in reply to Re: At what rate are YOU progressing? in thread At what rate are YOU progressing?
After a while you'll start realizing that all of these 'gurus' you worship are just plain folks like yerself. They just spend their time differently. They learn.
As an example, I can't tell you a thing about competitive professional sports
or current sitcoms. I don't watch TV. I don't follow games. People have to explain
to me when I'm watching the SuperBowl with them (to be social) that something
that just happened was "good" or "bad". And I haven't seen Ally McBeal, and didn't
watch my first Seinfeld until prodded by others, and after it was already in
syndication rerun hell.
What I spend most of my spare time doing is being online. Researching the next
item, reading about technologies, being here and on Usenet and IRC, answering questions. Well, and the twice-a-week trip to either the Karaoke bar or the
live comedy club. And on airplanes, I'm just as likely to read the latest book
from O'Reilly as I am a good SF novel.
Now project that backward 30 years. I didn't do sports in high school (I was the runt that got picked last anyway). I spent
much of my time in the library, or at home reading whatever books I could
get my hands on.
So, to get here, I traded all that "normal" stuff. I gave up my childhood for my
career.
Would I do it again? Probably. But don't ask
me any questions about our Portland Trailblazers; all I know is the stadium
creates traffic jams occasionally, and I can't even tell you what part of the year
the season is.
-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Re: At what rate are YOU progressing?
by Dominus (Parson) on May 02, 2001 at 18:39 UTC
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Says merlyn:
As an example, I can't tell you a thing about competitive professional sports or
current sitcoms. I don't watch TV...What I spend most of my spare time doing is being online.
I suspect that this is a red herring. You waste a lot of time on IRC.
If you stopped doing IRC you would watch TV and get just as much done.
(This isn't a suggestion, of course.)
I don't think anyone can be 'productive' all the time.
But some people watch TV in their downtime and
other people watch IRC; I don't think it's really that different.
--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia
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Dominus, do you know how merlyn spends his time in IRC?
I don't think so (I don't either), but I guess you have
prejudice about how IRC is going on. It's not that all
channels are just crap talk. If you e.g. take a look at most
of the channels that reside in
Open Projects Network you
can find a lot of useful information there - mostly
channels for opensource projects coordination. So I think
accusing using IRC is a waste of time is simply a wrong
assumption.
Btw., is it just me or did merlyn's post read like
adminspotting? *eg*
Update:Sorry, Dominus, if I got you wrong. If it
was meant with sarcasm or so then I didn't get it. I was
just writing what I tried to interpret from your
writing or between the lines. If I misinterpreted it: Again,
sorry.
--
use signature;
signature(" So long\nAlfie");
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Re: Re: Re: At what rate are YOU progressing?
by turnstep (Parson) on May 02, 2001 at 18:41 UTC
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No TV. No sports. You just went up a notch
in my book! :)
And not all of us consider that such things "normal."
On the contrary, those things keep the masses amused and
distracted from doing "normal" things like learning,
exploring, and asking difficult questions of themselves
and their surroundings. Why have people partake in
debates, communicate with their congresspeople, and
learn philosophy and science when they can vegetate
and consume instead?
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Says turnstep:
No TV. No sports....those things keep
the masses amused and distracted from doing "normal" things like learning, exploring,
and asking difficult questions of themselves and their surroundings.
I don't think that's true. In Annie Hall there's
a great scene in which Woody Allen is at a horrible
party inhabited by horrible boring intellectuals;
he sneaks off to the bedroom to watch the basketball game.
And predictably, someone comes to berate him for
watching the basketball game when he could be improving his mind.
Woody has a great speech about how this is a completely different
kind of accomplishment, a physical accomplishment,
and that the people in the other room are afraid of it because
it isn't their kind of accomplishment and they don't
understand it.
One of the most wonderful things about sports is that
they are universal. Everyone on earth has pretty much the
same kind of body; that's why we can have the Olympics.
To be uninterested in sports is to be uninterested in
the body and what it can do. And of course you know many geeks who
are divorced from their own bodies. But that is
not a healthy way to be.
Sports are not incompatible with learning, exploring, or
asking difficult questions of one's surroundings.
Many people shut off their brains when they sit down to watch
the football game, but that does not mean that is the only
way to do it---lots of people shut off their brains when they use the
-w switch too.
--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia
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Right. You'll have to pry my snowboard from my cold frozen fingers. Which often I have to do myself. {grin}
I'm just not historically much for watching other people make millions of dollars
while competing at kids games, simply because the surrounding discussions at this
end of the broadcast tend
to be more tribal than constructive.
-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
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Dominus writes:
To be uninterested in sports is to be uninterested in
the body and what it can do
Ah, but that was not the thrust of my argument. Their
is a difference between enjoying a sport yourself, and
being in touch with your body, and the mass worship
of sport teams that occurs, and is driven more by money
that true athleticism. Yes, the players on a basketball
team may be good athletes, but the majority of people
watching it are not watching it just for the appreciation
of the athlete's body and the player's control of it -
they are also rooting for their team and vicariously
living through the team, as in "I can't beleive we lost
the game by one point!" and "My team plays again next
Friday." Most sports fans are far from being in touch
with their own bodies, and do not participate in sports
themselves, but merely watch it. There is nothing wrong
with this: it is their choice; I just feel society as a
whole would be better served if just 1% of the energy,
brainpower, time, and money that goes into following
organized sports were spent elsewhere. While I grant that
watching sports does not really detract from a person's
life, neither does it enhance it.
Sports are not incompatible with learning, exploring, or
asking difficult questions of one's surroundings.
Performing sports, no, but watching them? What does one
really gain from watching two hours of basketball? Again,
this is a personal choice, but as you say, it's a
way of "shutting off your brain."
I have no problem with watching TV or an interest in
sports, but I will usually think higher of someone who
*moderates* themselves in such activities, and has other
interests, than someone who hovers around the national
US average of 20+ hours per week watching TV. Is this
an unfair judgement? Perhaps, but I've meet too many
people in my life who have reinforced my opinion that
few people actually *think* anymore, but merely wander
through life. Luckily, a lot of the "thinking" people
end up online, one reason I love PerlMonks as much as
I do. :)
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The guy on the street can tell you all this detailed information about what celebrity is doing this or that and they don't know
who wrote Moby Dick?!? I see it as bizarro world. The smartest people are pushed to the
margins of society whereas joe blow jock is seen as normal. Would not a "Normal"
society pay teachers more than ad execs and wouldn't our heros be great scholars that have
fought for the betterment of mankind such as Chomsky and Rousseau instead of people that
throw a ball thru a hoop and get a million a year. However I am not saying I am against people
playing sports I myself am a mountain biking, surfing, and snowboarding freak
Although these are more individual sports where self expression is the main factor
Anyways I'm just ranting as Matt Sisk
would say! cheers
js
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Re (tilly) 3: At what rate are YOU progressing?
by tilly (Archbishop) on May 02, 2001 at 20:20 UTC
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How many movies do you watch? :-P | [reply] [Watch: Dir/Any] |
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