[ExI] anorexic geniuses, was Re: Religions and violence.

[darren shawn greer]

I'm not sure if he was anorexic, but
Eric Satie only ate white foods.

 

I don't think there's a single white
food in my fridge besides milk, so poor musical genius fare here.

 

MY favorite genius story is regarding
Mikhail Bakhtin and his nicotine addiction. In Russia during World War II there
was a massive paper shortage. Bakhtin got so desperate for a smoke he eventually tore
up and used the paper from a manuscript called The Novel of Education and Its Significance in the History of Realism. Apparently he started with the
conclusion and smoked his way though pretty much the whole thing. All that
remains is a snippet about Goethe from the introduction.

 

As a writer and a smoker, I can
appreciate the dilemma.

 

Thanks Spike. I like this topic a lot
better.
Darren________________________________
> Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2010 13:53:46 -0700
> From: spike66 at att.net
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: [ExI] anorexic geniuses, was Re: Religions and violence.
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 8/3/10, John Clark wrote:
>
>>...I know, and Godel was I think an even greater logician than Aristotle...
>
> Sorry I haven't followed this thread closely, very busy, but I must
> break in here at the risk of posting something far from the point of
> the conversation.
>
>>...nevertheless he was a very odd man...
>
> Fortunate are we for that. May we all be so odd.
>
>>... He sealed his windows shut because he thought night air was deadly...
>
> As one who escaped from a nation which had used poison gas and wanted
> his genotype to be extinct, that would be understandable. If an enemy
> wanted to use a WMD attack to greatest effect, they would release some
> poisonous agent in the middle of the night. Most of the proles would
> quietly wake up dead. In that context, sealing the windows is not
> so odd.
>
>>...he wore heavy woolen coats on even the hottest days because he
> though the cold was deadly too...
>
> He was a really skinny guy who didn't eat much. People who are built
> like that have a very high surface area to volume ratio, we are cold
> all the time, even when others are comfortable or warm. These will
> tend to wear wool. I don't know why, but that particular material is
> (to me) comfortable in both cool weather and warm. I have nothing
> other than wool. I do get puzzled stares on the hottest days, but
> better that than no stares at all.
>
>>...and for unknown reasons he insisted on putting cheap plastic
> flamingos on his front lawn...
>
> Hey, just because Godel wasn't a redneck doesn't mean he was immune
> from delightfully tacky yet unrefined taste in lawn ornaments.
> Besides, flamingos are very interesting beasts. They have that odd
> upsidedown smile going, that lets them devour revolting goo along the
> bottom of the shallow waters. Regarding cheap plastic, I have never
> seen flamingo figurines in any other material or any other price range
> besides cheap and plastic. I find him guilty of Walmartishness, but
> innocent of insanity.
>
>>... He ended up starving himself to death, he refused to eat because
> he thought unnamed sinister forces were trying to poison him...
>
> Considering he escaped the Nazis and was a powerful propaganda device,
> I wouldn't be surprised if he had plenty of enemies that would want
> nothing more than to slay that gentle genius. I don't think anyone was
> trying to poison him, but I give him a hall pass for being suspicious
> of everyone.
>
>>... He weighed 65 pounds when he died...
>
> Dayum that's skinny, even by my standards. Srinivasa Ramanujan is
> another monster intellect we also lost to tragic self starvation.
> {8-[ And Karen Carpenter. {8-[
>
> My favorite Godel story: He didn't realize fully the danger from the
> Nazis, being as Godel wasn't always on exactly the same planet with the
> rest of us, so the scientific community managed to get him to the US.
> Einstein and others were trying to get him US citizenship. At the US
> consulate, he was given a copy of the US constitution, which he read
> carefully. An embassy worker asked "Dr. Godel, what do you think of
> our constitution?" Godel: "According to this document, the US could
> legally become a dictatorship."
>
> That sure doesn't sound crazy to me. We need a thousand like him, a million.
>
> spike
>
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>
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