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Rubilacxe

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Posts posted by Rubilacxe

  1. As with Constantine, I am awed by this chapter. This chapter, as with so many of Scrolls of Icaria, emphasizes the incredible merging of so many arts into one amalgam.

    Thank you, Jamie, for such a wonderous and moving chapter. I await tremulously for the next chapter!

  2. While I usually don't wax effusively about a story, Scrolls is so delightful, artistic, and epic that it is hard not to. Chapter 30 is another example of Jamie's skill at weaving plot and imagery together in a very magical way.

    When I finished this chapter, I stared at the last line for a moment or two still seeing Jamie's fingers begin to spark as he was tricked into answering the real question.

  3. Thanks to recent posts by Desdownunder and Cole Parker, I have spent the past few days listening to several stimulating lectures. Some were held at the Chautauqua Conference Center in western New York this past summer while others were from the Aspen Institute in Colorado, All are worthy of investigation I believe.

    Des already spoke eloquently on Karen Armstrong?s Charter for Compassion.

    To that I add George Kembel, co-founder and executive director of the d.school, whose talk explores ways to tap the latent human capacity for creativity and innovation: Awakening Creativity

    Kembel?s new approach to problem solving is really a paradigm shift as it looks for what is not obvious to find other solutions to problems.

    Of parallel interest is a lecture at the Aspen Institute given by Tod Machover, composer, inventor, and professor of music and media at MIT, discusses the many ways in which technology is transforming music: Transforming Music

    Machover?s talk celebrates out-of-the-box creativity involving music in innovative ways.

  4. Cole,

    The lecture was given in the outdoor ampitheatre, the crowd was definitely gray haired (as I am) but the questioners were most in their 30's. These younger individuals tended to be more 'partisan' to me.

    I expected these type of questions with a harder edge--I am just saddened that after an hour lecture delineating the parallel ways the world's religions have come to the same point would have been heard clearer by some of those posers. It is they who will have to be reached along with the naysayers for this admirable wish to be granted.

    By the way, of you go to www.fora.tv and register (it's free), you can download the lecture (250Mb) in wmv format.

  5. Friends we live in torrid times. Again and again, even here in Adelaide, I see references to the difficulties not just of climate change and world catastrophes, terrorism and its horrors, but also to the changes that now face the human race as a world community. The Charter for Compassion will be much needed if it is implemented as conveyed in the above sites and backed by so many people from so many different backgrounds.

    Idealism? If it works, I don't care what you call it.

    Des, I'm with Karen and you. I listened to her talk and the several questions/answers that followed. I found her talk fascinating, stimulating and very thought provoking. I was disheartened by some of the agressiveness by a few questioners. I wondered if they heard the same lecture that I did as confrontation rather than compassion seemed to be their modus operandi.

    Karen was very good at staying in a compassionate mode. However, that being said I despair that there are too many negative purveyors of thought in this world to allow such a compassionate world to exist effectively.

  6. "The USA and Britain, two great nations divided only by a common language." Who said that? Oscar Wilde? Mark Twain?

    According to everything.com:

    In 1887 Wilde wrote: `We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language'. But the 1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Esar Bentley) quotes Shaw as saying: `England and America are two countries separated by the same language', but without giving a source. It had earlier been attributed to Shaw in Reader's Digest.
  7. In most cases I think we should defer to the United Kingdom because they are the ones who came up with English,...

    Somehow I do not see Americans lowering their noses long enough to be able to read let alone act on such a proposal any time in the next millenium.

  8. <snip>

    But can I trust the BBC???!

    Interesting article from the BBC, Bruin. At least the sources of the BBC's statements are verifiable from the various censuses which are online via multiple genealogical resources. Of course, as the article points out, data has not consistently recorded the religion of the people identified that makes such statements difficult to completely verify.

    However, the numbers of the populations and at least some of the most recent censuses seem to corroborate the assertions of this article.

    As Morris pointed out in his two-part article on lying and deceit [see my previous post], deceit's role is to let the listener make the leap to the conclusion, a much more insidious way to spread mistruths.

  9. For a long time I've been fascinated by the way people just automatically believe what they read, or hear, from an apparently authoritative source, even if the authority of that source has not been tested and is open to question.

    An excellent delving into lying vs. deceit is in an op-ed piece by Erroll Morris in yesterdays and todays NY Times. Seven Lies About Lying, Part 1 and Part 2. I found his dialogue with magician Rick Jay and his thoughtful use of scripture, art and film to be insightful.

  10. I find everything about this story disgusting and wrong.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...0,1400625.story

    Everyone is wrong. The kids and the adults.

    When does common sense play a role in life?

    Too often, it doesn't.

    C

    Cole, while I agree in large part I think you have to view this through multiple cultural windows. See Edward T. Hall's books: The Hidden Dimension, The Silent Language, and Beyond Culture.

    These works on intercultural anthropolgy reflects Hall's many years studying various cultures around the world.

    This is not an attempt by me to lessen these heinous acts but gently to point out how the Liberian father may not be able to view this act as an Westener might. Nor do we know the cultural milieu that these boys came from that empowered them to act this way.

    I can't see how emprisoning them without some form of re-education or re-sensitizing their cultural perspective will change them for the better.

  11. First let me begin by saying, Happy Birthday, Jamie and Charlie. It's been 3 stories years since we last since we last had a celebration.

    That was a beautiful performance done by the Trio and Jamie for the Gahdar Duets. This appearance marks the first time that Nic has seen Jamie in a few years. The downer was the appearance of Prince Hippolito, at least in my opinion.

    I had my suspicions about the headaches Jamie was experiencing. But I didn't expect it to be The Screen.

    Wonderfully put, TalonRider. The dance scene was truly magical and The Screen was a real surprise but so many interesting posibilities arise from the awareness of its existence.

  12. Chapter 28 was recently posted and as usual, Jamie has published another winner! I love the textures that can create between all the characters, their locations and especially their mind sets.

    From the last page of this chapter:

    A star-like pattern ? moonlight streaming through the windows ? danced across his ceiling, and for some time before nodding off to sleep he stared at it with the eyes that his father had given him.
  13. Wow, the latest chapter is truly amazing. I couldn't stop reading from start to finish. I think that the hardest part is waiting the three weeks between chapters, as they just keep getting better and better.

    Seriously looking forward to the next chapter.

    Keth

    Not only was it amazing but it also had the stuff that grand legends are made of--this chapter was magnificent!

  14. For what it's worth (not much), Grasshopper has not responded to my emails either, and we used to correspond regularly, if infrequently.

    I have communicated very recently with Grasshopper enough to know that he is recuperating and having difficulties in physically writing and typing. Please be patient, he knows he needs to finish "Starfish" but needs some more time.

  15. What a wonderfully written story, Cole. While I can understand an editor suggesting changes in grammar when it's clear that it is needed, this story "needed" to be written as you wrote it.

    I edit for several authors and I would never change dialect or grammar locally spoken.

    And, what a horse!

  16. I believe true creativity is expressed in the solutions that you dream up or create given the restraints imposed either by yourself, or others.

    Frank Lloyd Wright, famed architect, left his Wisconsin school to found a western branch named Taliesin West in the outskirts of Phoenix, AZ. He chose wood and canvas as two major compoents of this Taliesin West. Both choices proved the difficulty in adhering to the "rule" of his school by implementing a wood that deteriorated rapidly in the southwestern heat and canvas for his roofing material which deteriorated rapidly as well. Both components had to be replaced within a few years of the construction of his building.

    My point is similar to Richard's in that we can adhere religiously to our tenets or we can be flexible where it makes creative sense. Writing is something that at least can be improved by editing as opposed to building construction where decisions made during planning can have consequential physical and fiscal results for the outcome.

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