Offbeat News - Page 6

Jet · 01-08-2011, 01:21 PM

Censorship of Huck Finn controversy

New edition of 'Huckleberry Finn' to lose the N-word

CNN Debate Video
http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/01/0....ew/index.html

(EW.com) -- What is a word worth? According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books' upcoming edition of Mark Twain's seminal novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will remove all instances of the N-word -- I'll give you a hint, it's not nonesuch -- present in the text and replace it with slave.

The new book will also remove usage of the word Injun. The effort is spearheaded by Twain expert Alan Gribben, who says his PC-ified version is not an attempt to neuter the classic but rather to update it. "Race matters in these books," Gribben told PW. "It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."

Is editing "Huckleberry Finn" a good idea?
Unsurprisingly, there are already those who are yelling "Censorship!" as well as others with thesauruses yelling "Bowdlerization!" and "Comstockery!"

Their position is understandable: Twain's book has been one of the most often misunderstood novels of all time, continuously being accused of perpetuating the prejudiced attitudes it is criticizing, and it's a little disheartening to see a cave-in to those who would ban a book simply because it requires context.

On the other hand, if this puts the book into the hands of kids who would not otherwise be allowed to read it due to forces beyond their control (overprotective parents and the school boards they frighten), then maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge.

Teachers: Which version of "Huck Finn" would you teach?

It's unfortunate, but is it really any more catastrophic than a TBS-friendly re-edit of "The Godfather," you down-and-dirty melon farmer? The original product is changed for the benefit of those who, for one reason or another, are not mature enough to handle it, but as long as it doesn't affect the original, is there a problem?

What do you think -- unnecessary censorship or necessary evil?

Poll above closes 1/10/2011

Jet · 01-09-2011, 02:55 PM

Bump. Poll closes tomorrow

Jet · 01-09-2011, 03:58 PM

Bump Poll closes tomorrow

Jet · 01-09-2011, 07:06 PM

Bumping again. Poll closes tomorrow

HumV4me · 01-09-2011, 07:19 PM

these look like rolly polly's or silver fish of the sea.

Jet · 01-10-2011, 03:31 PM

Thanks to everybody who participated in the Huck Finn poll.

Gemme · 01-10-2011, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HumV4me

these look like rolly polly's or silver fish of the sea.

???????????????????

Jet · 01-11-2011, 05:56 PM

The Da Vinci Code, Cracked?
Expert Says She Knows Where Mona Lisa Was Painted

TIME Magazine 
By TARA KELLY

That smile: No, we still don't know why. But one expert claims to have solved the question of where. For centuries the enigmatic smile of Leonardo Da Vinci's 500-year old masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, has intrigued, infatuated and even befuddled academics. But now Italian art historian Carla Glori claims to have solved a real life Da Vinci Code mystery of the landscape in the painting, reports the Guardian.

She argues that the three-arched stone bridge over the Mona Lisa's left shoulder is in Bobbio, Piacenza, in northern Italy. Her theory is based on a 2010 discovery, in which art historian Silvano Vinceti unveiled the numbers 7 and 2 concealed in the bridge. Most art historians believe the background, which features valleys and mountains, is an idealized landscape drawn from Da Vinci's imagination.

But Glori is now convinced that it depicts a specific place with 7 and 2 referring to 1472, when the Bobbio bridge was almost destroyed by flooding before being rebuilt. She came to this conclusion while investigating the possibility that Bianca Giovanna Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, the 15th century duke of Milan, sat for Da Vinci, and not Lisa del Giocondo in Florence, as is widely believed.

But fellow art historians disagree."There is no Dan Brown code here, just messages that reveal his thinking," said Silvano Vinceti. "Both the numbers seven and two are very important in the Kabbalism." Vinceti's team are also studying candidates from the court of Ludovico as possible sitters for the Mona Lisa. "But we believe Bianca Giovanna Sforza is unlikely because she died at 15 and the sitter is at least 22," he said.

Glori said she believed Da Vinci may have aged Sforza's face over the years he spent finishing the painting in a bid to hide her identity following her father's downfall.

Martin Kemp, a renowned Da Vinci scholar, also said that he was not convinced. "The portrait is almost certainly of Lisa del Giocondo, however unromantic and un-mysterious that idea might be," he said, adding that he also had his doubts on Bobbio. "Leonardo is remaking an archetypal landscape on the basis of his knowledge of the 'body of the earth'."

Glori will publish further details in her new book, The Leonardo Enigma, which comes out later this year.

__________________________________________________

Jet · 01-13-2011, 06:29 PM

New Zodiac Sign? Don't Change Your Sign Just Yet

By Alex Johnston
Epoch Times

An astronomer said that Earth’s alignment has shifted enough to warrant a change in the Zodiac dates and a new sign. However, a blogger says that you shouldn't change your sign just yet.

Astronomer Parke Kunkle told a local Minnesota NBC station that for the past several thousand years, we could have been using 13 astrology signs.
According to the station, they could look like this:
Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16, Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11, Pisces: March 11- April 18, Aries: April 18- May 13, Taurus: May 13- June 21, Gemini: June 21- July 20, Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10, Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16, Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30, Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23, Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29, Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17, and Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20.

Don't change your horoscopes just yet, writes Washington Post blogger Melissa Bell. "Well, Kunkle is an astronomer who is not too keen on the practice of astrology. When asked by telephone if the new star locations now require us all to switch our loyalty to a new sign, he demurred. 'I can tell you what the science is, but I'm not going to tell you what your personality is based on the location of things,'" she wrote and reported.
Related Articles

The new 13th sign is Ophiuchus. Earth is in a different spot from 3,000 years ago when many of the astrological signs were first drafted by astronomers in Babylon.

However, a reader wrote into The Post and said:
"The stars are markers that drift, but our main points of reference are not directly the stars. They are the equinoxes (both spring and vernal) and the solstices which altogether make the four cardinal points of the zodiac which in turn determine the signs. The stars help us locate those points which define the SIGNS of the Zodiac which remain constant in relation to the equinox point. The CONSTELLATIONS do move about and we take that into consideration when locating planets."

Kunkle said that the change in the Earth's tilt is "really over here in effect and [the] Sun is in a different constellation" than it was in ancient times.
"So in Earth's case, right now, Earth's spin axis points towards Polaris, the North Star," Kunkle told io9.com. "But in 3000 BC, the Earth's axis pointed towards a different star, Thuban. And that majestic motion takes about 26,000 years. so if you went from 3,000 B.C. and waited 26,000 years, you'd have the north star Thuban again."

He added that he never said there should be a 13th sign but that one could consider there to be 13 constellations instead of 12. "I just mentioned that it's there, and astronomers actually count it... So if you actually watch the stars in the background of the sun, it actually does go through the constellation of Ophiuchus," he told the website.

Babylonians probably used completely differnt signs regarless, he noted.
Kunkle, an astronomy teacher at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College and who is a board member on the Minnesota Planetarium Society, said the signs don't really mean anything.

"Sure, we can connect harvest to the stars," Kunkle told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "But personality? No."

View Poll Results: Do you think Huck Finn should be revised?
It's a classic and it should stay as written during Twain's time.	80	94.12%
It's time for an update to get rid of any racial slurs or references.	2	2.35%
Well all considered, logic says Gone With The Wind should be updated too.	3	3.53%
Voters: 85. You may not vote on this poll

01-09-2011, 07:19 PM	#105
HumV4me Member How Do You Identify?: FEMME Preferred Pronoun?: Honey, Baby, Love, Dearest Relationship Status: in an animal house Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: CALIFORNIA Posts: 131 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 49 Thanked 75 Times in 34 Posts Rep Power: 100331	these look like rolly polly's or silver fish of the sea. __________________ Alicia Ann

01-08-2011, 01:21 PM	#101
Jet Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: .. Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: .. Posts: 3,471 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 292 Thanked 2,646 Times in 1,293 Posts Rep Power: 0	Censorship of Huck Finn controversy New edition of 'Huckleberry Finn' to lose the N-word CNN Debate Video http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/01/0....ew/index.html (EW.com) -- What is a word worth? According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books' upcoming edition of Mark Twain's seminal novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will remove all instances of the N-word -- I'll give you a hint, it's not nonesuch -- present in the text and replace it with slave. The new book will also remove usage of the word Injun. The effort is spearheaded by Twain expert Alan Gribben, who says his PC-ified version is not an attempt to neuter the classic but rather to update it. "Race matters in these books," Gribben told PW. "It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century." Is editing "Huckleberry Finn" a good idea? Unsurprisingly, there are already those who are yelling "Censorship!" as well as others with thesauruses yelling "Bowdlerization!" and "Comstockery!" Their position is understandable: Twain's book has been one of the most often misunderstood novels of all time, continuously being accused of perpetuating the prejudiced attitudes it is criticizing, and it's a little disheartening to see a cave-in to those who would ban a book simply because it requires context. On the other hand, if this puts the book into the hands of kids who would not otherwise be allowed to read it due to forces beyond their control (overprotective parents and the school boards they frighten), then maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge. Teachers: Which version of "Huck Finn" would you teach? It's unfortunate, but is it really any more catastrophic than a TBS-friendly re-edit of "The Godfather," you down-and-dirty melon farmer? The original product is changed for the benefit of those who, for one reason or another, are not mature enough to handle it, but as long as it doesn't affect the original, is there a problem? What do you think -- unnecessary censorship or necessary evil? Poll above closes 1/10/2011

01-09-2011, 02:55 PM	#102
Jet Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: .. Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: .. Posts: 3,471 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 292 Thanked 2,646 Times in 1,293 Posts Rep Power: 0	Bump. Poll closes tomorrow

01-09-2011, 03:58 PM	#103
Jet Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: .. Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: .. Posts: 3,471 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 292 Thanked 2,646 Times in 1,293 Posts Rep Power: 0	Bump Poll closes tomorrow

01-09-2011, 07:06 PM	#104
Jet Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: .. Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: .. Posts: 3,471 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 292 Thanked 2,646 Times in 1,293 Posts Rep Power: 0	Bumping again. Poll closes tomorrow

01-10-2011, 03:31 PM	#106
Jet Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: .. Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: .. Posts: 3,471 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 292 Thanked 2,646 Times in 1,293 Posts Rep Power: 0	Thanks to everybody who participated in the Huck Finn poll.

01-11-2011, 05:56 PM	#108
Jet Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: .. Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: .. Posts: 3,471 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 292 Thanked 2,646 Times in 1,293 Posts Rep Power: 0	The Da Vinci Code, Cracked? Expert Says She Knows Where Mona Lisa Was Painted TIME Magazine  By TARA KELLY That smile: No, we still don't know why. But one expert claims to have solved the question of where. For centuries the enigmatic smile of Leonardo Da Vinci's 500-year old masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, has intrigued, infatuated and even befuddled academics. But now Italian art historian Carla Glori claims to have solved a real life Da Vinci Code mystery of the landscape in the painting, reports the Guardian. She argues that the three-arched stone bridge over the Mona Lisa's left shoulder is in Bobbio, Piacenza, in northern Italy. Her theory is based on a 2010 discovery, in which art historian Silvano Vinceti unveiled the numbers 7 and 2 concealed in the bridge. Most art historians believe the background, which features valleys and mountains, is an idealized landscape drawn from Da Vinci's imagination. But Glori is now convinced that it depicts a specific place with 7 and 2 referring to 1472, when the Bobbio bridge was almost destroyed by flooding before being rebuilt. She came to this conclusion while investigating the possibility that Bianca Giovanna Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, the 15th century duke of Milan, sat for Da Vinci, and not Lisa del Giocondo in Florence, as is widely believed. But fellow art historians disagree."There is no Dan Brown code here, just messages that reveal his thinking," said Silvano Vinceti. "Both the numbers seven and two are very important in the Kabbalism." Vinceti's team are also studying candidates from the court of Ludovico as possible sitters for the Mona Lisa. "But we believe Bianca Giovanna Sforza is unlikely because she died at 15 and the sitter is at least 22," he said. Glori said she believed Da Vinci may have aged Sforza's face over the years he spent finishing the painting in a bid to hide her identity following her father's downfall. Martin Kemp, a renowned Da Vinci scholar, also said that he was not convinced. "The portrait is almost certainly of Lisa del Giocondo, however unromantic and un-mysterious that idea might be," he said, adding that he also had his doubts on Bobbio. "Leonardo is remaking an archetypal landscape on the basis of his knowledge of the 'body of the earth'." Glori will publish further details in her new book, The Leonardo Enigma, which comes out later this year. __________________________________________________

01-13-2011, 06:29 PM	#109
Jet Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: .. Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: .. Posts: 3,471 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 292 Thanked 2,646 Times in 1,293 Posts Rep Power: 0	New Zodiac Sign? Don't Change Your Sign Just Yet By Alex Johnston Epoch Times An astronomer said that Earth’s alignment has shifted enough to warrant a change in the Zodiac dates and a new sign. However, a blogger says that you shouldn't change your sign just yet. Astronomer Parke Kunkle told a local Minnesota NBC station that for the past several thousand years, we could have been using 13 astrology signs. According to the station, they could look like this: Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16, Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11, Pisces: March 11- April 18, Aries: April 18- May 13, Taurus: May 13- June 21, Gemini: June 21- July 20, Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10, Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16, Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30, Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23, Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29, Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17, and Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20. Don't change your horoscopes just yet, writes Washington Post blogger Melissa Bell. "Well, Kunkle is an astronomer who is not too keen on the practice of astrology. When asked by telephone if the new star locations now require us all to switch our loyalty to a new sign, he demurred. 'I can tell you what the science is, but I'm not going to tell you what your personality is based on the location of things,'" she wrote and reported. Related Articles The new 13th sign is Ophiuchus. Earth is in a different spot from 3,000 years ago when many of the astrological signs were first drafted by astronomers in Babylon. However, a reader wrote into The Post and said: "The stars are markers that drift, but our main points of reference are not directly the stars. They are the equinoxes (both spring and vernal) and the solstices which altogether make the four cardinal points of the zodiac which in turn determine the signs. The stars help us locate those points which define the SIGNS of the Zodiac which remain constant in relation to the equinox point. The CONSTELLATIONS do move about and we take that into consideration when locating planets." Kunkle said that the change in the Earth's tilt is "really over here in effect and [the] Sun is in a different constellation" than it was in ancient times. "So in Earth's case, right now, Earth's spin axis points towards Polaris, the North Star," Kunkle told io9.com. "But in 3000 BC, the Earth's axis pointed towards a different star, Thuban. And that majestic motion takes about 26,000 years. so if you went from 3,000 B.C. and waited 26,000 years, you'd have the north star Thuban again." He added that he never said there should be a 13th sign but that one could consider there to be 13 constellations instead of 12. "I just mentioned that it's there, and astronomers actually count it... So if you actually watch the stars in the background of the sun, it actually does go through the constellation of Ophiuchus," he told the website. Babylonians probably used completely differnt signs regarless, he noted. Kunkle, an astronomy teacher at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College and who is a board member on the Minnesota Planetarium Society, said the signs don't really mean anything. "Sure, we can connect harvest to the stars," Kunkle told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "But personality? No."