Calvin and Hobbes For The Day
- emmline
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Interesting, true, entertaining, and thought provoking...
eg...Has anyone ever determined whether environmentalists have a greater tendency to be dog lovers or cat lovers?
Similarly, and perhaps overlappingly...has anyone ever determined whether political conservativism v. liberalism tends to have any correlation with choice of companion animal?
eg...Has anyone ever determined whether environmentalists have a greater tendency to be dog lovers or cat lovers?
Similarly, and perhaps overlappingly...has anyone ever determined whether political conservativism v. liberalism tends to have any correlation with choice of companion animal?
Ahhh I do miss Calvin and Hobbes, so I just reached back behind me and pulled out one of C&H books.
What is also wierd is that I just finish reading a sci-fi book that I haven't read for thirty years, George K Stewart"s, The Earth Abides.
A classic example of science fiction disease epidemiology. According to Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart (1895-1980) a disease comes out of nowhere, kills off all of the Earth's population save for a handful of survivors including, unfortunately, our hero, who is one of the most feckless characters ever to grace the pages of fantasy. Instead of rebuilding society or even setting up a halfway successful community, the tiny band of survivors get caught up in a collective fit of ennui and mope about for a generation or so while the cities collapse into the ground and their grandchildren end up on the cultural level of Cro-Magnons. Things get so bad that the inheritors of our civilisation regard coins as being nothing but handy metal for making arrowheads out of.
What is really scary and a heart stopper is that today we have coming out of nowhere it seems to most people of this planet, diseases like SAARS, Bird Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola and HIV. Is our Earth trying to tell us something.
Calvin and Hobbes always made me stop and think.
Thanks for posting this.
MarkB
What is also wierd is that I just finish reading a sci-fi book that I haven't read for thirty years, George K Stewart"s, The Earth Abides.
A classic example of science fiction disease epidemiology. According to Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart (1895-1980) a disease comes out of nowhere, kills off all of the Earth's population save for a handful of survivors including, unfortunately, our hero, who is one of the most feckless characters ever to grace the pages of fantasy. Instead of rebuilding society or even setting up a halfway successful community, the tiny band of survivors get caught up in a collective fit of ennui and mope about for a generation or so while the cities collapse into the ground and their grandchildren end up on the cultural level of Cro-Magnons. Things get so bad that the inheritors of our civilisation regard coins as being nothing but handy metal for making arrowheads out of.
What is really scary and a heart stopper is that today we have coming out of nowhere it seems to most people of this planet, diseases like SAARS, Bird Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola and HIV. Is our Earth trying to tell us something.
Calvin and Hobbes always made me stop and think.
Thanks for posting this.
MarkB
Everybody has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.
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They rocked.
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I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 63">Coming Soon</a>...
Go on, you know you want it.
Go on, you know you want it.
Eddie
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -Groucho Marx
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -Groucho Marx
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beowulf573 wrote:<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 63">Coming Soon</a>...
Go on, you know you want it.
You're right! Wow!
Sara (*adds to her "someday" wish list*)
'I wish it need not have happend in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'
-LOTR-
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'
-LOTR-
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- Tell us something.: You just slip out the back, Jack
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And get yourself free - Location: Loren has left the building.
All the survivors have the feature that they've been bittenMarkB wrote:Ahhh I do miss Calvin and Hobbes, so I just reached back behind me and pulled out one of C&H books.
What is also wierd is that I just finish reading a sci-fi book that I haven't read for thirty years, George K Stewart"s, The Earth Abides.
A classic example of science fiction disease epidemiology. According to Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart (1895-1980) a disease comes out of nowhere, kills off all of the Earth's population save for a handful of survivors including, unfortunately, our hero, who is one of the most feckless characters ever to grace the pages of fantasy. Instead of rebuilding society or even setting up a halfway successful community, the tiny band of survivors get caught up in a collective fit of ennui and mope about for a generation or so while the cities collapse into the ground and their grandchildren end up on the cultural level of Cro-Magnons. Things get so bad that the inheritors of our civilisation regard coins as being nothing but handy metal for making arrowheads out of.
What is really scary and a heart stopper is that today we have coming out of nowhere it seems to most people of this planet, diseases like SAARS, Bird Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola and HIV. Is our Earth trying to tell us something.
Calvin and Hobbes always made me stop and think.
Thanks for posting this.
MarkB
by a rattlesnake, I believe.
My recollection is different--the leader, a geologist (who is
bitten by a rattlesnake while out in the Sierras, crawls
into a cabin, recovers, and comes out to find humanity
virtually gone), struggles to keep the community that
collects around him in the Berkeley Hills modern. He is a
scientist (faculty at UC-Berkeley). He boards the windows
of the university library to preserve the books, and his dream
is that his community will start up the generators
that powered the electricity in SF, and resume
modern life.
But, despite his best efforts, the community gradually
devolves into a Neolithic tribe--the children and grandchildren, especially
cannot relate to the old world and begin to think magically.
Finally, in despair, he goes to the library and smashes the
windows, then goes back and teaches the kids how to
make bows and arrows.
Bertrand Russell wrote the introduction of the
copy I read. Best
Last edited by jim stone on Fri Mar 04, 2005 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
Found this:
George R. Stewart: The Man Who Named the Wind
George Rippey Stewart was a Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley, starting in the 1920's. He used his excellent knowledge of literature to compose some of the most remarkable works of the 20th century. In those works, many still in print, Stewart worked out a new paradigm for knowledge, applicable to the 21st Century.
He was born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, in 1895. Shortly, the family moved to Indiana, Pennsylvania, where Stewart spent his boyhood. When he was 12, the family moved to Azusa, California, where they had acquired an orange ranch. Stewart developed a passion for California's history, natural history, and landscapes.
Stewart spent a lifetime, wandering and wondering. He loved to travel, by foot or road. When his mother insisted that he attend Princeton, he traveled there by riding the rods. After he married the daughter of the President of the University of Michigan, Theodosia Burton, he decided - in 1924 - to drive them back to his new job at UC Berkeley. This first cross-country trip was perhaps the most adventurous, since it happened before there were many roads, but it was not the last. Stewart wrote his favorite journeys into his books.
Stewart was a prodigious author, called by his friend Wallace Stegner a "poet and precisionist." He worked at UC Berkeley that being one of the most remarkable wellsprings of ideas and institutions this world has ever known: the National Park Service, founded by UC graduates, had its educational headquarters there; Lawrence split the atom; Starker Leopold would write the classic report on wildlife in National Parks; Carl Sauer was establishing new directions for geography; and so forth. Stewart learned well from his colleagues, then wove the knowledge into his works.
His great paradigm was that of a multi-disciplinary perspective. He wove human and natural sciences and history into remarkable "Whole Earth" works long before Earth Day. His works included, often, the perspective from space - again, long before humans had been there. The popularity and influence of his works is widespread: One of his works, Earth Abides, is now in 27 languages. Another, Storm, is the book which popularized the practice of naming storms. So everyone knows what Stewart did, although not many know his name.
George R. Stewart: The Man Who Named the Wind
George Rippey Stewart was a Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley, starting in the 1920's. He used his excellent knowledge of literature to compose some of the most remarkable works of the 20th century. In those works, many still in print, Stewart worked out a new paradigm for knowledge, applicable to the 21st Century.
He was born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, in 1895. Shortly, the family moved to Indiana, Pennsylvania, where Stewart spent his boyhood. When he was 12, the family moved to Azusa, California, where they had acquired an orange ranch. Stewart developed a passion for California's history, natural history, and landscapes.
Stewart spent a lifetime, wandering and wondering. He loved to travel, by foot or road. When his mother insisted that he attend Princeton, he traveled there by riding the rods. After he married the daughter of the President of the University of Michigan, Theodosia Burton, he decided - in 1924 - to drive them back to his new job at UC Berkeley. This first cross-country trip was perhaps the most adventurous, since it happened before there were many roads, but it was not the last. Stewart wrote his favorite journeys into his books.
Stewart was a prodigious author, called by his friend Wallace Stegner a "poet and precisionist." He worked at UC Berkeley that being one of the most remarkable wellsprings of ideas and institutions this world has ever known: the National Park Service, founded by UC graduates, had its educational headquarters there; Lawrence split the atom; Starker Leopold would write the classic report on wildlife in National Parks; Carl Sauer was establishing new directions for geography; and so forth. Stewart learned well from his colleagues, then wove the knowledge into his works.
His great paradigm was that of a multi-disciplinary perspective. He wove human and natural sciences and history into remarkable "Whole Earth" works long before Earth Day. His works included, often, the perspective from space - again, long before humans had been there. The popularity and influence of his works is widespread: One of his works, Earth Abides, is now in 27 languages. Another, Storm, is the book which popularized the practice of naming storms. So everyone knows what Stewart did, although not many know his name.