As far as scientific gobbledygook goes, I don't think it has to do as much with a society's vision of the future as it does with the language that's floating around.
In 1936 the hot science buzzwords were radio, radium, vitamin, and, uhm, that was pretty much it.
In 2008 is there anyone(at least in the SF demographic) who hasn't at least heard the words string theory, antimatter, DNA, neutrino, wormhole, plasma, nuclear, subatomic, hormone, polarity, gigabyte. Our nonsense sounds like science because we have more science words to string together:
"The plasma drive emits a stream of ionized neutrinos that invert the spin of the tachyons in local space..."
"You mean---?"
"Yes. A transmogrifying time machine."
Our time has the equivalent of shoveling radium: how many times have Star Trek captains solved a problem by "reversing the polarity."
Born 1/61. We lived in Mexico at the time. I have a vague memory of the election of Diaz Ordaz in 1964 (I was 3).
The first memory of a major event was the Six Day War. I was in Jewish school in Mexico, and our parents and teachers were terribly worried.
After that we moved to the states, and it was the Nixon-Humphrey-Wallace campaign. My father said that if Wallace won, we'd be moving back to Mexico.
Maybe it's because I've lived here nearly 30 years, but driving in and around Boston doesn't upset me. It's kind of relaxing in a way, like solving a puzzle. Except when I cross into Somerville. There's something spooky about that town, because the instant I go over the town line, I become completely and hopelessly lost.
For the other three of you who, like me, didn't get the original post, Sunnydale is, apparently, the setting for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though I still can't tell if moderating an online forum is better or worse than being on Usenet.
I've never felt as far from the zeitgeist as I do this moment.
Todd @73 and abi@75
I ran across this youtube video of someone adding four ribbons to an old moleskine.
It's a slightly different technique than abi's, but a similar idea.
For some reason, the part of the clip that stuck in my mind was when he's telling the librarians not to enlist his help when his books are banned.
"I'm a big frog in a little pond," he says.
"Were," I thought. "You were."
I tried to be a Ray Bradbury fan, but even when I was 14 and read his books, I felt that here was a man who liked to hear himself talk and would repeat the good parts to make sure you got them.
A colleague sent me an angry e-mail after I asked her to do one thing too many:
"I am not at your beckon call," she wrote.
Thank you Jim!
I thought I was the only one.
The King of Efland? Well that would be Howard Stern.
On Thunderbirds: I liked how all the sons were named after Mercury-era astronauts.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 2 |
| 2007 | 5 |
| 2006 | 1 |
| 2005 | 2 |
Total: 10 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by pb:
Show all comments by pb.