|
|
|
Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
 Posted - 10/14/2007 : 10:44:17 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by marfknox
Ooo - I got another one. Money can't cure incurable diseases, including insanity. I'd rather be among the working poor and healthy than rich and severely mentally ill.
|
Ummmm.
Money turns "batshit crazy" into "eccentric", Marf.
Sorry. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
 |
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2007 : 13:13:54 [Permalink]
|
Marfknox.....
I promise not to hit on you this time, as I was perceived to be doing from my wheelchair last time we met!
With respect to your commentary on natural talent, I am unsure as to what other kind of talent there may be, however your point is extremely well taken and requires some thought and research on my part before I can properly answer. I will return this evening or tomorrow with a response.
Ooo - I got another one. Money can't cure incurable diseases, including insanity. I'd rather be among the working poor and healthy than rich and severely mentally ill.
|
As regards a cure for incurable diseases, I believe this is a form of oxymoron and as such is precluded from consideration by my original caveat that we must exclude things that don't exist! A curable incurable disease is much like an irresistible force applied to an immovable object!
Insanity is not currently seen as a medical condition, rather a legal definition, and usually thought of as temporary. Physicians prefer the term mental illness, which frequently is curable by expensive treatment and medication. I have personal experience with this and I must agree with your "working poor" aphorism. However, if I had not had considerable financial resource available at the time of my illness, I would very likely be institutionalized or dead (by my own hand) today! |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2007 : 14:24:48 [Permalink]
|
Filthy.....
| We have had such an infection here in NC this year. Fox bite. |
We've even got it here in Idaho. Everytime I turn on the jabberbox, I get fucking O'Reilly or Hannity! |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2007 : 19:54:00 [Permalink]
|
Filthy.....
| Gotta 'nother'n: It won't get J.K. Rowling to write an eight Harry Potter. She's richer'n God, and good and sick of Harry after those seven long ones, and she's still involved in the movie productions. She also seems to be honest. |
Touche' She probably couldn't be bribed! I would try with the offer of enormous sums of money to be donated to various charities of her choosing, playing to every emotional sensitivity that she has to attempt to pursuade her, but she is an artist and probably has decided that Harry is a finished piece of work.
However, how about this? You hire experts to intensely study her style. Commission them to find an author who can closely (perfectly, if possible) copy her style. Write a book that (under intense legal scrutiny) appears to be a Harry Potter written by anonymous of some sort. (Can't use the Potter name directly or the other characters, but can certainly re-create most of her Magic.) The book needs to be so good, that most people reading it will believe it to be written by Rowling. About Harry Potter, not named.
Then send a manuscript of the book to J.K. anonymously. Absolutely untraceable. (Remember, you have as much dough or more than she does) Invite her to read the manuscript (which is anonymous) and tell her that if she does not write an eighth Harry Potter, you (unknown) are going to quietly publish the manuscript as a book, make it a little hard to find, get word all over the Internet and elsewhere (tips to reviewers, notes to columnists and commentators, etc.), and make it an underground sensation! People all over the world will think that she has written a new Potter! It will become a best seller!
Demonstrate, by sending her one million dollars in cash with your note and the manuscript, that you likely have the wherewithal to carry it off.(remember, you have billions!)
Tell her that if she will write a real eighth Harry Potter within two years and publish it, you will then meet with her privately, identify yourself, destroy the manuscript or give it to her, and contract - with her lawyers and yours present - to not ever publish a copy of it. She, of course, would have to hold you harmless, in return.
I think she would have your manuscript deeply studied by a crack team of barristers who, if your lawyers were really good, would advise her that you probably could publish it and escape prosecution for copywright infraction. At that point, I think she would decide she would rather make another hundred million or so, than have her creative integrity soiled by a believable imposter!
At that time you could walk away, having successfully bribed J.K. Rowling to write an eighth Harry Potter.
|
|
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 10/14/2007 : 23:43:08 [Permalink]
|
For $20,000, you can buy the lies, under oath, of a real scientist. Those of Michael Behe, anyway, and perhaps only if the lies are to be "pious" ones. (Behe was paid $20,000 by the Association of Christian Schools for stating in an "expert witness" deposition that anti-evolution biology textbooks were "excellent.")
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 10/15/2007 01:54:55 |
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 03:32:18 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
Filthy.....
| Gotta 'nother'n: It won't get J.K. Rowling to write an eight Harry Potter. She's richer'n God, and good and sick of Harry after those seven long ones, and she's still involved in the movie productions. She also seems to be honest. |
Touche' She probably couldn't be bribed! I would try with the offer of enormous sums of money to be donated to various charities of her choosing, playing to every emotional sensitivity that she has to attempt to pursuade her, but she is an artist and probably has decided that Harry is a finished piece of work.
However, how about this? You hire experts to intensely study her style. Commission them to find an author who can closely (perfectly, if possible) copy her style. Write a book that (under intense legal scrutiny) appears to be a Harry Potter written by anonymous of some sort. (Can't use the Potter name directly or the other characters, but can certainly re-create most of her Magic.) The book needs to be so good, that most people reading it will believe it to be written by Rowling. About Harry Potter, not named.
Then send a manuscript of the book to J.K. anonymously. Absolutely untraceable. (Remember, you have as much dough or more than she does) Invite her to read the manuscript (which is anonymous) and tell her that if she does not write an eighth Harry Potter, you (unknown) are going to quietly publish the manuscript as a book, make it a little hard to find, get word all over the Internet and elsewhere (tips to reviewers, notes to columnists and commentators, etc.), and make it an underground sensation! People all over the world will think that she has written a new Potter! It will become a best seller!
Demonstrate, by sending her one million dollars in cash with your note and the manuscript, that you likely have the wherewithal to carry it off.(remember, you have billions!)
Tell her that if she will write a real eighth Harry Potter within two years and publish it, you will then meet with her privately, identify yourself, destroy the manuscript or give it to her, and contract - with her lawyers and yours present - to not ever publish a copy of it. She, of course, would have to hold you harmless, in return.
I think she would have your manuscript deeply studied by a crack team of barristers who, if your lawyers were really good, would advise her that you probably could publish it and escape prosecution for copywright infraction. At that point, I think she would decide she would rather make another hundred million or so, than have her creative integrity soiled by a believable imposter!
At that time you could walk away, having successfully bribed J.K. Rowling to write an eighth Harry Potter.
|
Or she could compliment you upon your style and creativity, and tell you to publish & be damned. And then, just before she set the dogs on you, she'd tell you to watch your reviews.
There is no more competitive and cut-throat world than that of the professional writer. Flowery statements of integrity and honor to the contrary, big-name writers, and Rowling's name is downright humongous, can influence a review in their genre with no more than a mild word over a cup of coffee.
Oh, and your manuscript having given her a few ideas, none of then concerning Harry, she'd be back at the keyboard earning a few more million.
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
|
|
|
marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 03:33:49 [Permalink]
|
Val wrote: Ummmm.
Money turns "batshit crazy" into "eccentric", Marf.
Sorry. |
I hope this is a joke. I don't think that anyone who has watched a few people and their family and friends suffer because of severe mental illness would say something like this and mean it seriously.
While certainly there are mental illnesses that cause a person to simply behave strangely, most of the people I know with severe mental illness suffer intensely, and their suffering is directly caused by the illness, not outside forces that could be altered with money. Depending on the condition, people with mental illness can be tortured by feelings of paranoia, internal voices, hallucinations, and self-worthlessness. They are disconnected from reality which obviously limits the quality of their interpersonal relationships and can lead to behavior that is self destructive and/or harmful to others. Dr. W.C. Minor, who gain fame for contributing thousands of entries for the Oxford English Dictionary was confined to an asylum most of his life because he murdered a man while having a paranoid hallucinatory episode. Later in life he cut off his own penis during another episode. Many with certain mental illnesses can develop egocentricism, which is often not recognized as part of their mental illness, but rather a negative personality trait. Severe mental illness is an unwanted tragedy regardless of how much money someone has. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
|
| Edited by - marfknox on 10/15/2007 03:34:06 |
|
|
|
JohnOAS
SFN Regular
Australia
800 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 04:29:14 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by marfknox
Val wrote: Ummmm.
Money turns "batshit crazy" into "eccentric", Marf.
Sorry. |
I hope this is a joke. |
I'm 98% certain that Val meant it as a joke. I've apologised for bad jokes straight after making them.
Val's statement is, I believe ,a version of a http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eccentriccommon joke[/b], if not popular joke. |
John's just this guy, you know. |
|
|
|
marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 11:02:00 [Permalink]
|
John wrote: | I'm 98% certain that Val meant it as a joke. I've apologised for bad jokes straight after making them. |
Admittedly, I'm oversensitive about this because it's close to home, so I hope I'm not over-reacting. There is tons of mental illness in my family. I watched one realtive who was my same age go from being a bright, happy, ambitious pre-teen to being a suicidal, self-mutilating psychotic. Whenever I had teenage angst I became frightened that I, too, might be developing something, but thankfully I seem to have been passed over with regards to those genes. To me, mental illness is the worst kind of illness. Physical pain can at least be treated with pain-killers or coped with through time and the natural ability to adapt to limitations. I've learned to live with plantar faciitis and I'm getting more and more used to my migraines. But when mental illness is severe, it's like losing one's very sense of self and humanity. It can alter one's personality, and it can cause one to become totally out of touch with reality, and thus no longer be able to connect with other people and meaningfully engage with the world. Chilling stuff. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
|
| Edited by - marfknox on 10/15/2007 11:02:21 |
|
|
|
marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 11:11:56 [Permalink]
|
| I'm not sure I get where this conversation is going. I don't think anyone here would deny that money in our current society equals power, and that this power is maximized when the person with money is clever. However, the power of money is dependent on a human consensus. It is based on ideas. The worth of various currencies around the world is a balance of trusts, and certain social forces can cause values to plummet. Thus, people who have more money (and therefore more power) have an interest in a stable overall society. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
|
| Edited by - marfknox on 10/15/2007 11:12:13 |
|
|
|
marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 11:27:41 [Permalink]
|
bngbuck wrote: | With respect to your commentary on natural talent, I am unsure as to what other kind of talent there may be, |
developed talent.
| As regards a cure for incurable diseases, I believe this is a form of oxymoron and as such is precluded from consideration by my original caveat that we must exclude things that don't exist! |
Sometimes people who have a disease that is typically uncurable get better. Sometimes treatments work for certain people, but fail to help others. This isn't in the realm of the impossible.
| Insanity is not currently seen as a medical condition, rather a legal definition, and usually thought of as temporary. Physicians prefer the term mental illness, |
Yeah, that would be why I also used that term. In context I was clearly using "insanity" to mean mental illness.
| which frequently is curable by expensive treatment and medication. |
Mental illnesses are treatable, but most are not easily cured even with expensive treatments. Generally they are maintained in the same way that a condition such as having diabetes can be maintained with treatment. Some mental illnesses are temporary or mild. Others are difficult to treat or maintain and lead to being institutionalized or losing legal autonomy.
| However, if I had not had considerable financial resource available at the time of my illness, I would very likely be institutionalized or dead (by my own hand) today! |
I doubt anyone would deny that mental illness is more common and severe among the poor due to a lack of proper treatment. I was simply pointing out that being rich does not guarantee either physical or mental health. There have been rich people who have killed themselves for no apparent reason other than their own depression. There have been rich people who have been institutionalized for mental illness and lost power of attorney over their posessions. And there have been rich people who have died or suffered due to medical error or failure of treatment to work for them. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
|
| Edited by - marfknox on 10/15/2007 11:29:00 |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 15:30:43 [Permalink]
|
Filthy.....
I wrote:
| Then send a manuscript of the book to J.K. anonymously. Absolutely untraceable. (Remember, you have as much dough or more than she does) |
Having read that, you wrote:
| Or she could compliment you upon your style and creativity, and tell you to publish & be damned. And then, just before she set the dogs on you, she'd tell you to watch your reviews. |
You see, she couldn't say anything to you because she would not know who or where you were! She would have to accept your ultimatum and write Harry #8, or do nothing!
Also, I wrote:| I think she would have your manuscript deeply studied by a crack team of barristers who, if your lawyers were really good, would advise her that you probably could publish it and escape prosecution for copywright infraction. At that point, I think she would decide she would rather make another hundred million or so, than have her creative integrity soiled by a believable imposter! |
I shoud have added here: So she would go ahead and write Harry 8 and publish it!
So, give her a year or so to crank out #8, and then, if that book is not forthcoming, go ahead and publish your clever rip-off. She has been advised, and will be again, that she probably can't win in court. But she tries anyway. Enormous publicity. Book Star Wars! Rowling vs. Anonymous. Nobody knows whether it's for real or a gigantic publicity trick. Book sells like crazy and you get most or all of your money back. And most of the world believes that Rowling really did write a Harry 8 because the book is damn good. Her denials just feed the fires!
End result - you have convinced most of the literate world that J.K. Rowling has written has another Harry Potter. Only you, Rowling, and your few, well-bribed co-conspirators know the truth.
Years pass, and in the mists of history, appearance frequently becomes reality! A glance at the Shakespeare vs. Francis Bacon (or Christopher Marlowe) controvery will confirm that.
So, if you made a bet with me before starting the scam, that you could bribe Rowling into writing Harry #8; and you told me nothing of the particulars of how you did it, when I saw the anonymous (fake) Harry 8 hit the best seller lists, when I read it and agreed that it sure sounded like her, I would very likely pay you off. That's the next best thing to proving the point, making everyone think that you proved the point.
Actually, Filthy, you win. You couldn't buy off Rowling unless she capitulated to your intial blackmail because she didn't want to see her creation sullied in any way! I cannot state with any degree of cetainty that that would happen, however! |
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 10/15/2007 : 16:21:05 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
Filthy.....
I wrote:
| Then send a manuscript of the book to J.K. anonymously. Absolutely untraceable. (Remember, you have as much dough or more than she does) |
Having read that, you wrote:
| Or she could compliment you upon your style and creativity, and tell you to publish & be damned. And then, just before she set the dogs on you, she'd tell you to watch your reviews. |
You see, she couldn't say anything to you because she would not know who or where you were! She would have to accept your ultimatum and write Harry #8, or do nothing!
Also, I wrote:| I think she would have your manuscript deeply studied by a crack team of barristers who, if your lawyers were really good, would advise her that you probably could publish it and escape prosecution for copywright infraction. At that point, I think she would decide she would rather make another hundred million or so, than have her creative integrity soiled by a believable imposter! |
I shoud have added here: So she would go ahead and write Harry 8 and publish it!
So, give her a year or so to crank out #8, and then, if that book is not forthcoming, go ahead and publish your clever rip-off. She has been advised, and will be again, that she probably can't win in court. But she tries anyway. Enormous publicity. Book Star Wars! Rowling vs. Anonymous. Nobody knows whether it's for real or a gigantic publicity trick. Book sells like crazy and you get most or all of your money back. And most of the world believes that Rowling really did write a Harry 8 because the book is damn good. Her denials just feed the fires!
End result - you have convinced most of the literate world that J.K. Rowling has written has another Harry Potter. Only you, Rowling, and your few, well-bribed co-conspirators know the truth.
Years pass, and in the mists of history, appearance frequently becomes reality! A glance at the Shakespeare vs. Francis Bacon (or Christopher Marlowe) controvery will confirm that.
So, if you made a bet with me before starting the scam, that you could bribe Rowling into writing Harry #8; and you told me nothing of the particulars of how you did it, when I saw the anonymous (fake) Harry 8 hit the best seller lists, when I read it and agreed that it sure sounded like her, I would very likely pay you off. That's the next best thing to proving the point, making everyone think that you proved the point.
Actually, Filthy, you win. You couldn't buy off Rowling unless she capitulated to your intial blackmail because she didn't want to see her creation sullied in any way! I cannot state with any degree of cetainty that that would happen, however!
|
Indeed. The flaw is that most likely she wouldn't care. And she'd still steal ideas from your work -- she's a writer; it's second nature.
Lemmee see if I can think of another one. It's turned out to not be as easy as I'd initially thought.
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
|
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 21:02:46 [Permalink]
|
Marfknox.....
You wrote:
| But, if one lacks the natural talent to engage with the art world dialogs (if one is aiming to fit their work into the context of conventional art history) and/or persistence to master a craft (if one desires to paint like Vermeer or DaVinci) no amount of money will solve their problem. |
I believe that art, like all aesthetic endeavor, indeed lies in the eye of the beholder. I have seen works out of the Rembrandt school (or contemporary simulations of his style) that have been denounced by critics as the work of hacks or poseurs. To my eye they were beautiful and I saw them as art. But I am not a critic and have no idea of how the respective developed talents of a Master and a poseur are judged. All I have is a well-developed sense of what pleases me visually.
However, when a Jackson Pollack, or Warhol comes along, I start to think that much "art" is truly created by notoriety. Some of this kind of thing may well be critic-created. Much of Pollack is pleasant to my eye, but neither the talent nor the craft is anywhere as evident to me as that of Titian, Vermeer, or certainly Da Vinci (and, obviously, many other Masters)
I am cynical enough to believe that one could find an excellent draftsman or CAD operator, hire them to noodle around and produce some carefully contrived provocative images either of near photographic realism (Warhol), or dazzling color splashing (Pollack), or something totally different (fractals, for example) and then proceed to spend a large fortune publicizing these pictures. Certainly gallery galas galore. Get as much coverage as you can buy to expose the images to the art world and, especially, the public at large. Purchase, bribe, or whatever it takes to publish a lot of rhetoric and comment about the new artist and his movement. Hire an eccentric actor to play the part.
If you spent enough in the right places, you could create an impression that something new and important was happening in the world of art. Many critics might not buy in, but you could undoubtedly bribe others to write glowing reviews and even create your own critics and put them in the right places to write.. As I have said elsewhere, controversy can be manipulated to an end. Especially with the application of lots of money.
Look at (no, please don't) Fox News. Here is a billionaire spending millions every day to create a totally phony political reality for millions of people. For a while there it looked like a majority of the US electorate! Anyway, if that can be done in the world of politics, it can be done in the world of art.
Pablo Picasso wrote:
"In art the mass of people no longer seeks consolation and exaltation, but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessences, seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I myself, since Cubism and before, have satisfied these masters and critics with all the changing oddities which passed through my head, and the less they understood me, the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, puzzles, rebuses, arabesques, I became famous, and that very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt were great painters. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere."
Pablo Picasso |
(Bolding mine)
The same reasoning applies to many of the art forms. If "rap" or "hip hop" is artistic expression, I certainly believe that "natural talent" can be bought. At the risk of offending many here, I would apply the same opprobrium to some rock music. Before igniting a nuclear explosion, please notice that I said "some". However, I cotton to Classical and Jazz as to what my ancient ears perceive as Art.
| Money can't buy charisma, creativity, and intelligence. Money can hire consultants to help with that, but it can't make the buyer smart enough to realize if their consultant is doing a good job. |
I personally think that money bought the early charisma of both Ronald Reagan (a hack actor who read a speech on TV prepared by professionals and became a Republican icon) and George W. Bush (a Texas rich kid oil failure whose Daddy's money pushed him into a governmental vacuum and then whom the evil genius of Karl Rove propelled to nearly winning the presidency before the totally bribed majority of the Supreme Court cinched it for him!)
But I'm just the 200 pound cynic in the room, and to hell with giving evidence for those statements!
Let's talk about creativity and intelligence tomorrow. Now it's getting tough! |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2007 : 21:45:28 [Permalink]
|
Marfknox.....
| I'm not sure I get where this conversation is going. I don't think anyone here would deny that money in our current society equals power, and that this power is maximized when the person with money is clever. However, the power of money is dependent on a human consensus. It is based on ideas. The worth of various currencies around the world is a balance of trusts, and certain social forces can cause values to plummet. Thus, people who have more money (and therefore more power) have an interest in a stable overall society. |
I'm not sure what you are saying here.I feel that money = power and enormous money = enormous power if cleverly used. To the point that far more things can be bought than most folks ever imagine.
I've tried this one on a variety of people over the years, and I am constantly amazed at the lack of imagination that I encounter. Folks really don't believe that money can buy happiness. It sure as hell has for me! For those that deny themselves a lot of comfort food like god and heaven and all that shit, it becomes a pretty material world. My point is, most don't realize how material it is.
Anyway, I don't understand the relevance of the last part of your post to my thesis that money can buy (almost) anything.
However, I am arthritic, alzheimic, and ancient. Also eccentric, as Val was kind enough to point out. So I probably just don't get it! |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Money can buy (almost) Anything!
