best of craigslist > asheville > Wanna break my Star Wars cherry? Originally Posted: Sun, 1 Jan 16:47 ESTMade it to version 13 of the couple-thousand RSS feeds: still getting rid of Sharepoint programming hints while adding things that are, you know, interesting. To me.
Wanna break my Star Wars cherry?
Date: 2012-01-01, 4:47PM EST
Yes, it's true, I've never seen "Star Wars." I was 14 years old when the original came out (you do the math) and somehow I never managed to see it, or any of the sequels.
It's time. I'm ready to hand in my Star Wars V-card.
I know this might seem like pretty hot stuff to some of you, introducing a Star Wars virgin to the film that shaped you into the person that you are, developed your sense of virtue and cultivated your concepts of right and wrong. Imagine how hot will it be to sit next to me as I experience -- for the first time! -- the foundation upon which you've not only built your entire personality, but with which you've cultivated the purpose of your heart and the direction of your soul. It will be no less than miraculous, I'm sure. A spiritual epiphany.
This is a one-time offer. I mean, once it's busted, there's no getting my Star Wars cherry back, ya know? So I want it to be good. I want my first time to be memorable. Special. I want the build-up, the excitement, the breathless anticipation, all of it. I want you to tease me with your superior Star Wars wisdom until I'm begging you to please please PLEASE put it in, put it in!! Put the DVD in the player and start the movie! I want you to hold my hand as I submit for the first time to the marvel and wonder of this grand event. I might even be okay with some costumes and role playing before the movie starts, but I'd have to be really comfortable with you. Size matters (no matter what they tell you), so obscenely large screens to the front of the line, and surround sound is a must.
So how about it? Do you think you are the one to cure me of my Star Wars purity? Tell me why.
**Please note this is NOT an offer or request for any sort of sexual activity but I probably won't want to see you again, which is why I consider this a casual encounter.**
January 23, 2012This site is called Smart Software.
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History:
Accepted wisdom will have us believe St. Louis' infamous Pruitt-Igoe public housing development was destined for failure. Designed by George Hellmuth and World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki (of Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth), the 33-building complex opened in 1954, its Modernist towers touted as a remedy to overcrowding in the city’s tenements. Rising crime, neglected facilities, and fleeing tenants led to its demolition—in a spectacular series of implosions—less than two decades later. In the popular narrative, bad public policy, bad architecture, and bad people doomed Pruitt-Igoe, and it became an emblem of failed social welfare projects across the country. But director Chad Freidrichs challenges that convenient and oversimplified assessment in his documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, opening in limited release January 20.A report from Brazil, where philosophy became a required high-school subject in 2008:
That’s not surprising, considering that the 2008 law is above all a political project. In 1971 the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 eliminated philosophy from high schools. Teachers, professors in departments of education, and political activists championed its return, while most academic philosophers were either indifferent or suspicious. The dictatorship seems to have understood philosophy’s potential to create engaged citizens; it replaced philosophy with a course on Moral and Civic Education and one on Brazil’s Social and Political Organization (“to inculcate good manners and patriotic values and to justify the political order of the generals,” one UFBA colleague recalls from his high school days).Hmm, Adobe Edge Animate is free for now if you sign up for their Creative Cloud service (which is also free). As with Google - which I hypocritically use in all sorts of ways - I feel bad encouraging them.
The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality. Can it do even more? Can it teach students to question and challenge the foundations of society itself?
12 comments:
So what doomed Pruitt-Igoe, if not bad policy, underfunded and ill-considered design, and lack of maintenance? Gremlins?
It's hard to figure out what's at the link, but "it's not that simple" seems to be the message, which is pretty banal, and it doesn't refute what doomed it. I dunno if the film is any good or even mounts an argument, but it sounds interesting to watch.
Agreed. I may have to search it out.
The picture there is a good overview, however, and shows what a contextual horror the buildings were, and they didn't even provide the density of the buildings they replaced.
Couple of years ago now I thought the Photoshop.com free web version of the gigantic bitmap editor was pretty awesome, both from a functional standpoint and as one of the most beautiful websites I'd ever seen. Sadly, it depended far too much on client-side processing, and was just unusable. I'm going to have to check out the cloud services...
The idea of just renting a lot of these tools makes sense for professionals. I think it's pretty smart.
Sadly, Edge produces HTML pages and a bunch of .js files, and that's not what I want to play with at the moment.
I'm a born again SW virgin. Didn't give as shit about it when I was 4, don't remember the franchise, don't care to. Nobody will pop my fake cherry.
I'm a "Star Wars" agnostic- the first movie was really entertaining, the second was great, the third had its moments but was pretty "meh", and the prequels were crap.
Seeing the opening of the first one was great, the scene where Darth Vader first appears was terrifying. By the time I was in high school, I'd moved on. I got over the James Bond franchise around then too.
I"m one of the ones raised with a strong Star Wars background but have rejected it in my adulthood.
I hate the Jedi. A small group of ultra elite people who by virtue of birthright have massive power over others. Able to force people into do things against their will without their even being aware of it. Don't worry about any abuse of power because they follow a very strict, religious code of ethics. And those are the good guys. No thank you.
But the style of most of the good guys of legend and myth is some cheat to a triumph because they're virtuous. The hero is ordinarily a manifestation of a power fantasy and it's good to be suspicious of them.
I don't have any problems with the occasional Heroes Exemption. Han Shot First for IPU's sake!
My issue is with the romantic glorification of a secret and totally unaccountable cabal of religious extremists. Paternalistic religious extremists who have the self-appointed primary responsibility of maintaining law and order throughout society. I'm not comfortable with that.
Still a really broad swath of heroes there. The new James Bond movie is doing well.
Well with Bond and friends, there is this constant background threat of the incompetent government of the day revoking their kill-whomever-i-want privileges. Plus MI6 doesn't have mind control (or do they...). And they are nominally not self-appointed guardians of society - although I concede the difference is negligible. As is the difference between whatever mystic mumbo-jumbo credo the Jedi go by and "for Queen and country".
Hmmmmm. OTOH, Judi Dench's M drinks bourbon so whatever faults and anti-social behaviour the Bond franchise enables gets a pass.
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