ambrosite

"The translation process is itself an art form."

Without question. I have also read books in several different translations and it is remarkable how different they can be from each other. In his notes, one translator said there is no such thing as "translating" a book from one language to another, what you are really doing is rewriting the book in another language.

Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell is a novel that was required reading in Canada for generations, but it is almost completely unknown in the United States. I don't know if it is a "great" book (I have not read it myself), but many Canadians consider it a classic of Canadian literature.

That doesn't look nearly as bad as I thought it would. I never had a problem with Picard being bald though. Even as a kid he was my favorite character on the show.

Very interesting way of looking at it. I've always wondered what is the evolutionary advantage of consciousness -- if we don't have free will, then why have self awareness at all if we would function just as well without it? Your idea provides one possible answer to that question.

I see this story as a kind of thought experiment about the way in which societies treat minority groups. There have been many societies that felt the oppression of a minority was justified, or even necessary, in exchange for the greater good of the society. This story takes that idea to its logical extreme: a perfect society, with unlimited health and happiness for all, in exchange for the complete and utter oppression and degradation of the smallest possible minority -- a minority of one. Is it still justified? The people who feel it is not are "the ones who walk away from Omelas."

"Only check out the first screen of any news web site. No scrolling down, and no clicking links."

I like that rule. One quick check of the news home page should be enough to tell you if there is anything truly important going on that requires your immediate attention.

It has been a really long time (years) since I had to use any printed book as reference material. For any question I have concerning a random factual matter, I am always able to find an adequate answer online in less time than it would take to reach for a book, look up the topic in the index, and then turn to the appropriate page.

Where I still find books useful is in learning a new subject from scratch. Reading an entire book from cover to cover gives me a broad mental overview of the whole subject, and that is extremely helpful when trying to put the random bits of knowledge I find online into context.

No downvote from me; I agree with what you said and I appreciate your having the courage to say it. The writer of this article has dumped one form of religion and replaced it with another, right down to the wishful thinking about a "super empathetic" supreme intelligence, and hope for immortality.

Strangely enough, this tactic has made me much less inclined to click links for the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other online publication that uses paywalls. I think, "Hmm, I only have 3 free articles left this month, I don't want to waste one of them on this particular article" and therefore I end up never reading any articles at all.

If you are from Europe then you don't get it. This is mostly an American thing and it has been going on for years. I recall a story from about 10-15 years ago where a couple from Europe (I think they were Dutch but I'm not 100% sure) was arrested in New York City for leaving their child outside on the sidewalk while they entered a cafe for a few minutes and ordered coffee. They could see their child through the cafe windows the entire time. They expressed shock upon being arrested because such behavior was normal and commonplace in their country.

Sinbad should just go ahead and make that movie now. He can then release it with a marketing campaign that says, "The classic childhood favorite, lost for 20 years, now available and fully remastered!"

That's awesome, but to me it is an example of retro design -- that is, a site made to look as if it was built back then, not something that would actually have been built back then. Still very cool though.

I just found my first website (from January 2000) in the Wayback Machine. Not gonna post it here, but it's actually not that bad -- it had a consistent header, sidebar navigation, and a collection of nerdy sci-fi jokes that for some strange reason I thought were hilarious. :/

I actually get a little excited when I see the blink and marquee tags still being used on current websites. (yeah I know, I'm psychotic!)

I love it. I have an unreasonable amount of nostalgia for old websites like this. This is what the whole Web looked like back in the early days, before the usability and design gurus figured out the "best practices" and all sites started looking the same. It really was a wild new frontier. I'm not saying the Web was objectively better back then, but it sure was fun.

But not everyone is capable of being Elon Musk, or should even want to be like him, if they really understood what it takes to be him. Here is one of the most insightful posts I have ever read on the subject, coming from someone who should know -- his first wife:

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates-St...

Seems a good place to bring up Charles Holland Duell, the US Commissioner of Patents who supposedly said "Everything that can be invented has been invented" back in 1899. That quote has since been debunked as apocryphal, but the story behind the alleged quote is interesting.

https://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-every...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell

I for one appreciate the link. I think his advice is right on target for someone who aspires to be a creative writer, which is not necessarily the same thing (unfortunately) as someone who aspires to earn a living from writing.

The copyright date is 2006. It's amazing that a site design like this would have been built as late as 2006. It looks more like something from 1996.

Oh, and I just noticed that if you change the language to German, there is a link to a photo gallery:

http://www.luebeckaltstadthotel.de/tischbein.htm

It does actually have a fluid grid, so it is responsive down to about tablet width. It does not display correctly on phones however, which I suppose is a fatal flaw for a hotel site.

I love coming across old sites like that. So much nostalgia. :)

It would be better to say, if a leader can relate to the people, then he may be more likely to take their interests seriously.

I liked that quote, too. I think it is true of other art forms as well, like novels, movies, and even computer games. I find that most of the time, when I like a new book or movie, it is not because it was an original and unique experience for me, but rather because it reminded me of some other book or movie that I had loved a long time ago.

>> To be honest I'm quite impressed that NYTimes went this length to create these technical widgets ... Seems like a relatively high cost of production.

That's because the article is really just an advertisement for TimesMachine, a subscription newspaper archive. I didn't notice it at first, either.

Ironically those graphics are the whole point of the article. It is supposed to simulate what the year 1968 might have looked like if there had been a Twitter feed back then. There is very little original content in the article text itself.

Edit: On further inspection, I am coming to the conclusion that the article is really a thinly veiled advertisement for TimesMachine, a subscription newspaper archive.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com

A general purpose housekeeping robot would be revolutionary and would sell extremely well, but we are probably decades away from having one that would even function correctly, much less be commercially viable.

Don't get me started on JJ; I still haven't been able to get through any of his Star Trek films. The same person who said the original Star Wars is slow and boring also said that he cannot watch any movie that was made before the year 2000, because filmmaking styles have changed too much and he finds all of the older films boring. Personally, I have trouble watching anything that was made after 2000.

I will not say it's true for every novel. The Outsiders was a book that bored me in school, and I still find it boring. Cry, the Beloved Country on the other hand was completely over my head in high school, but it is one of my favorites now.

Murphy Brown was the first show I can recall that dispensed with a theme song entirely and just displayed the credits over the opening scene. I remember thinking it was a revolutionary change (especially for a sitcom) when I first saw it back in the early 1990s.

The same thing happens with great novels. I have recently been re-reading some of the novels I was forced to read (and hated) in high school, but I understand and appreciate them so much more as a middle-aged adult. I thought of myself as a pretty smart kid back then, but there were so many things I just could not understand without sufficient life experience.