Meadowlark Bradsher

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since Jan 23, 2001
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Recent posts by Meadowlark Bradsher

Gosh, that sounds really nice! I hope it was a good experience for you. It certainly sounds like it.
Good job!
21 years ago
Umm...I had heard that even student and teacher had relations in that culture....
Is this a rumor?
21 years ago

Originally posted by Devesh H Rao:

U mean to say 1 billion viewers is not a decent enuf target?
But i dun think any indian director will have the guts to take on the subject and make a movie on it and i really doubt if anyone not well versed with the nuances of Mahabharata will make justice to it.....


I see your point...my impression off Bollywood is that the films are commonly low-budget. The spectacle of LOTR is so high budget it seems like it is gamble amongst gambles.
Is it that Bollywood movies compete so much with eachother? A giant budget Mahabharat would probably blow away the competition.
21 years ago
Okay, I'm getting the big picture. I don't have a specific example of an interesting problem. Not sure where to find one, or if I'd be ready to handle it anyway.
I suppose I also used philosophy and logic interchangeably, though they aren't always that way. Then there is semiotics, which influences AI.
All I can do is continue to learn to appreciate the value of solutions already discovered.
[ December 30, 2003: Message edited by: Meadowlark Bradsher ]
21 years ago
Paul, regarding an example...
I just remember talking to a "step-cousin?" who programs and he told me he never gets to do much of anything interesting, just a lot of basic flow controls.
Except there was a time when he had to construct an interesting algorithm that explored a tree.
That's okay but not exciting either. Who am I kidding anyway? You'd have to be an academic or a specialist engineer of some kind to get to do interesting stuff. Or a hack.
I imagine in the old days when you had to work with limited resources that the lifestyle produced a lot of problem solving glory. Maybe small device programmers still get to enjoy this kind of experience.
Oh and AI programmers probably do too. Big Time.
I'm still getting the big picture.
21 years ago
Re:

Originally posted by vasu maj:
Not really. My experience has been that most tech savvy guys are least philosophical.
Vasu


You wrote...

Originally posted by Michael Ernest:

That's an amusing slip; I happen to agree with it.


That's interesting.
I probably would not be a good judge anyway.
I am at such a beginning level. I can understand a few things in a cursory manner. I can drop names like Godel, Leibniz, or Turing that I have learned from a few sources are worth exploring further. I kind of look upon them as rock stars.
I am certainly hungry for these kinds of subjects even if I am not sophisticated in them.
I suppose its really more history than anything intellectual unless you are actually approaching new problems. I'm certainly not. I just love hearing about the subjects from people who love them.
21 years ago
I am not a programmer (or developer if thats more correct). However I have been curious about it. I'm not any greater than a novice philosopher as well.
I know that I can learn anything that computer science has to offer. It seems like most jobs won't often call on the more interesting questions that academics get to ask, though.
I am an outsider in every respect, and an autodidact, but I wonder if many programmer, retain a zeal for things to do with logic and philosophy? Or even math for that matter.
I guess I am looking for an attractive group.
21 years ago
Hi,
I'm not a "real" Java developer, I've given up for now commercial interest in it, but I have comments about this movie too.
First of all in the defense of the Hindus posting with lackluster reviews, I have to say it does pale in comparison to the Mahabharata in my opinion. The battle in this epic is simply amazing, and I always longed to see something as good while watching LOTR 3. The TV series of the Mahabharata is such a blast to watch. It would need to become a more widely popular story in order to ever have a chance of a big budget filming like LOTR though. Don't know how that will ever happen.
But I love the LOTR story as a good peice of work, and I have silly comments too. I think in most cases I am actually wishing to re-write Tolkein.
The battles scene weres still a lot of fun. The feminist thing was a beautiful execution but my guts says aesthetically she should not have "penetrated" the king of the nasgool with her sword but beheaded it. Somehow it seems like a more feminine kill, in the worst un-nurturing way, instead of a pseudo-male kill.
This was the end of the 3rd age, what does that represent?. It was so close to being a story about how good and evil have outgrown being purely represented by different individuals and are now both exist in the same man (and thus the powerful magic must also dminish). This would be the case if Smeagol voluntarily destroyed the ring in a moment of self-conflict, realizing the right thing to do. It could be the beginning of a more postmodern, less mythic time.
In Hinduism and Greek mythology there is the same 4 ages. In Hinduism I have heard this comparison. In the 1st age good & evil lived in the same universe but on different planets, or planes. The 2nd on the same planet but in different countries. The 3rd in the same country but in different people. And in this the 4th in the person. LOTR was so tantalizing close to this appealing mythic structure.
I also wanted that Aragorn should have expressed supernatural anger at the undead soldiers for their crime, calling them to their oath, and by not neglecting them given them the opportunity, that they did take to fight again. He would represent the regal combination of anger, authority to speak for their past allegiance, and compassion by caring for their oath. It seemed liked a more fleshed out moment of authority than just his lame "Will you join us? Yay!" thing.
And instead they just kind of leaped off of the pirate ships. Hooray! That was lame.
I guess that's me trying to mine out more of the meaning that has come to appeal to me. The stories that appeal to me retain the mythic spaces/ times by exhibiting a logical transition to our postmodern existence.
[ December 29, 2003: Message edited by: Meadowlark Bradsher ]
21 years ago
If you don't mind me asking, what did you get him?
21 years ago
As a side bar....
In the 60's and 70's there was a transformation in films where the "humanness" of the story and characters created a livid film experience. The Godfather for instance was more about a film about a family than a crime movie about gangsters. This was the new "real" then. It made film engaging again.
I believe that today "intelligent" is the new "real". By that I mean greater historical accuracy, more thought provoking situations, depth through details, more dependence on educated filmgoers. Films that had to be well researched to be made basically.
Does it seem valid?
[ December 24, 2003: Message edited by: Meadowlark Bradsher ]
21 years ago
Hi....
Umm...I am a movie freak. I don't watch tv I just watch rentals only. I even rent tv shows.
There are a lot of great films out there but often the affect was personal.
  • Beautiful Mind (despite the ridiculousness of musclebound Russel Crowe) devistated me because of the respect, and support he had received despite struggling with dishabilitating madness
  • Exotica (Atom Egoyan)- because it was guiltless examination of condemned sexual behavior (though perhaps cinema-simplified)
  • Waking Life - Sheer kanoodling fun
  • Changing Lanes - a great examination of escalating conflict
  • Matrix - Great blend of thought and gut...I like some thoughts from the last one too. Trinity was an interesting as a woman who no longer feared death
  • LOTR - What a great story...I like to imagine that Smeagol voluntarily destroyed the ring. Wish Aragorn got pissed at the undead deserters. Didn't read the book- I'm ashamed to admit.
  • Memento - just makes you think about dependence on your own memory. Funny how the list is mostly films in recent memory.


  • It seems a little artifical to try to remember older films. I know Hitchcock is great and John Luc Godard. Atom Egoyan is often great. I enjoy David Fincher's work (he's not old though). And John Boorman has often been great. Clint Eastwood, Ron Howard... as directors, I also always expect great films from them.
    [ December 24, 2003: Message edited by: Meadowlark Bradsher ]
    21 years ago
    Its getting close to X-mas. I hope you'll make it.
    I got my wife a shopping spree at the Chicago Prada store. This worked on a lot of levels.
    I walked her to the store and had a saleswoman bring her the gift certificate, and this just an hour or so after the prices dropped from 30% to 50% on the Fall line. Then I told her to look around.
    Here's what I accomplished...
  • There was planning involved so it was extra thoughtful
  • It was a frivolous value for our income so its something she wouldn't buy for herself or do for herself, but she was now forced to do
  • It was a store that psychically she did not feel she belonged in so it awarded her identity
  • It showed that I knew of her special interests.
  • It kinda hurt just a little because of the amount of money so I felt "out of body" too. She sure did. It held a real message, not just a common symbol of one.
  • If we had a larger income it wouldn't have been meaningful, it was poised against our lifestyle. And contrasted it.


  • I always try to make it special, over our limit, well packaged, and thoughtful somehow. It has to have a value to her and a price for me, then I feel it really carries a message to her.
    I hope that may help, if you haven't already bought him his gift.
    [ December 24, 2003: Message edited by: Meadowlark Bradsher ]
    21 years ago
    I was born in the United States and immediately granted citizenship for the effort.
    The only definition I have of "Anti-American" in which I find the term truly repugnant is when it describes an example (if I was or could have been a part of it) in which I would personally feel discriminated against, including being threatened, simply because I was born here or raised as a child here.
    I think criticism of things I was taught here, or "culturally" exposed to, or even just the government, is as good as the critic but in general criticsm is always a good thing. The USA (or any other country or any other culture, I regret to inform some people) is not perfect in principle or execution. Therefore criticism is always an important feature of improving any system. The abolitionists of the USA criticised slavery for a long time and as a result the country grew slowly away from looking away when slavery or discrimination occured and became more active.
    My understanding is that even Thomas Jefferson criticized slavery in a draft of the Declaration of Independence but later wrote it out because the South was needed to fight the British. Later it took a bloody Civil war to get a more honest democracy started. War is the starkest form of criticism but in this case it was against one of the worst hypocrisies.
    This country has always been divided like that perhaps not as dramatically, and along different lines. It always will be, and a heavy dose of freedom of speech continues today as long as it can afford its medium.
    Some may disagree but good critism is the only way to refinement. There is always room for that.
    Discriminatory criticism is just meant to vent and hurt. Its best not to get to hurt and just move on.
    22 years ago
    Paul,
    I noticed that you didn't have a description for the self-centered jerk. If that is the selfish jerk I was referring to I was naming the person who is perhaps, greedy and self serving, who sacrifices others.
    That makes $0.04.
    -med
    22 years ago