The Reading Room

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12:10 AM

Q: What is the Neverending Story's moral about power?

In Michael Ende's brilliant novel The Neverending Story, the world of Fantastica is ruled by the Childlike Empress, a mysterious ruler who is given a different name each time a new human comes to her world. When Bastian What message does The Neverending Story promote in terms of power? Does it...

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas Any thoughts on this? scifi.stackexchange.com/a/158292/31394

BESW

1:03 AM

Video Poem Wins Navajo Filmmaker National Prize http://buff.ly/2qgAvwy https://t.co/Kx8AWkF9va

Tweeted by indiancountry on April 29, 2017 at 1:00 AM

Bookworm

1:31 AM

Q: How culturally mixed were the Earth ambassadors in Hard to Be a God?

Anton, aka "Don Rumata of Arkanar", is Russian. Pashka, aka "Don Hug, first groom of the chamber of his lordship the Duke of Irukan", is Russian. Alexander Vassilevitch, aka "Don Kondor, Supreme Judge and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Mercantile Republic of Soan" (and other titles), is Russian...

russian-literature strugatsky-brothers hard-to-be-a-god

user15026

@Bookworm While I suspect that comment is supposed to be somewhat humorous or what have you in the request to leave the movies out of it...it comes off a little harsher than I think it strictly needs to.

Riker

2:05 AM

lol, jeopardy had a question about that red wheelbarrow poem. the one benjamin (I think) seemed obsessed with asking about when this was private beta

user15026

2:33 AM

The William Carlos Williams one?

Riker

2:52 AM

yep

8 hours later…

b_jonas

11:10 AM

@Randal'Thor I don't think that's right, from what I remember, but I'll have to check. From what I remember, Yoda-speak works by taking the English word order and cyclically rotating it to put the first verb (which may be an auxiliary) last.

Oh! Is that our first Michael Ende question?

No, not quite, we have 3 at scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/michael-ende . I forgot that.

Rand al'Thor

11:27 AM

@b_jonas Depends what you mean by "our" :-)

2 hours later…

b_jonas

1:15 PM

"Yoda-speak works by taking the English word order and cyclically rotating it to put the first verb (which may be an auxiliary) last" - no, that's only how Yoda speaks in Darths & Droids.

> Stopped they must be. On this all depends. Only a fully trained Jedi Knight with the Force as his ally will conquer Vader and his Emperor. If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil.

^ That one is a genuine Yoda speak. The longer sentences are completely normal English, and the shorter ones certainly don't follow the word order of Hungarian (where the new or emphasized information comes right before the verb within a simple phrase)

@Randal'Thor ^

2 hours later…

Long John Silver

3:30 PM

Q: Was Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum at all inspired by A Predicament?

Poe's satirical short story A Predicament tells the story of a woman who is slowly decapitated by the minute hand of a large cathedral clock. In all its ridiculous, it was supposed to be a horror parody, a bit unlike much of the rest of Poe's writings. It was published in 1838; four years later, ...

short-stories edgar-allan-poe

Rand al'Thor

@LongJohnSilver Bounty on an interesting question from the Unanswered list.

It won't be the last of those you'll see from me.

user15026

4:02 PM

I like the name of the bot :)

Gallifreyan

@Ash Rand al'Thor almost named our Mos Eisley bounty bot "Greedo shot first"

user15026

@Gallifreyan laughs

Gallifreyan

in Mos Eisley, Mar 28 at 15:56, by Rand al'Thor

Mar 6 at 0:49, by Rand al'Thor

And I resisted the temptation to name it "Greedo shot first" ;-)

For which he, of course, would have been lynched.

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor IDK up to you

People will either upvote it or not upvote it

1 hour later…

Benjamin

5:07 PM

I am looking forwards to participating in the May topic challenge.

Gallifreyan

Damn, I have to actually read something. Any suggestions? (cc @Randal'Thor - you might want to put some suggestions in the announcement post)

user15026

@Gallifreyan Topic challenge suggestions or just general suggestions?

Gallifreyan

Reading suggestions for May's reading challenge.

Icelandic sagas are numerous, and I have no idea where to start.

Benjamin

@Gallifreyan I plan to read various of the sagas from the database

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan The Icelandic Saga Database has several. I plan to just pick from there, randomly if I have to.

Benjamin

5:14 PM

@Randal'Thor How long does it take to read each one?

Rand al'Thor

@Benjamin No idea.

I haven't read any of them - yet :-)

This is going to be a learning experience for all of us!

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor I trusted you! Did you just plunge us into a challenge without reading anything?! :D

Rand al'Thor

I still need to finish Hard to Be a God, dammit.

Preferably by tomorrow.

@Gallifreyan Hey, I want to widen my own cultural reading experience as well as everyone else's! :-)

Mithrandir

5:46 PM

@Ash gracias.

Mithrandir

6:09 PM

Here's a resource-request question for you guys: what's a good history book that covers world history for the late 1500s/early 1600s?

b_jonas

6:34 PM

@Benjamin If you want to read icelandic sagas, mythology.meta.stackexchange.com/q/263/197 may give a hint for where to start

Benjamin

@b_jonas Thank you!

b_jonas

Hmm, I should mention that in the meta post.

Mithrandir

6:52 PM

I just noticed CVS has started stocking homeopathic pills on the same shelves with--and labeled similarly to--their actual medicine. Telling someone who trusts you that you're giving them medicine, when you know youâre not, because you want their money, isnât just lying--itâs like an example youâd make up if you had to illustrate for a child why lying is wrong.

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir All in favour of using this as our Community Promotion Ad?

Mithrandir

The 'reading is about more' part?

Rand al'Thor

No, the whole image.

Mithrandir

wonders if you're serious

...it won't fit.

Also, copyright?

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir (hint: I'm not)

Mithrandir

6:59 PM

@Randal'Thor ...right. That's what I thought.

1 hour later…

Mithrandir

8:26 PM

We've got a request for questions about the works of Ursula LeGuin and Hermann Hesse - anyone familiar enough with one of their works to ask q question about one?

user15026

If someone wants to answer stuff about their works, they can always self answer :)

Hamlet

@Mithrandir from who?

Mithrandir

@Hamlet Math.SE user who I was talking to

Mentioned that they'd be a fan of the site forever if we had questions from some specific authors (which we didn't have).

Mithrandir

8:45 PM

Also, what I saw when I logged on:

Gallifreyan

Hehe

Mithrandir

That's a lot of inbox messages.

BESW

9:18 PM

One of my favourite ways to unwind is to take a good book to a coffee shop, and place it nearby while I refresh Instagram for an hour.

Tweeted by laurenbravo on April 28, 2017 at 4:47 PM

The Force Awakens goes ElizaBB-8than with latest Star Wars Shakespeare cover. http://on.io9.com/XT3fqf2 https://t.co/NiTFAtBWmd

Tweeted by io9 on April 29, 2017 at 2:38 PM

Benjamin

10:03 PM

@Mithrandir Who?

b_jonas

Great example of bad writing: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/…

The text of the sign reads as if "bajtársai és hívei" is continuing the sentence, making it seem like Kálló Ferenc was killed by his own comrades; whereas the sign probably wants to mean that his comrades have put up the sign.

BESW

10:23 PM

[sigh] I wish I was better at tracking down scholarly works online.

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