Scipio

This piece here is an all right rebuttal I think. The fact that it's former Chomsky partner Herman that writes it is odd. It's a funny old world that humanists have. Do you think they ever get tired of talking to the same people? I would.

I said this in the old thread, but this is the important one to my mind. Also DotA has more in common with an emotional manifesto than a deep essay. Also, the correct way to have arguments about Death of the Author is through the medium of wrestling matches. Its what he would have wanted.

I've not quite finished the book yet so I only have comments about the cast itself... It was super good! You seemed a lot more sure in it than last month, it felt like you had more distinct points and specific thoughts about it, and I agreed with them all, which is nice. Though I would like Jake back, and for Chris not to add a Scottish accent to his repertoire of repeated voices.

I haven't played it, and am pretty much only bringing it up because I happened to read about it a couple of minutes after finishing the cast, but do you think introversion's prison architect could be looked at as systems driven satire? Say if running a prison that kept inmates happy lead to a negative public image, or making it easier to profit off a badly run prison or whatever. (I have no idea if the game could do this or not) Edit: The Tropico game's could probably be read as satire in a few ways as well.

Giantbomb are pretty experienced at internet beefs.

I had the stupidest grin on my face when I was reading through those footnotes and suddenly the two words “Infinite Jest (I)”, appear. I sort of feel like that was a moment when I realised I was reading something plotted by a fucking genius. One of the (many) sections where it comes across how perfectly crafted those footnote are is when Hal's in the viewing room watching a bunch of his dads films, primarily Blood Sister: One Tough Nun, and the legwork that the footnotes did earlier starts to pay off in like a hundred fucking ways at once, they work as this background for Hal's academic relation to his dad, they're this huge information reservoir the reader has that allows for a shift in tone in the book, they can be seen as this detail that you have to highlight what the characters have missed and the course there on, or as you go back through the footnotes it can be read as specifically calling out you and the fact that you've missed a whole load of shit. This and a whole lot more, and probably even more that I'm too stupid to think of. yeah, book's alright.

Yeah, pretty much. I think it's important to read 'The Death of the Author' as a purposefully antagonistic, playful, 2000 word sprint. Its unfair to Barthes to take it as the whole point, without considering his stuff like 'From Work to Text', 'Theory of the Text', The Pleasure of the Text - that said, I still find his more thought out points on the idea of the Author, disappearing into the writing and so on, problematic. Foucault's 'What is an Author' is (to me) a far more interesting and nuanced starting point for contemporary author theory. On the subject of interpreting texts, I sometimes see pieces of criticism as being complete works in there own right, (I find this really hard to explain what I mean), so like Edward Said's reading of Mansfield Park is often dismissed as a mis-reading or a hatchet job or whatever, and I imagine that Austin was probably not thinking of the slave trade when she wrote it (although that's sort of the point), but Said's work still remains incredibly powerful to me, and it's pretty much all I end up thinking about when reading Jane Austen now, it sort of matters beyond if it was right or not. Also, I was reading a couple of interviews with David Mitchell, and found that Cloud Atlas was partly inspired by If on a winters night a traveller which is, depending on my mood, perhaps my favourite book, I am pretty excited to start reading.

So long! Sorry you can't use ladders.

It is fucking mental how good this is. The opening tram ride might have actually been as impressive as the first time I saw it in HL.

I should point out that this is gcse and earlier education I'm talking about, not college, I'm trying to think about what I learnt then because its probably the last time most people are taught history, and so going back to the starting point, what most peoples knowledge of Tommy Cromwell would be. Trying to remember stuff that far back probably produces a more generalized and simple version of what I was actually taught. Saying that, I don't really remember More appearing that much, aside from as a guy that wouldn't have anything to do with the annulment and Cromwell trying to talk him into it. What I remember him most from is reading Utopia on my (English Lit) degree. I don't think there was ever an out and out bad guy, in fact, throughout the entire Tudor (reign? Lineage? whatever you call it) that I was taught, I only remember Mary as being particularly vilified. What this conversation has mainly made me realise is how little I actually know. It's one of those area's of history that's so repeatedly taught in schools that as soon as I had the option I wanted nothing to do with it, I guess I sort of want to go back to it now. Maybe a good historical biography is in order...

Maybe my perspective on him is less common then I thought then. As I said having done pretty much no reading on him, or seen films about him, all I remember when I hear his name is what I (vaguely) remember from school, against enclosures, poor act, good with crown's money (?maybe? can't remember this one) executed via conspiring at court against him, king regrets his death. Having a few brothers and sisters go through the same-ish curriculum and seeing the same stuff come up then, I was just assuming most people have the same sort of perspective.

I don't think Cromwell's image is negative, whenever I did Tudors at school, and for most school children after going by my younger brothers and sisters, you pretty much learn him as 'cool guy that was best buds with Henry, then the king gets angry and kills him - immediately regrets it.' Though I've not seen A Man for All Seasons, so maybe I'm not aware of how much impact has. (or read Wolf Hall for that matter)

Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and his stuff as Dan Kavanagh.

The Thick of it returns as incredible as ever. That is all.

Wind-Up bird is p. incredible, if that's sitting around unread I'd go for that first. I was thinking of making 1Q84 my holiday read, does anyone have any experience with the kindle version? Or rather, is there anything in the text that would make it obviously unsuitable for that.

Cheers. the address box had spaces for zip code (post code) city and country, so I just slapped it all in there. Your right though, I'll send an email as well. Thanks for your help. All this effort for a joke book. it is obscene. disgusting.

Is there anybody here that can read Norwegian that can tell me how to order a book from this website? There was a form on the page for the book, and I filled it out and got an email saying (i think) 'thanks for your order', but I haven't given them any money?? This is too hard for me.

37:50 is the most important part. Drew and Vinny need to be in charge of all video production for anything.

I was going to mention this last time FTL and Star Trek came up, but forgot, now it's relevant again! The PCGamer UK podcast talked about how well FTL created star trek scenarios, and make the point that if you look at formulaic television shows, stuff like star trek or crime procedurals, heavily system based games can create pretty similar narratives. I thought it was interesting because I'd always thought about those types of games as creating exceptional moments, or stuff like Sean's space engine game where you see an image or landscape open up because you happened to be in the right place - but the idea of a bunch of interacting systems creating a sort of standard narrative, with a recognisable dramatic arc (even if it was simple), was cool. Also, I agree with everything Jake said about TF2. I don't really have anything to add, It was just neat to hear it, especially the stuff about a perceived learning curve vs the actual one.

So NBC used to have some fantastic Olympic coverage. That's like a fucking master-class in deadpan comedy.

Just the stuff in Hermit in Paris, the thing I remember most is on the wiki page too. "not least when the blackshirts three times pretended to shoot my father in front of her eyes" implying that she either called their bluff, or what I prefer, that she just did not give a fuck.

just paste those Joyce letters at random intervals throughout

Calvino's dad was pretty cool (his mum was cooler), Borges was wishy-washy as heck though.

I don't give a shit what they tried to make, they ended up making a game about the juvenile fantasies of some weird cop.

A police officer goes into a coma and creates a dream referencing a bunch of films about cool cops, where he gets to have cool car chases, and everything he does is just and nobody gets hurt in any of it? I thought that was the joke. E> and the whole world is ridiculously clean and pg? and his partner is his best friend, but not quite as cool as cool cop Tanner Driver and the assassin is a sexy lady and one of the first missions is helping a kid use sweet driving skills to scare his bully driving teacher, which obviously has nothing to do with anything in Tanners childhood. 3 hours in this game is fantastic.