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Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God? - Epicurus -
RIP. 2001 remains the freshest science fiction movie ever made.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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RIP to one of the giants.
Apolyton's Grim Reaper 2008, 2010 & 2011
RIP lest we forget... SG (2) and LaFayette -- Civ2 Succession Games Brothers-in-ArmsComment
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QFTOriginally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Rendezvous with Rama is one of my favorite books ever.
Resident Filipina Lady Boy Expert.Comment
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Damn.
I had just finished reading the 500-600 page collection of all of his short stories. He had a great knack for writing a short story in which you really felt you were only briefly visiting another universe, knowing you'd never experience more than the few minutes / years of that world's existence.
That, and one of his short stories really made me proud of humanity. It captured our spirit better than any another story I've ever read:
Pour one out."You know," he said to Rugon, "I feel rather afraid of {Humanity}. Suppose they don't like our little Federation?" He waved once more toward the star-clouds that lay massed across the screen, glowing with the light of their countless suns.
"Something tells me they'll be very determined people," he added. "We had better be polite to them. After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand million to one."
Rugon laughed at his captain's little joke.
Twenty years afterward, the remark didn't seem funny.Comment
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RIP, Dave.The cake is NOT a lie. It's so delicious and moist.
The Weighted Companion Cube is cheating on you, that slut.Comment
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Had a good innings thoughSpace is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Douglas Adams (Influential author)Comment
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TV interview from 1985 with Terry Wogan
I love being beaten by women - LorizaelComment
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I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life - anybody's life, my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.Comment
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Oh no.
My favourite author of the genre, gone. What a marvellous career, and what a remarkable life he had, so full of achievements and adventure.
R.I.P. Arthur, and thanks for all the thrills.Comment
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Sad news. Always liked the man.
The 9 Million Names of God is my favourite SF short story.Only feebs vote.Comment
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My tribute to him and the Big Three.
A Tribute to the Trinity
Today, on the 19th of March, 2008, the last of the Big Three has passed away, and the beginning of their age has finally come to an end. For they are those that have seen the future, and shaped it. Arthur C. Clarke has gone on to join Heinlein and Asimov in death.
Today, as a tribute to him, I went out and bought a collection of his short stories, along with two of his novels. My chest is leaden knowing that that collection is now complete, and that never shall anything be added to it again.
I remember when, as a child, I read the short stories and Foundation series by Asimov, and the Space Odyssey series by Clarke. It is only in them that I found the cleanness and honesty and innocence of spirit which drew me to the pleasures and rigour of science and engineering, and to where I am now.
It is not known how many young people became interested in the sciences because of these three. Probably, the space program of many a country has them to thank for its existence. They inspired in us the confidence that the world does, contrary to all that we have been told, make sense.
No matter how I felt when cracked open a book by any of them, by the end of a few pages, I was always lost in the sublimely elegant worlds of their creation, and when I finally returned, it was always with a renewed sense of optimism, of joy, of a gayness of the spirit which buoyed me up throughout the most trying of times.
For a time, I could be as a child again, lost in plain wonder at existence and the excitement of discovery, in amazement at the miracle of my humanity, mesmerised by a vision of our boundless potential, by dreams of our expansion into the vastness of space, and by the final vision of our surpassing of ourselves. I still can.
It was Clarke who popularised the idea of the satellite and geosynchronous satellite. The reason I can talk with my friends across three oceans is because of this man's vision.
The man who can truly dream is one in a million. He who can show others his dream, and enthral them with his vision, is rarer still. And rarest of all is one who can inspire others to dream their own dreams, and to be an oasis when the world seems to them like a desert.
Thank you, Big Three, for quenching the thirst of millions of lost, wandering, and parched young minds. Thank you for teaching us to dream. Thank you for fuelling our soul when it seemed that its fire would go out. Thank you for giving us the optimism to always push on. And thank you most of all for reminding us always, without hesitation or doubt, that no matter what we set out to do, it's possible.
Wherever you are, Deus of our Skies, may it always be full of stars.
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Sad to see him go.
Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez DávilaComment
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Ah dang.Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard DawkinsComment
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