robert a. heinlein

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Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time
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Counterglow
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
Just a shout-out to an old high school librarian who's probably dead now. His last name was Johnson. We called him "Wimpy" because of a slight resemblance to the character in "Popeye". On many occasions, somebody would ask him a question about some topic or other, and he'd not only tell you what books to get and EXACTLY where they were in the library (as in "three shelves down, five from the left"), but the pages and paragraphs of the information you wanted. He couldn't always supply that level of detail, but it was far from uncommon, and he was never wrong as far as I know. And he never sent anybody looking for a book that had been checked out.

He was a truly astonishing man who worked without fanfare in a nondescript job in a small Canadian high school.
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Grey_Area promoted this comment Edited by Counterglow at 12/07/09 7:42 PM Counterglow was starred Counterglow was unstarred

Grey_Area
12/07/09

@Counterglow: Okay, way off topic, but fine librarians such as this deserve a shout out. Rock on "Wimpy" Johnson, wherever you may be.

Io9 Commentariat, SALUTE!!
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Counterglow
12/08/09

@Grey_Area: Thanks for getting into the spirit. I was reading about all those methods of accurately storing all kinds of information in your head, and here was a guy who kept a whole library up there.

Funny...he didn't LOOK like a mentat.
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hwilam
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
Anne McCaffery's Pern books create an entire catalogue of teaching ballads to remind humanity of the tasks necessary when the red star comes near.
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Grey_Area
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
Dan Simmons used the diary bit in Hyperion with the girl who was ageing backwards. That always creeped me out.

"See you later alligator."
"In a while crocodile."
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Dr Emilio Lizardo
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
Buckaroo Banzai: write it on your palm, lick your palm, slap your mentor on the forehead so he gets a copy too.
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RoboBagins
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
Gundam is only an acronym in alternative universe of Gundam Seed.

In fact, I'm not sure of where it comes from in classic Universal Century (UC). In UC Lunar Titanium is renamed to Gundarium alloy after being used to armor the Gundam.

ok. enough Gundam babbling from me.
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techgoddess: Only .002 cents per byte
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
OH GOD TVTROPES

Thanks io9, for making me fail this semester!!! XD
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Charlie Jane Anders
12/07/09

@techgoddess: Only .002 cents per byte: I freakin love tvtropes. They do such a great job.
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Ruthless, If you let me
12/07/09

@techgoddess: Only .002 cents per byte: Someone linked tvtropes in a comic article last week. It totally OBLITERATED my afternoon.
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goldfarb
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
the 'Method of loci' is, and always will be, the coolest way to remember things...
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Ruthless, If you let me
12/07/09

@goldfarb: I've never heard of this method before. I wiki'd it, and I have decided that this method, or close to it, got me through high school and college.

When taking a test, or writing an essay, or even verbally answering something, I would recall various pages in the text, and remember where on the page I had seen it, I.e: pg. 53, 3rd paragraph, 4th sentence. (Even where I had read the passage originally [library, bedroom, etc.]) After that, I could remember the necessary information (or quote) almost verbatim.
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goldfarb
12/07/09

@Ruthless, If you let me: cool...
sometimes it's called Cathedral Memory...because everyone knew all the different places in a church (nave, apse, altar etc) they could place items to remember is specifics spots...then just walk through their Cathedral to remember things...
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Ruthless, If you let me
12/07/09

@goldfarb: I read a book when I was younger about a mage that recalled spells much like Cathedral memory, except it was a Manor house, with multitudes of rooms. I likened it to a real-life version of that.
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goldfarb
12/07/09

@Ruthless, If you let me: and I think Sagan refers to it in Cosmos...
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firstofnormalin
12/07/09

@Ruthless, If you let me:
I do somewhat of the same thing when I'm memorizing lines (especially from Shakespeare--I mean, I swear Old Bill sometimes didn't write English...) Anyway, I visualize where the line is on the page and it jogs my memory. I also learn the last line of two of someone else's speech that leads into mine. I'm finding that now I don't need to know that I know the line--the line is there, even if I can't remember it until I need it. Mostly I use something that's close to hypnosis--progressive relaxation then repeat the line in my head. just before I go to sleep.
BTW, the guy who's credited with the "memory palace" where objects are associated with furniture, etc. was Simonides of Ceo, back in 500BC.
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Belabras
12/07/09

In reply to How To Jog Your Memory, The Science Fiction Hero Way
I thought of another one, but I forgot it.
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Vulcan Has No Moon
11/26/09

In reply to Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time
Neon Genesis Evangelion. The damn writers/producers couldn't think of a way to end that train wreck except by killing off the whole damn cast. They should have just ended it with Kaworu Nagisa and success of the Human Instrumentality Project....if not sooner.
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Alvarez
11/28/09

@Vulcan Has No Moon: I liked the ending for one simple fact: I hated every last character on the show. Oh I was enthralled by it and couldn't stop watching it until I'd seen every last scrap of the shows and movies but, they seemed to be great examples of humanities selfishness and propensity to destroy itself. On the one hand I hated Shinji's father but also couldn't stand Shinji's whining.
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Vulcan Has No Moon
11/28/09

@Alvarez: Actually, I don't really care they killed everyone, just that it seemed like they had run into a brick wall with the story and took an easy out. Like they never planned the story arc out to the end. It's like the writers got together and said, "Show got cancelled, and we've got an hour to rap this up. Any ideas on how to tie up all the loose ends?" "Let's just kill everyone off." "Cool!" and then everyone knocked off early for lunch.
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Wookie1972
11/25/09

In reply to Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time
Oh, and is it blasphemy to suggest that Professor Tolkien's work, despite the lack of sex, was just a wee bit soap operatic?
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Burke
11/25/09

@Wookie1972: Or that (per Randall from Clerks 2) the hobbits were gay?
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Wookie1972
11/26/09

@Burke: If I could pick a point where I got off the Kevin Smith train, it would be that. What a schmuck.
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firstofnormalin
11/26/09

@Wookie1972:
Then so was Wagner's Ring and the whole Nibelungenlied. And, of course, Puccini.
How about The House of Atreus? And the Oedipus cycle?
I'm gonna do my PhD dissertation: Buffy As A Universal Human Archetype
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Wookie1972
11/26/09

@firstofnormalin: Well, those were real operas, soap or not. Except for Oedipus. (although Oedipis, with its use of hidden parentage, would obviously count)
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firstofnormalin
11/27/09

@Wookie1972:
Well, I'll grant most weren't _sf_ soaps, but look at Wagner's Ring--dwarves (maybe even dwarfs), dragons with magic blood, hero screws his sister, magic swords, magic gold rings, tarnhelms for invisibility, Rinemadens living under the river...if that ain't a fantasy/soap opera combo, I'll eat my Furtwangler CDs.
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Wookie1972
11/25/09

In reply to Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time
Soap operas aren't all that bad- doesn't War and Peace have something like 400 characters?
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ggodo, the man from R.O.A.C.H.
11/25/09

In reply to Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time
And yet, Sonic's comic books were so much better than any game released this decade.
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Alessar
11/25/09

In reply to Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time
ALIAS? Here, I can explain Alias:
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atrus123
11/25/09

In reply to Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time
Another weird thread in BSG was Starbuck and Leoben. They have this long, complex, tormented relationship throughout the series, and then when they discover Starbuck's dead body on the Earth (that is Earth but maybe isn't Earth), Leoben gets creeped out by her, runs away, and.... well that's it. The relationship just seems severed; they never cross paths again; the event is never discussed. Nothing.

I always found that a little strange.
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Dirk Anger
11/25/09

In reply to Top 10 Most Ridiculous Soap Operas Of All Time

what about the Summers family tree? It's even worse than that x-men relationships map:
[tvtropes.org]

Here's the text version: [members.core.com]

(I'm sure somebody must have done a beautiful one somewhere)
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