On Paths Unknown discussion
The Anything Goes chit-chat thread (subject to tiny fine-print rules)
message 151:
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Traveller
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Feb 24, 2015 03:23AM
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Traveller wrote: "Oh wonderful, i will cheer for you along the way, Yolande! Maybe your doings will motivate me to do something to try and at least become slightly more immersed too - have you found any good easy-i..."So far I've found this one where you can choose your level and then listen to short videos with questions to anwer:
http://apprendre.tv5monde.com/
This one for looking up movies:
http://www.cinetrafic.fr/film-francais
And then I use facebook to follow French news pages that gives me article updates once in a while which I read to keep in practice. I think they are Le Figaro (kind of a gossipy news thing), DW Françcais (serious news updates), Français interactif (just gives general interest articles about the French language, culture etc. and is sometimes in English).
That's about the best ones I have for now. I'm still going to start looking for some French blogs to follow :)
I'm reading, very slowly, the Arsène Lupin series for reading practice because it's not too difficult for me, but even though I understand about a quarter of it it's still hilarious! Just look at the title for the second book - Arsène Lupin vs Herlock Sholmès!
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Ha, I'm vaguely familiar with Arsène Lupin - have you seen the videogame Arsène Lupin vs Sherlock Holmes? It's great fun, (i played it and loved it) and i suspect you might be able to play it with a French soundtrack.
Traveller wrote: "Yolande wrote: "'m reading, very slowly, the Arsène Lupin series for reading practice because it's not too difficult for me, but even though I understand about a quarter of it it's still hilarious..."No. That sounds interesting, I will look out for it, thanks!
Traveller wrote: "You might know it as Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis.See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock..."‘… the game makes sure Watson is always nearby; however the developers did not animate Watson walking from place to place in the original version, resulting in a "creepy" Watson who apparently always stands still when in view, but seems to silently teleport closer when the player looks away…’
Dr. Watson as "Weeping Angel"! Don't even blink!
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:D
I love these Sherlock games and have played them all but for the last two, and for some of them that Watson thing is quite true. It was even worse in Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened .
You play as Sherlock most of the time, and Watson is just always in the way. But its not a game-breaking problem, really. :)
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I watched one episode. Meh. Sure, it has Lucy Liu, but it doesn't have what's'isname Cumberbatch. (btw, right after your little faux pas over Cumberbatch's name during our discussion of Neverwhere, my wife and I went to see The Imitation Game, and my wife also got his name wrong in almost exactly the same way... Maybe there's another universe where he's not called Benedict.)
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No, seriously, the Victorian Holmes feels wooden and unreal compared to the real flesh and blood person that the writers of Elementary have managed to turn him into, and it just gets better as the series progresses. One does have to watch them in succession though.
Oh and they make up their own stories, but I am 100% okay with that - and I've been a huge Sherlock lover since childhood. Initially I hated how they took liberties, but the show really is -that- good that now I like it!
But it was so completely unbelievable! It's a problem with both the recent Holmes TV series, because that sort of "consulting detective" just isn't going to exist in a modern police force, but the episode I saw ("The Diabolical Kind" - Jan. 2, 2014) had Moriarty being held in a prison-built-for-one, being guarded by people who were incapable of connecting the need for such a special prison to the abilities of the prisoner. OK, it's part of the Holmes mythos that the authorities have to be much less intelligent than Sherlock, but that's no reason for them to be absolute idiots.
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You'll see how even what you said there develops. These characters develop, and that is part of what i love about the show. :)
Sadly you watching that episode out of sequence has spoiled pretty much a huge piece of the backstory plotline for you.
Lol! An awesome picture for an awesome character and actor. I'll miss him in future Star Trek movies. Sigh.
That's "trekkER!", and you were probably going to miss him in future Star Trek movies, anyway. COPD tends to restrict anybody's mobility :-(
LLAP.
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Yeah, that's been worrying me. Not too long ago, I heard a respirologist (maybe it was my bridge partner, I'll have to ask him) say that your lungs never really recover. A few days later, I heard the old line that a few years after quitting you can't tell the difference between an ex-smoker and a non-smoker. Given that it's very nearly 30 years since I quit, I'm having a little difficulty getting into a Vulcan frame of mind about it.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Yeah, that's been worrying me. Not too long ago, I heard a respirologist (maybe it was my bridge partner, I'll have to ask him) say that your lungs never really recover. A few days later, I heard t..."I didn't even know he was sick until yesterday, and, I must admit, I'm pretty unfamiliar with COPD. I've always heard the lungs do recover. The whole thing seems very illogical.
Just as an interesting side note: Initially, NBC asked Gene Roddenberry to get rid of the “guy with the pointy ears” partly because they were worried about his “satanic” appearance. Luckily, Roddenberry refused to cut Spock.
I've been worried about that too Derek ... Heard that same line about healing lungs when I quite some 15 years ago. Now some doctors are hedging a bit. Also had an editor who had COPD. Nasty disease. Weakens you so much. One of my earliest memories of TV is sitting up with my dad, late (for a kid that's about 11) and watching Star Trek ... Then being called "Spock with glasses" in high school cause I took physics and loved all things science. There are some things, books and exceptionally conceived characters included, who will always define us - a benefit of such a social and connected world we humans have created. LLAP indeed!
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But in any case, if we had still been smoking it would only have made matters worse - smokers who get diseases like that who still continue, tend to die earlier. My maternal grandfather died of lung cancer, and he was a smoker. My father had been a heavy smoker and quit in his fifties, but he developed a form of lung cancer nevertheless. They got him fixed up (sorta) with cancer therapy, but the treatment almost killed him, and he never fully recovered.
In any case, I'm just glad i stopped even though i wish i had never smoked. I started because of peer pressure, and that's so sad to me, because I suspect that's how many people got started.
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Ook! Ook! Ook Oook!
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Mortality should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my friend, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Damn!What a beautiful memory wall you have created!
Thank you!
Sniff
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I had been expecting it, but even so....
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I was terribly stung by the unfairness when he was diagnosed - I mean, him of all people... but then he seemed to be doing okay for a while there, and I guess no news often feels like good news...
Ruth wrote: "Damn!What a beautiful memory wall you have created!
Thank you!
Sniff"
Yes. Ditto.
Congrats on quitting smoking, Trav. I can say it was easily the hardest thing I have ever done. People don't understand what it's like to have something take control of your brain like that. And then the nightmares. I would go through all that again for NO amount of money.Re Spock: even though he quit 30 years ago, it was still fairly late in life and after he'd developed problems.
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Oops, sorry, Greg! I don't know why this stupid group is not sending updates! I agree on it being extremely hard, so congrats to you too! I think nicotine is especially hard to give up on because of the potent combination of calm and clarity that it gives you. It's kind of a physical tranquilizer and a brain/intellectual stimulant, -and- it puts you on a euphoric high all at the same time.
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Very good to see you; thanks for popping in, Allen!
I smoke 4-5 cigarettes per day, a habit I haven't changed for years. I take serious interest in keeping myself abreast of medical benefits of anything and everything. (I am neurotic there as I am an inveterate hater of death..haha). Some years ago I used to blog in a site named 'Sulekha'. There were two well-known doctors (who were co-bloggers too) who received international recognition for their research on 'Sudden quitting of smoking and onset of cancer' . I think there is some truth in it. My father-in-law was heavily into pan chewing (nicotine based ) and within 6 months of stopping he developed Oral cancer and died last year. See the links below. The person bearing handle'Ixedoc' is Dr. Arunachalam Kumarhttp://creative.sulekha.com/does-quit...
I can't imagine smoking ever being good for you, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that quitting cold turkey has got to be an immense shock to the system, and I can imagine it being a trigger for the cancer. otoh, I'd bet (not a whole lot—I'm just going with the odds, here) that that cancer wouldn't have occurred at all if not for the tobacco in the first place.
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Smoke in itself is very harmful to the lungs - you need to read studies about ppl exposed to daily high levels of smoke such as people who cook on very smoky stoves, and you'll have a fright.
The nicotene is bad for your heart, sure, but it's the actual smoke that does the most harm, IMO.
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Which reminds me, I'm sure you guys all know of the claims that Jack the Ripper had been identified?
Trav, sorry for my dissenting note. Totally INSANE use of money and expertise No one needs reminding of the "importance" of Cervantes! They could have used the funds to donate copies of Don Quixote in various languages to school libraries in poor countries around the world.It's the BOOK that matters, and there us nothing
useful to be learned from desecrating a grave.
I tend to agree ... about finding more useful ways in which to spend. Especially since our elementary school's total "new book" budget only paid for about 30 titles this year while the school system managed to find, at triple the cost, the means to refurbish the football team's weight training room. Thank heavens!Funny. We were also ranting about a story last night (somewhere in the U.S., can't remember) that the alumni of a private college slated to close managed to raise millions in just a few days to save it. Imagine if we could raise millions for food pantries as easily.
I know there are good reasons for all spending, and I realize that my perception of priorities are not always right, but ... wow.
PGR wrote: "Trav, sorry for my dissenting note. Totally INSANE use of money and expertise No one needs reminding of the "importance" of Cervantes! They could have used the funds to donate copies o..."I'm of two minds (well, that's normal...). First, nobody should need reminding, but people have short memories, and probably should be reminded anyway :-)
But even if this is the grave of some absolute nobody, it will drive an (at least momentary) interest in Cervantes. Just as the fairly recent exhumation of Richard III has done for the history of his period in England. So, I'd agree that there's probably nothing useful to learn from Cervantes grave (unlike Richard III's as there were actually conflicting opinions about the man himself that have been answered), but it will nevertheless have spinoff value.
otoh, I wonder how many people, outside Spain, have ever even had the chance to read a complete Don Quixote (I haven't—I wonder if there's one on Project Gutenberg). There's definitely something to be said for getting more unabridged Quixotes out there...
And yes, I had read on The Guardian site that the Ripper had been "definitively" identified. Excuse me if I express a healthy degree of scepticism!
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "otoh, I wonder how many people, outside Spain, have ever even had the chance to read a complete Don Quixote (I haven't—I wonder if there's one on Project Gutenberg)"And there you go. Apparently, we have Don Quixote, complete, in two volumes at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5921 & http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5946. Of course, so far I have no idea what the translation is like, but I've downloaded them anyway.
Derek, we can throw away all previous translations of 'Don Quixote' as the translation by the great Edith Grossman (Hailed by writers including Carlos Fuentes as the translation of the century) supersedes all other translations. It is so contemporaneous that you can read it as if it was written yesterday.
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Re forensic historiography; well, I do think it can tell you more about the person, (especially if they died under suspicious circumstances like Tutankhamen for example) and in the case of Spain, they had already been doing a LOT of it in order to identify relatives who went missing during Franco's reign, in any case - I mean, we are talking hundreds and hundreds of corpses which had been found in mass graves in the last few years, so I'm wondering if one more person's remains would make all that much difference?
Re translations: There have of course been lots and lots of t/lations of Don Quixote, and I do think that choosing which t/lation to read depends very much on personal taste.
..but it is true that the Edith Grossman translation has received high praise, and I'd like to get hold of a copy sometime.
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Well, I think it looks like all that they managed to establish, is that the suspect possibly had had sexual relations with the one victim close to the time that she'd been killed. Whether that actually makes him her actual killer and the killer of all the victims, has not been 100% established, as far as I know... But it still is rather interesting.
More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Ko...
I read Cervantes in Spanish. It's quite different than English. I wish my French was good enough to read Proust in the original...
It's interesting, isn't it, that over a century later we can shed new light on previously intractable mysteries? Even if Kosminski's guilt cannot be conclusively proven, that we can put forward new evidence rather than just more conjecture is pretty impressive. Me, I think O. J. did it! :P
Traveller wrote: "You know, I am tired of not getting any updates from this group. Does anybody know where to set it?"Not a clue. I have the same problem. THIS thread is not a problem for me, I see those updates (which is why I'm here), but I have had no updates from the current book discussions (which is why I'm so far behind on them...)
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I wish either my French or Spanish was good enough... :\
@ Puddin: it was :(view spoiler)
PS. Did you see that TV doccie on the forensics they did on Tutankhamun ?
@ Derek: I didn't used to for this thread, but it suddenly started with Kenneth's post. Yaye!
As for the book discussions; I have a project for work that I fell behind on, and now I don't have time for fiction or GR, argh...
Hmm, yes you did say you were going to read Vandermeer with us... https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I've seen a number of documentaries which involve the young king and I believe a subset did delve into forensics, but it would be difficult to say whether any would be the one you're referring to. If you can find details on the one you mean, though, I'd probably find it quite interesting!
Traveller wrote: "You know, I am tired of not getting any updates from this group. Does anybody know where to set it? I mean, this thread is set to "you are following this discussion" but i NEVER get updates from..."1.)Go the "Group Home" page
2.)under the banner, look for the line that says "you are a member of this group. Edit" click "edit"
3.) at the bottom of the edit page there is a link labelled "discussion options" or something like that. Click this link.
4.) set the radio buttons to your liking
If you have already done this and you are still not getting notified, I don't know what to do.
I imagine Traveller's done all that—'coz I have and nothing helps!
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