR that is true. The Modernist believes in OR more than AND. Postmodernists believe in AND more than OR. In the very postmodern Stephen Sondheim musical, _Into the Woods_, one of the heroines laments, ``Is it always or, and never and?'' Of course, at the time, she was trying to rationalize an adulterous relationship, so perhaps we'd better drop that example. Well, hey. At least we can use Perl as an example. In Perl, AND has higher precedence than OR does. There you have it. That proves Perl is a postmodern language.
But back to the monoculturism of Modernism, or rather the assumption of monoculturalism. Nowadays we've managed to liberate ourselves from that assumption, by and large (where by and large doesn't yet include parts of the Midwest). This has had the result that we're actually free to evaluate things (and people) on the basis of what's actually good and what's actually bad, rather than having to take someone's word for it.
More than that, we're required to make individual choices, the assumption being that not everyone is going to agree, and that not everyone should be required to agree. However, in trade for losing our monoculturalism, we are now required to discuss things. We're not required to agree about everything, but we are required to at least agree to disagree. Since we're required to discuss things, this has the effect that we tend to ``deconstruct'' the things we evaluate. I'll talk more about the pros and cons of deconstructionism in a bit, but let me just throw out an example to wake you up.
- Larry Wall, LinuxWorld 1999.
By the way, I'm planning to leave some amount of time at the end for Q and A, so you should start thinking about the Q part while I'm talking.
When I was invited to talk here, it occurred to me that most of the people here would be more interested in Linux than in Perl, so, in the interests of universal harmonic convergence, I thought I should talk about both Perl and Linux. To do that, I had to figure out what Perl and Linux have in common. Besides the obvious, of course.
Obviously, both Perl and Linux owe a lot to Unix culture, but this is well documented. If I merely pointed out the obvious commonalities, I'd have to talk the whole time about things you can find out from the manuals. (Or should I say, things you ought to be able to find out from the manuals? Whatever.)
I'm not here today to teach you how to use Perl or Linux. I'm not here to teach you what Perl or Linux are.
I'm here to talk about why Perl and Linux have both been so successful. Note that I'm measuring success here not so much in terms of numbers of users, but in terms of satisfaction of users.
So I started thinking about deeper connections between Perl and Linux, and that led me to think more about the deeper reasons for writing software. And that led to the subject of this talk. I'm going to start off talking by about postmodernism. After that, I'll switch to talking about postmodernism. And at the conclusion, I'll return to the subject of postmodernism.
However, since this talk is itself a postmodern work of art, I'll be dragging in all sort of other cool things along the way, so maybe you won't fall asleep.
Nowadays people are actually somewhat jaded by the term ``postmodern''. Well, perhaps jaded is an understatement. Nauseated might be more like it. But, anyway, I still distinctly remember the first time I heard it back in the '70s. I think my jaw fell and bounced off the floor several times. To me it was utterly inconceivable that anything could follow modern. Isn't the very idea of ``modern'' always associated with the ideas ``new'' and ``now''?
The idea was so inconceivable to me that it took me at least ten seconds to figure it out. Or to think I'd figured it out. As a musician, the pat answer occurred to me almost immediately. I was familiar with the periods of music: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern. Obviously, if there were to be a period of music following the Modern, it would have to be called something other than Modern. And postmodern is as good a name as any, especially since it's a bit of a joke on the ordinary meaning of modern. Obviously the Modern period was misnamed.
But, as I said, that was the pat answer. The Modern period was not misnamed. True, the ordinary word ``modern'' is associated with ``new'' and ``now'', but the historical period we call Modern chose to associate itself with the ``new'' and the ``now'' in such a deep way that we actually see the breakdown of the whole notion of periods. The Modern period is the period that refuses to die. The world is now an odd mix of the Modern and the postmodern. Oddly, it's not just because the Modern refuses to die, but also because the postmodern refuses to kill the Modern. But then, the postmodern refuses to kill anything completely.
For example, it's been several decades now since a certain set of Bible translations came out, and you'll notice a pattern: the New English Bible, the New American Standard Bible, and the New International Version, to name a few. It's really funny. I suspect we'll still be calling them ``new this'' and ``new that'' a hundred years from now. Much like New College at Oxford. Do you know when New College was founded. Any guesses? New College was new in 1379.
A couple of days ago I was discussing all this with my daughter on the way to school. As usual, I turned on the radio to hear the news, and Heidi immediately started surfing all the music stations. Since this is one of the perils of fatherhood, I only said, ``I have to talk about postmodernism on Wednesday. What should I say?''
She said, ``Like, it's all about how you don't have justify everything with a reason anymore. You can just put in stuff because you like it, you know, because it's cool. With Modern stuff you always had to justify everything.''
I said, ``I still feel like I have to justify Perl all the time to a lot of people.''
She settled on a station with some interesting music, and said, ``This is Dave Matthews' Band. The thing that's really cool about him is that he, like, went out and found all these different artists who have different styles, and combined them all in ways you've never heard before.''
I said, ``Isn't it interesting how postmodernism has become so much a part of our culture that it's sort of fading into the woodwork?''
Heidi frowned and said, ``Dude, dad, it's not like it's some kind of a fad. Postmodernism is deeper than that--it really is the culmination of everything that went before it. Like, it's all about coming full circle. It's not like we're going to stop wanting to do that next week.''
I said, ``I suspect you're right. After all, the various earlier periods of music were measured in centuries.''
``It's not just music,'' she said.
``Well, of course not,'' I replied, ``all these things go together, but some disciplines change at different rates. The reason I'm giving this talk on Wednesday is because I think there's still a big streak of Modernism running through the middle of computer science, and a lot of people are out of touch with their culture. On the other hand, I'm not really out to fight Modernism, since postmodernism includes Modernism as just another valid source of ideas. In fact, Perl contains lots of modern ideas from computer science. Along with all the rest of the ideas in there.''
Heidi said, ``You wanna know something really funny. In my IMP class, our class slogan is, 'There's more than one way to do it.'''
``You're kidding,'' I said. [I should also say that that IMP stands for Interactive Math Program, which is a math curriculum in which you sort of learn everything at once. In sort of a postmodern way.] Anyway, I said, ``You're kidding.''
``No,'' she said, ``That's why IMP is better for math students like me--we learn better when we can see the big picture, and how everything fits in. The old way of learning math never gave you any context''.
While I was digesting this, and thinking about how it applied to computer science, she went on, ``Well, it's like, you know, we have this saying at school, when somebody gets uptight about something, we say: 'Tsall good. If someone is depressed, we say: 'Tsall good.'''
``But you don't actually think everything is good, do you?''
``No, of course not.''
``Are you saying that everything has good elements in it?''
``No, Dad, I think when we say that, we're saying that, overall, things are good. Like, look at the big picture, don't just focus in on the two or three bad things that are happening to you right now.''
I report this conversation to you not just because I think my kids are cute and smart, but also because I think it's important that we know where our culture is going, and because it's our kids that will shape our culture in the future. I don't think I could have defined postmodernism better than Heidi. Look at the big picture. Don't focus in on two or three things to the exclusion of other things. Keep everything in context. Don't go out of your way to justify stuff that's obviously cool. Don't ridicule ideas merely because they're not the latest and greatest. Pick your own fashions. Don't let someone else tell you what you should like. 'Tsall good.
That's all well and good, but I ask you, if it's all good, why, in every other breath, does my daughter say ``That sucks.''?
There's a mystery here, and if we can fathom it, perhaps we'll learn a thing or two. I think that what's going on here is that our culture has undergone a basic shift, one that is actually healthy. It used to be that we evaluated everything and everyone based on reputation or position. And the basic underlying assumption was that we all had to agree whether something (or someone) was good or bad. Most of us actually used to believe in monoculturalism. Although even back then, we didn't really practice it. And in fact, you could argue that the whole point of Modernism was to break our cultural assumptions. We could argue all day long about whether postmodernism came about because Modernism succeeded or because it failed. As a postmodern myself, I take both sides. To some extent.
This would bother a Modernist, because a Modernist has to decide whether this is true OR that is true. The Modernist believes in OR more than AND. Postmodernists believe in AND more than OR. In the very postmodern Stephen Sondheim musical, _Into the Woods_, one of the heroines laments, ``Is it always or, and never and?'' Of course, at the time, she was trying to rationalize an adulterous relationship, so perhaps we'd better drop that example. Well, hey. At least we can use Perl as an example. In Perl, AND has higher precedence than OR does. There you have it. That proves Perl is a postmodern language.
But back to the monoculturism of Modernism, or rather the assumption of monoculturalism. Nowadays we've managed to liberate ourselves from that assumption, by and large (where by and large doesn't yet include parts of the Midwest). This has had the result that we're actually free to evaluate things (and people) on the basis of what's actually good and what's actually bad, rather than having to take someone's word for it.
More than that, we're required to make individual choices, the assumption being that not everyone is going to agree, and that not everyone should be required to agree. However, in trade for losing our monoculturalism, we are now required to discuss things. We're not required to agree about everything, but we are required to at least agree to disagree. Since we're required to discuss things, this has the effect that we tend to ``deconstruct'' the things we evaluate. I'll talk more about the pros and cons of deconstructionism in a bit, but let me just throw out an example to wake you up.
- Larry Wall, LinuxWorld 1999.
I didn't read all that babbling, too damn long.
So many words....
*fetal position*
*fetal position*
Yeti .....Be ashamed for your self. 
You have actually managed to create a post EVEN MORE BORING!!!
than the monkeyboygirl's worst efforts.
During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to
masquerade often under the guise of patriotism: Howard Thurman:
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward
those who are not regarded as members of the herd. Bertrand Russell:
You have actually managed to create a post EVEN MORE BORING!!!
than the monkeyboygirl's worst efforts.
During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to
masquerade often under the guise of patriotism: Howard Thurman:
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward
those who are not regarded as members of the herd. Bertrand Russell:
did you know that in the 41st millenium, there will be only war? the nice man who lives in GOlden Gate Park told me that. then i fed the ducks.
As none of us will be alive at that time......I DON'T CARE!!
Git.
Git.
Well only that we are in the 4th millenium, I say we got a long ways to go.
You know what they say: Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
of course
yeah but they only say that sort of thing at geek festivals......so just where have you been hanging out Jorrrrrrvik?
ahaahh
Humidity is 90% today.
Getting muggy in here.
Hmmm.....how to "TOP" this post off??
Ahh I know.....
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in
the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of
its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the
clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. Dwight Eisenhower:
Getting muggy in here.
Hmmm.....how to "TOP" this post off??
Ahh I know.....
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in
the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of
its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the
clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. Dwight Eisenhower:
We'll go right into a quotation of me again:
"DaveW is a sheep fvcker."
Genius.
"DaveW is a sheep fvcker."
Genius.
A duck can't walk without bobbing it's head.
You learn something new every single day.
yes yes, but can they fly without bobbing there head?
yeah...
Yeti, you got to remember monkeyboy thinks that Cows go Meow, Dogs go ribbit and Cats go MOO.
Its true, monkeyboy is an idiot
Ducks can walk/waddle without bobbing their heads.....and fly without doing so as well.
It's Pigeon's and Dove's that have all the head bobing palaver.
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to
who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-----torture, imprisonment
without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-----which does not
change its moral color when it is committed by our side. The nationalist
not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a
remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
-----George Orwell
ps Jorvik is a worm Fu8ker...
only thing with a small enough hole apparently.
It's Pigeon's and Dove's that have all the head bobing palaver.
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to
who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-----torture, imprisonment
without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-----which does not
change its moral color when it is committed by our side. The nationalist
not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a
remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
-----George Orwell
ps Jorvik is a worm Fu8ker...
only thing with a small enough hole apparently.
I'm not a topper with the worms, I'll let you know...
I'll let that sink in.
I'll let that sink in.
Depends on the duck, the tall ones don't bob their heads, the mallards do however.
w00t i am a 1337 h4x0r
I'm here, I'm sick, I haven't eaten since 7:30 am ET, friend went to get me my supper, and it's taking this friend 2 hours, and I'm getting frikken pissed off. Edit:Ex-friend never got food for me, instead he got baseball cards for himself with my money.
Lesson learned:Even when you are too sick to drive to get your own supper, never trust a friend with your money, so the friend can get you your supper.
Lesson learned:Even when you are too sick to drive to get your own supper, never trust a friend with your money, so the friend can get you your supper.
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