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Re: SB66 Ep. 127 First Contact

eblonk — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:49:06 -0000

I only know Childhood's End through a song. I need to read it at some point.

Allow me to indulge, I love to plug Van Der Graaf Generator, UK's best kept music secret. Singer Peter Hammill is also the writer of my favourite song about stage actors, After The Show.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Childlike Faith in Childhood's End

"Existence is a stage on which we pass,
a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart;
it's hopeless, I know, but onward I must go
and try to make a start
at seeing something more
than day to day survival, chased by final death.
if I believed this the sum of the life to which we've come,
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Somehow, there must be more.

There was a time when more was felt than known
but now, entrenched inside my sett,
in light more mundane, thought rattles round my brain:
we live, we die...and yet?

In the beginning there was order and destiny
but now that path has reached the border
and on our knees is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
Though the forces which hold us in place
last through eons in unruffled grace
we, too, wear the face of creation.

As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space is living history.
It seems as though time must betray us yet we're alive
and though I see no God to save us, still we survive
through the centuries of progress
which don't get us very far.
All illusion! All is bogus...
we don't yet know what we are.

Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man,
with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand
and though, in time, the sea may claim us for its own
we are the rocks which root the future - on us it grows!
We might not be there to share it
if eternity's a jest but I think that I can bear it
if the next life is the best.
Even if there is a heaven when we die,
endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
that always comes as answer to the question
"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"

Adrift without a course,
it's very lonely here,
our only conjecture
what lies behind the dark.
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
think of a lifetime which means more than my own one,
dreams of a grander thing than we are.
Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders...
when all life is over who can say
no mutated force shall remain?

Though the towers of the city are denied to we men of clay
still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Frightened in the silence, frightened, but thinking very hard,
let us make computations of the stars.

Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run:
faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes...
colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate.
The universe now beckons
and Man, too, must take His place;
just a few last fleeting seconds
to wander in the waste,
and the children who were ourselves move on,
reincarnation stills its now perfected song,
and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.

All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too,
all the throng who have danced a merry tune...
human we can all be, but Humanity we must rise above,
in the name of all faith and hope and love.
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too,
there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude,
naked to the galaxies...naked, but clothed in the overview:
as we reach Childhood's End we must start anew.

And though dark is the highway,
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past.

In the death of mere Humans Life shall start!"

Re: Webb For Graham Against DADT

eblonk — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 15:02:22 -0000

I see a lot of people from the Terry M. Helvey School of Upright Citizenship. Terry, empowered by the kind of people that rail against gays in the army, turned Allen Schindler into a near unrecognisable corpse. Why did he think he could? Decent people hate gays, so he could. Of course, anti-gay people washed their hands of it properly, secretly hoping another of their ilk would go beserk. Enter Calvin Glover, who happily obliged by killing Barry Winchell.
Of couse, of course, it was the fault of Allen and Barry. Terry and Calvin are nice, decent, gay-hating people that only did what they were encouraged to do.

I know, Allen made the 2-Q-T-2-B-S-T-R-8 joke, which justifies a gruesome summary excecution. *in a Bush accent* 'he probably wasn't a christian like good ole Terry was'

Re: Google Maps Lawsuit: Woman Follows Directions, Gets Run Over

eblonk — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:30:04 -0000

Companies and technology? The damage from person-to-person advice is nothing to be sneezed at either. People tend to trust information they get from other people if it's directly and personally (hence all kinds of non-sense products and services get sold). The thing is, people don't always double-check or use their common sense. Not too mention overestimating their own common sense or ability to judge.
Back to companies and technology: people actually have a distrust against these things, also without checking. Uncritical distrust is as foolish as uncritical trust.

Re: Our online lives slowly leak away

eblonk — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:52:00 -0000

Don't worry about it. It happens.
There's lots of stuff from my (pre-computer age) youth that's gone, like hardcopy photos. That's how it is. Focus on the important things you need now. Older stuff will hop along, much of it anyway.

Re: Using Twitter as a Sales Tool - Episode 16

eblonk — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:12:07 -0000

The 140char limit has a good side in that it forces to be clear and concise.
As for selling there, besides if someone requests it, I have some qualms about (cold) selling on a network of friends. LinkedIn, no problem selling myself professionally there, facebook and twitter, got some doubts.