Misson

Hmm. Yes. Which is another reference to the Black Swan concept...sort of. Duchess got me reading this book about unlikely events and I really liked the framework. (Although I did not like the tone and some of the personal swipes at people and organizations that the author didn't like.) Of course, we are all prisoners of our perceptions, as I've prattled on about repeatedly. And, like it or not, we are also prisoners of shared societal perceptions. (What Jung called the collective unconscious). There may always be bizarre and unexplainable factors at work in bringing us to where we are (gods, aliens, the zodiac, the healing power of color). So, if you like, as far as we know, from a purely mathematical odds standpoint, dismissing mysticism (gods, aliens, the zodiac, the healing power of color), our being here is pretty unlikely. I like that picture too. I don't even remember where I got it. If I ever get a boat (which I probably won't) I will name it the Diving Sea Tiger. Or the Blue...Blue...Azul...something... (Help me out here, Jill.) "And so it was it became a magical spoon. And little magic there is in Hundred Acre wood, from the time of the snow to the falling of leaves, that was not in the spoon. And little magic there is in the six pine trees, that only heffalump roam over, that the spoon had not too. And there was scent of honey in it and sight of woozles, and the chorus of birds that sings before dawn in April, and the deep proud splendour of rhododendrons, and the litheness and laughter of streams, and acres and acres of tweetybird. And by the time the spoon was black it was all enchanted with magic."

By definition, in fact. True, but these things have little impact on the mathematical possibility of our having arrived at this moment. Kind of like subatomic forces have little impact on your ability to go about your daily tasks. Sure, there's an impact, but it's minute. (Of course, now you get back to the Black Swan issue, but that's another matter entirely.)

I think it depends on how you define miraculous. If you are thinking of it as some form of deity-inspired intervention, then I would sort of agree with you about the limitations of our understanding (specifically of the actions and motivations of the deity). If you are looking at it from a purely mathematical perspective on an evolutionary event, then, no, the assertion stands. At each juncture in the growth of our species, something different could have happened and we would have come out entirely different or been evolutionarily usurped by a superior species or some such. Of course, by the same argument, anything that would be sitting here pondering/discussing/experiencing its' being here is just about equally unlikely. (A hyper-intelligent shade of blue, for example.) At least that's my take on it.

It does sort of sound like something from Ed Wood doesn't it? However... Yes. The dialog in the movie is pretty funny...and the way much of it is spoken is really interesting. The director appears to have told everyone to put all these strange pauses in that occur as characters react to their own dialog. I think Jeff Goldblum was made to be in a movie like this given his tendency to put weird "uhs" and introspective glaces into his lines in just about every movie I can recall him in. Posey is a hoot in this movie (she always comes off as a non-nonsense single mom who just happens to get involved in international espionage and who has a cool "spy" coat that was a gift from her boyfriend). The best part of the dialog that I was going to cite (other than, "I'm afraid so." :angry: ) was, "I realize you must...well...miss the man." "I hope I never see him again...really. I mean it. I'm single. (Looks off into the distance or the back of her mind or something.) Sort of." :angry: However, what I really liked about it was how unlike the previous movie (Henry Fool) it was. You can hardly tell it's a sequel. Based on this movie, I expect the next one to be a musical or something. Don't believe all the fans of the first movie (which I found mostly dreary and somewhat base) and check this movie out. Anyhow...

Oh, yeah! Where the "rich kid" kept going off to get the 10gs when he was playing Ricky Schroeder! I was a little confused about Tang's whole situation. I confess I actually confused him with the main guy's brother in the beginning based on the dialog. Have you ever seen The Hustler? That's a really cool pool movie. I just saw a film I enjoyed (for a very odd reason that I'll explain) so I'm going to offer an obscure quote from that. If nobody gets it, I'll keep adding to the quote - kinda like "Name that Tune" in reverse. Eventually one of the characters gets named and that may give it away. "I was wondering..." "Yeah?" "Well, I was wondering, if, perhaps...I was wondering if you'd care to have dinner some night this week?" "You mean, like, you know...a date?" "I'm afraid so."

I just saw a movie yesterday with Walken in it that such a quote could have been in (although I don't specifically recall it which makes think it's still wrong) called Poolhall Junkies. The most amazing thing about that movie for me wasn't the dialog (although a quote about a lion getting po'd and taking out the jackals comes to mind), but the fact that the star of the movie seemed to actually be making some pretty clever pool shots without cutaways. It almost made me wonder if they CG'd him onto the person making the shot. Either that or he really is a very good pool player.

I'm reading this book called Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by VS Ramachandran and I came across an interesting idea. To quote, "Humans, on the other hand, have evolved an organ, a brain, that gives us the capacity to evade specialization [which is how other animals survive according to evolutionary theory]..." He goes on to explain how the brain has all sorts of latent skills which have little evolutionary function, because... "Natural selection can only explain the emergence of actual abilities that are expressed by the organism - never potential ones. When they are useful for survival, they are passed on to the next generation. But what to make of a gene for latent mathematical ability? What benefit does that confer upon a non-literate person?" I think the notion that evolution cannot explain our primary evolutionary advantage is sort of fascinating. OTOH, if we didn't have all that latent ability, would we be where we are? In his book The Black Swan, which I recently finished, the author notes that the fact that you are here today is almost a miraculous occurrence. It is almost completely outside the realm of probability - the odds against it are astronomical. Ramachandran sort of attributes this to our latent skills (which are probably not even close to fully explored) which give us an evolutionary advantage - even though the process of evolution is unlikely to have produced them! Fasinating.

A Star is Born and Mentyl are actually two of the reasons I am not a Streisand fan.

Thanks. My next hint was going to be that it was a post-coital discussion. It would have been my first hint, but I thought it was too vague. I have no idea what your quote is from. It almost sounds like Harlem Nights (a foul-mouthed rip-off of the far superior The Sting - one of my top five favorite movies ever) but I don't think that's right.

I had a feeling you would like this movie. Hint: Morgan Freeman is in it. (But then I think Freeman has been in every third movie made in the past 10 years. )

I must confess, I'm not much of a Streisand fan. However, since I really, really liked The Bishop's Wife, I will consider it. And now, an iterations upon iterations quote. "Because if you aren't talking about the guy I think you're talking about...Well then you have me mistaken for somebody else because in my mind, there is only one Bond." "On that we agree." "Same time on three..." "One.." "Two..." "Three..." [simultaneously]"Roger Moore!" "George Lazenby!" "Roger Moore?! Are you kidding me?" Picking movie quotes about movie quotes for movie quotes. I could be Kevin Smith. (That's not the quote you're guessing, the other one is. That one is from Clerks 2, so you don't have to guess it.)

AOL News of the Weird? What a strange place to put the dog story. Teen Can't Hold Flower in Yearbook Pic (Because of a shotgun!) It's a good thing our justice system is so well employed.

That's a lot of clue. Is it On a Clear Day You Can See Forever?

Hmm. It sounds like witty reparte from an old movie (Bogie and Bacall for example) or smart alecky-reparte from a newer, more cynical movie (post 1980). However, many of those films seem to be about teenagers. Got me.

You can set aside the water thing if you like, but it's inherent in the legal definition of piracy. PIRACY (BY U.S. CITIZEN) - Whoever, being a citizen of the U.S., commits any murder or robbery, or any act of hostility against the U.S., or against any citizen thereof, on the high seas, under color of any commission from any foreign prince, or state, or on pretense of authority from any person, is a pirate, and shall be imprisoned for life. 18 USC (I recall getting into a drawn out discussion with someone who didn't think piracy should have to take place in international waters (the high seas), but, alas, it is part of the definition. Piracy in national waters (the low seas?) is simply classified as theft.) And that's the main difference. I also suspect that the motivation for freedom from various things (servitude and whatnot) is vastly overstated because of our (Western) fascination with it. We find what we look for. From my reading, most pirates who chose to turn pirate did so because it was convenient to their situation and few other options presented themselves. (Which may in some ways be similar to the reasons for joining a gang - see below.) I forget which pirate it is (Kidd?) but he basically turned pirate because being a privateer wasn't working very well for him - they couldn't find any ships to take. (A letter of marque is a pretty puny thing against a ship full of bored sailors.) Sailors expected a certain amount of servitude and difficult conditions - the BRN and pirate crews had a lot more in common than is generally recognized. Ask Ed Foxe. I think it was he who pointed out to me that the conditions on a pirate ship were not really all that different from those on a BRN vessel - the movie versions notwithstanding. The primary motivation for gangs, according to psychologists, is need for belonging to a group unified around a common purpose. FWIW.

If they are indeed "decorative" as you suggest, then doesn't it make sense for them to package the decoration as winningly as possible? Thus the heels. I do wonder what the sales success ratio is for the decorative girls, though? Sex sells, but what does it sell? Computer products? Doubtful. (This all reminds me of that cheesecake advert poster of Uma Thurman in the movie The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Perhaps she was posing with a computer? I don't recall it very clearly. I must say that Thurman is an odd choice for the femme fatale in that movie. She herself has said something about how the perception of her beauty is more of an acquired taste. But I digress. I do think she wears heels. I suppose most women do at some point and time. Most women do a lot of appearance-driven things. Curious that the animal kingdom leans a bit towards the males doing things and having traits appearance-driven rather than the females. But I digress further.)

They'd probably share your email address with all their buddies and you'd get a bunch of spam as a result. BTW, If I remember correctly, Patrick ***'d out the word you're wondering about Merrydeath. If you're going to spam a forum, subtlety or propriety are probably not major concerns...

Upset? Not particularly. It's been six years. I learned that fan fics got deleted in 98 or 99 when we wrote this (really funny) story called Scooby Doo and the Phantom Menace. It got lost in some problem that occurred, so I saved all the stuff from another fan fic I was writing by myself because of that experience. I just thought it would have been neat to link to my old fan fic. Last time I looked, it was still there. But it's not the responsibility of TF.N to save files forever.

Back when I was a regular poster at TF.N 1999-2001ish) , I was writing an on-going parody story with my own characters. One of the ships in the story was a ship that had been taken over by protocol droids and was cruising around doing...something...I forget...that had little to do with the main story. I loved writing about it though. Imagine a ship full of protocol droids. (Huh...it used to be there in the Classic Fan Fiction forum, but it has apparently been deleted. I still have the story (incomplete) in Word...it's over a 100 pages long. What a way to waste my time...something that is completely unpublishable. *Sigh*) It's pretty awful. Add to that the fact that there are about a dozen forum and collector in-jokes and most of you will probably not even find what were meant to be funny bits all that funny. Here's the introduction of the ship in the story.

I was watching The Davinci Code last night (despite the fact that I didn't think much of the novel) and I got to the end and thought, "This movie was ok." One of those rare movies that is (slightly) better than the book. The computer effects were a little cheesy, but I can see why they used them (LCD) and Hanks was dependable as always...but wait! The movie wasn't over! The bad guys (such as they were) were either dead or captured and...the movie still keeps going! I guess I didn't remember the book that well. Since it was getting late, I finally shut the thing off and figured to watch the rest tonight. How many endings does a potboiler murder mystery movie need?

Yep, I think that's right. (High Fidelity is a cool movie.)

Wow, that's cool. I wonder where you get one?

Absolutely correct. A personal favorite of mine. It borrows heavily from Tex Avery cartoons (Tex having worked at just about every major studio during the golden age of cartoons.) It's also full of great cartoon quotes and particularly gags, as Cpt. Sophia mentioned. It's funny how many people (me among them at times) think that quotes like the first one came from the cartoons. Actually, the cartoons borrowed them from radio shows. This makes sense when you realize that many of the voice actors and directors came from there. (For those of you who liked the movie, read the graphic novel, if only for comparison. It's shocking how much more violent and cynical it is than the movie. This was originally supposed to be a horror movie! Fortunately, the director added the cartoon element. I confess, I like this movie better.)

Gee, I didn't think this was a hard quote. I have actually given you two hints (although one of them is so absurdly subtle it is easily missed.) How about another quote from the same movie (and the same character): http://www.markck.com/Sounds/Missme.mp3

Quite right. However, never having seen a W.C. Fields movie, it can't be that. This movie came out about a half century after Fields died.