Oleg Zabluda's blog: May 14, 2012

Oleg Zabluda's blog

Monday, May 14, 2012

The living will envy the dead.
The living will envy the dead.

Where did that phrase come from? Opinions differ. Most of the Russians think that it's from Treasure Island's Long John Silver.

In the cartoon he said: "...через час те из вас, кто останется в живых будут завидовать мёртвым!"
Остров сокровищ (Сокровища капитана Флинта) (Серия 2) (27:27 mark)

Translation by Chukovky: "Через час вы будете смеяться по-иному. А те из вас, кто останется в живых, позавидуют мертвым!"

Original by Stevenson: "Before an hour's out, ye'll laugh upon the other side. Them that die'll be the lucky ones."

Americans think its Khrushchev, speaking of nuclear war, quoted by The Washington Post, Mar 20, 1981, p. A23.
http://www.bartleby.com/73/1257.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=2Tu3bScwKKAC&pg=PT264
No form of this quotation has been verified in the speeches or writings of Khrushchev, so could be yet another made up story.

in Apocalypse/Revelation of John (Откровение) 9:6
"During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them."
"В те дни люди будут искать смерти, но не найдут ее; пожелают умереть, но смерть убежит от них"
http://bible.cc/revelation/9-6.htm

And then there was along tradition in Russia to use this phrase going back to at least Karamzin's "Марфа-посадница, или покорение Новагорода" (1803): "...тогда живые позавидуют мертвым!"
http://az.lib.ru/k/karamzin_n_m/text_0080.shtml

I the book "On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn (1960), which I own and read, chapter 2 is called "Will the Survivors Envy The Dead"
http://books.google.com/books?id=EN2gtPTjFd8C&pg=PA40

In "The Jewish War" ("Иудейская война") by Flavius Josephus (Иосиф Флавий) (ca. AD 75) we read about the Jews complaining about Herod:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/war-of-the-jews/book-2/chapter-6.html
"...those that were left had endured such miseries, that they called those that were dead happy men"
"но участь тех, которых он оставил в живых, была такова, что они завидовали погибавшим"

http://lib.ru/POEEAST/FLAWIJ/flavii_voina.txt
I don't know which translation this is. See http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Иудейская_война for the list of translations to Russian, the earliest being 1713.

Later, in the same book:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/war-of-the-jews/book-6/chapter-3.html?p=2 "So those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die, and those already dead were esteemed happy, because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries."
"Голодавшие отныне жаждали только смерти и завидовали счастливой доле ушедших уже в вечность"

A lot taken from http://www.chitaem-vmeste.ru/pages/material.php?article=89&journal=54
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiAlDKyedJc#t=27m27s

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Poison oak is everywhere in San Francisco Bay Area.
Poison oak is everywhere in San Francisco Bay Area. Everybody encountered it and there are lots of stories about it here. Let me tell you 2 randomly chosen ones.

Story one, from acquaintances, I'll call G:

The four of us on a day hike got stuck on the top of a hill at Big Basin after dark. We could see the road and lights directly below us, and decided to go straight down. The fact that we were bushwhacking through blackberry was immediately obvious to us. But the fact that it was mixed with Poison Oak, only became obvious shortly before the two of us were hospitalized.

Story two, from Natalia L

A bunch of people went camping. They made a fire from some dry wood laying around, and got smoke into the lungs. They realized it was Poison Oak shortly before the 2 of them died and the rest envied the dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicodendron_diversilobum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicodendron_diversilobum

Labels: Oleg Zabluda

We went to watch Avatar in IMAX 3D.
We went to watch Avatar in IMAX 3D. On Feb 28, 2010. Dennis was awfully quiet on the way back, which means it made quite an impression. This is an old email from Mar 1, 2010.

Avatar was a great movie. All the alleged sophisticates who badmouthed the storyline are full of shit.

Our only wish is that Cameron shot it less like Pocahontas and more like Harry Harrison's "Deathworld" ("Неукротимая Планета"). It would require pretty much no changes in the movie whatsoever, and would make everything much cooler ("гораздо круче"), because the local fauna were much scarier then blue grubbers ("корчевщики").

Yesterday, during collective discussions, we came up with a plausible hypothesis surrounding the past and future events.

First of all, note also that all animals, except Navi, although, apparently being the same Phylum, have 6 extremities, either 6 legs ("horses", "wolves", "hammerheads") or 2 legs and 4 wings. Very suspicious and scary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_universe_in_Avatar#Fauna

The inescapable conclusion is that humans got into big trouble ("серьезно вляпались") this time. There were only 5 previous cases when a Navi could fly the "Last Shadow". Last time it was the heroine great-...-great-grandfather. Since there is nothing obviously preventing the present Navi's themselves riding Gavilandora maxima, the obvious conclusion is that he was also a marine, but from another non-human species (oorah!). He also unified all the tribes by doing so, just like the current events, obviously for the same reason.

Since those species did not come back to settle the score, they were probably neutralized at the source, at least for the time being. This already happened 5 times before so the odds are against H.Sapience.

We don't know for sure who did it. Could be anyone. The planet is big and mostly unexplored. Subsurface is completely unexplored. The rest of the planetary system is completely unexplored. There is no guarantee that the blue aborigines we encounter are the most advanced individuals or even species on the planet. They are suspiciously humanoid, and the chicks are incredibly hot. What are the chances of that? Nil! It looks more like a or a trap or a test.

BTW, there is no doubt that the Earth, Alpha Centauri and other stars, exchange single-cell organisms. It is comforting to know that they naturally evolve to be mostly Bilaterally Symmetric :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateria
Great! This will be very helpful in their understanding of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
BTW, Arecibo Message has a bug. Pluto is listed as a planet. Time to send out a correction, or they'll think we are stupid. We already can detect planets around other stars, and so can they. (also see https://plus.google.com/112065430692128821190/posts/8Zu2koqWaHy)

Ray Kurzweil's take in his essay "Reflections on Avatar"
http://www.kurzweilai.net/reflections-on-avatar-by-ray-kurzweil/

Notice that even Kurzweil did not understand why the Unobtanium was "no longer needed". The above explains why not. No Humans, no need.

Kurzweil needs to brush up on his zoology and weaponology. There are no birds or tanks in the movie. The "baddies" are not the army, but minimum wage security guards ("вохра"), working for the mining company. There is nothing especially unusual about animals defeating armed people, like grizzlies, elephants, rhinos, warthogs, dogs, even an occasional sperm whale.

Also observing the weapons of the future, for example "Amplified Mobility Platform" (AMP) suit - an MK-6 class combat vehicle. we conclude that either

1. In that future, the race of armor vs weapons was decisively won by weapons (so there is no point in armor anymore) or the current trend that mobility is more important then armor came to the logical conclusion.
That's why the local fauna won. It was more mobile.

or

2. The lessons of the past were forgotten. The AMPs needed to be up-armored, but weren't.

BTW, the reason the weapons needed to be manned (or more correctly "occupied") during the assault at all, was the "interference" around the Mother Tree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_universe_in_Avatar#Fauna

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