Off topic answers: Seafood, time travel, and dystopian novels

Formerly Known as General Jack D Ripper

Wow! Brave New World you are entering into. Yikes!

Have you ever read Orwell’s 1984? If yes, your thoughts on how it compares to the very rapidly changing world we live in today? I

In other words when will you personally know when:

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”

Honestly don’t remember 1984 because the last time I read it was probably 1984 and I was too young to fully comprehend the mind-bending futuristic state and the implications that dystopia represented in the author’s allegory were. I just thought it was funny that they “got so much wrong” about the future. (Hey, I was 9 at the time).

I did, however, recently read Brave New World. I was impressed with the different twist where instead of having “Big Brother” watching their every move, they were desensitized by entertainment and egocentric pursuits. Frankly, this seems more realistic and thus a more frightening view of the potential future.

Note that Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner (among many) tried to build upon both themes, which was fun for a while. But at some point I put down a book (I think it was the Uglies) and said out loud “that’s enough YA dystopian fiction for a while.”

Mo’celts

Austrian author and nobel laureat Elias Canetti wrote extensively about people’s “acoustic masks.” You can can think of it this way: we all put on different identities (masks per Canetti) in different situations. For example I might put on the identity of a doctor at a professional conference and a sport fans at a pub. Canetti thought we all have masks in the form of the way we talk, write, and communicate with language. Maybe certain words, or rhythm/cadence, or accents, or phrases we use, etc. So, what do you say about you acoustic mask or masks? What do you think it is characterized by? What does the way you talk or write say about who you are?

I get what the laureat is saying, and he’s clearly much smarter than I am, but I don’t know if I see it so much as a mask as the three dimensional (or more) aspect of our faces/personalities. Just because someone in one setting sees you in one way and another person in completely different setting brings out something different doesn’t mean we’re masking or altering our faces.

Fundamentally we’re still the same person, but if you introduce a series of different stimulations in the social experiment of our lives, you get a different reaction for each stimuli.

BHCELTICS

What stock should I buy? The goal here is to make a lot of money very quickly with a relatively modest initial investment. Please help.

Short term goals in investing is just glorified gambling. You might as well put a few bucks on a basketball game (I’m sure you’ll find no shortage of companies willing to help you out). On the other hand, I do not encourage anyone to get involved in gambling. Especially if you have an obsessive personality type (the main reason I’ve always stayed away – I mean, look at how much I think about the Celtics).

Now, if you are really interested in making money, I suggest the very boring, but statistically proven method of dollar cost averaging. It won’t help you buy a new pair of shoes next week, but you might be able to retire several years younger.

Morpheus6610

I am constantly annoyed watching games and missing key moments while TV directors are cutting away till the ball crosses the mid court. The game is too fast for this. I don’t want to look at players’ faces. How many key moments do we miss because a director is making art instead of showing basketball.

If you have league pass you should look at some of the feed options where you can follow just specific players or a continuous feed of the on court action. That may be an interesting future state of consuming sports (maximum flexibility) but I tend to think most (casual) fans are just as happy doing as little thinking and interacting as possible and letting the “experts” tell them what is happening on the court. I mean, that’s how I consume football, baseball, and any other sport beyond basketball.

AlohaCeltic

Where’s the best place to get fried clams? Do you think aliens would like fried clams?

If you are ever near the Cape, check out The Seafood Shanty.

If aliens had the same taste buds as humans or at least humanoid beings, I don’t see why they wouldn’t like fried clams. Unless of course they worshiped clams and found our practice of deep frying them and consuming them to be insulting to the point of triggering a War of the Worlds situation. That would be bad.

Then again, if any advanced civilization was interested in the Earth for any reason beyond using us as fuel or slaves, you’d think they would have shown up by now. But you never know.

Dutch D3str0y3r

Ok, here goes.

If you had to pick any country, besides the US, to live in for the rest of your life. Which country would it be and why?

My mother knew 5 languages and taught me Spanish for 2 years and I still can’t put together a non-English sentence. So monolingualism is a limiting factor to me (much to my shame).

With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the trips I’ve taken to Ireland, Scotland, and even London. So I could probably settle down over there if necessary. Perhaps Australia as well. I just haven’t had the pleasure of visiting there yet, so I don’t know for sure.

Also, with unlimited funds I could easily see my wife and I taking a couple of years just jumping on one cruise after another.

Tenacious D

Eric Clapton. Goat? All-star? Meh? Cultural appropriator? (it came up in another forum). My take is NO. Yes (duh). No. No.

Clapton is like Dave Cowens to me. I have tremendous respect for them, heard lots of great things, but they were just before my time so I don’t think I’ll ever have a full appreciation for who they were and what they meant to fans.

Eddie Van Halen was more my generation but I’m not as big of a guitar fan as some of my friends. Shout out to my buddy Andy and his love for Stevie Ray Vaughan.

As an aside, it does seem like guitar solos aren’t as prevalent as they used to be. We need more Mike McCready and The Edge and less power cords and synthesized loops in my humble opinion but that’s not going to stop me from enjoying Twenty One Pilots or AJR.

Aaronwhite12

Is a hotdog a sandwich?

No, it’s a taco.

Is cereal a soup?

AlohaCeltic

How would our society be different if humans had evolved to reproduce only in a brief infrequent periodic window, say once every 5 years?

The phrase “party like its 1999” would have a whole new meaning.

Also, the NBA draft would be loaded every 5 years and pretty slim pickings every other year. I guess that’s one way to eliminate tanking (in most years), though I’d imagine there are easier ways.

This is actually a fun concept. If you stole it from a YA dystopian novel, let me know how good the book is before I jump back into that genre.

pjhimself

Do you believe in extraterrestrial life/UFOs ?

I can’t rule it out in an infinite universe.

Enik

It’s theoretically possible to orbit the edge of the event horizon of a black hole to achieve time travel to the future. Would you volunteer for the mission?

I’ve seen enough movies, read enough books, and generally been saturated through various forms of entertainment for enough years to know one thing. Time travel never works out the way you want it to. Generally speaking things end up worse than they were before and I’m pretty sure I’d hose things up good.

As a God fearing man, I am content to leave the job of balancing the entire fate of the universe to the omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving Lord.

That’s enough of my rambling. Thanks again for your thoughtful and fun questions. Feel free to react to my reactions and keep the off topic discussion going in the comments below.

Cheers!