Clever heading here – Welcome
Just a place for me to put my random thoughts …
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What makes a “team” a “team?”
… Meanwhile back at the ranch …SO I wrote 1600 words or so in a rambling post that started out with the intent of answering the “what make a team” question. THAT post desperately needs an edit, and maybe I’ll post it later this week … Shorter version“Team” is another of those “interesting” words. Merriam-Webster…
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What makes a game a “game”?
Movie“Free Guy” was “cute” and fun. First thought: they are examining a very old question. Maybe at the root of the movie is that the old “unexamined life is not worth living” thing. GamesANYWAY – the movie deals with ‘gaming’ in general so the “secondary thought” becomes just what makes something a “game?” Merriam Webster…
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“new freedoms”
new and improved!A random headline that caught my attention (I think it was an online post from a Scottish media outlet/newspaper) mentioned the “new freedoms” being permitted due to COVID restrictions being eased. That obviously set off my internal geek semantics alarms. “Free” is one of those “understood but hard to define” words. MAYBE “free”…
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sequels, spin-offs, remakes, nothing new under the sun
Ecclesiastes and existentialismThe book of “Ecclesiastes” is one of the “wisdom” books in the Judeo-Christian Bible. In a Christian Bible it is typically found in the “Old Testament” between “Proverbs” and “Song of Solomon.” In a Hebrew Bible the books are arranged differently and might be called Qohelet (Preacher)- but it is the same “Ecclesiastes.”…
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fidelity, wisdom, and virtue
First principles:As a first principle we can say that “conscious thought” always precedes “intentional action.” Volumes have been written on that concept – and it makes for an interesting “two drink discussion” – i.e. what exactly is “consciousness?” is a “reflex” action “thought?” We then wander into the concept of “mind vs body” – i.e.…
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Visibility, connections, purpose, “happiness”
Quick shout-out to the Merriam-Webster word of the day for August 1, 2021 – pulchritude. English has a large number of words – for any number of reasons that I won’t go on about here. “Pulchritude” comes into the language via the Latin adjective “pulcher” which means “beautiful.” The “ch” is pronounced as a “k”/”hard…
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Measuring “greatness”
Just what do you mean “great?”Random thought time: What makes something/someone “great”? Merriam-Webster offers us definitions for “great” as adjective, verb, and noun. The earliest form of the English word (as an adjective) boil down to “large” – so a “great person” in the 12th century would have just been “exceptionally large.” Of course saying…
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Honor, Eye for an Eye, Greed, Living Well …
According to Yahoo! Finance – “Coursera, Inc. operates an online educational content platform that connects learners, educators, and institutions” CourseraWith a lot of the “history” classes – the instructor/presenter is an expert of the subject, teaches at a prestigious university, and has probably written a book. SO the online coursera class becomes “marketing” for the…
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“The Immigrant” – Charlie Chaplin 1917
disfluenciesMy “amateur hour” production of commentary while watching “The Immigrant” fell victim to volume mixing. The “learning curve” lesson is that “while I’m streaming/recording” I don’t hear the sound that is going to the stream – so the music volume on the movie was too high making the recording of my commentary unusable. File this…
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“Movies”, “Records”, and me – part 2
RecordsNotice that the word “movie” is not bound to a specific technology. e.g. “Movies” used to be synonymous with “films” – then the film went away, but the pictures remain … The same is true of “records” as a noun. Remember, gool ol’ Mr Edison made the first sound recordings on wax cylinders. So “records”…