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Tristanjohn -> Minimalists (and their intention to restrict goals and progress) (10/24/2003 12:02:08 AM)
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Isn't it a grand day?[indent]"I can feel my pain, Lord. And I thank you!"
[/indent]Say, does anyone feel the suction in this room? As if every shred of intelligence were just being vacuumed out of it at an unholy rate?
[quote=Chiteng]Minimalism is when know events or combat parameters are ignored, in the pursuit of a statistical model.[/quote][quote=pasternakski]Where did this nonsense definition come from? "Minimalist art" is representation of the artist's vision through sparse brush strokes. I know of no other credited use of the term or any similar one. Please explain.[/quote]
All right, Pasternakski, I will.[indent]Main Entry: 1 min·i·mal·ist [img]http://www.m-w.com/images/audio.gif[/img]
Pronunciation: -list
Function: noun
Date: 1907
1 : one who favors restricting the functions and powers of a political organization or the achievement of a set of goals to a minimum
2 a : a minimal artist b : an adherent of minimalism
[/indent]One might also look up the term maximalist for a comparative slant on that, though that's more of an idle suggestion.
If you do so choose to look this kind of stuff up a decent online source may be found here:[indent]http://tinyurl.com/63z
[/indent]You might well employ this source to better catch my typos for me, Pasternakski, a service for which I'm always grateful. And while you're not busy at that giddy pursuit, and as incredible as it seems, you could possibly learn something new to squeeze into that tiny head of yours, and should you learn enough they might even appoint you jack-in-the-pulpit around here. One never knows.
But now let's get on to other and happier subjects.
I get a kick out of running down thoughts presented online, and while a ton's been written on Douglas MacArthur this item strikes me as a fairly good synopsis or abridgment if you will, or at least it is a fairly good blurb of the man the mass media came to portray, and should it come across as somewhat cliche this far down the road maybe that's understandable after all and perhaps even something warmly sought after in our day's vanilla age of comfortable truth and easy fiction.[indent]http://tinyurl.com/s26g
[/indent]As long as Morison has been brought up lately, one perspective of this author which I've never quite gotten or have been able to warm up to is his apparent admiration for MacArthur. At one juncture Morison goes so far as to declare that no officer who ever served under MacArthur had anything to say of the man which not was not highly complimentary of his organizational skills, his grasp on firm leadership and seeming ease of ability in all phases of supreme command, or words to that effect.
That is not my impression of MacArthur, but then again I never got to rub elbows with the man, was instead bombarded by the storm of media circus around him and only after the fact at that. Something Mogami wrote drove my attention back to MacArthur, who was to my generation broadly presented as a regular American icon, a man to be revered above the normal respect one usually accords our country's highest-ranking military men who have distinguished themselves in service. And yet as time wore on, as I grew bolder intellectually, as my interest in military matters led me to closer study of this figure of history my opinion of him and his work swung completely round to where now when I conjure MacArthur's image I see instead of America's hero of the 1950's more the darker and vaguely threatening profile of a bombastic and opportunistic individual, with maybe some of the buffoon thrown in.
Well, my thoughts and impressions of MacArthur must remain where and what they are for the time being. There is small chance to alter one's lifetime of thinking patterns, a lifetime of having been actually thought for by others to some extent in a moment passing. Nevertheless I do wonder what my opinion of this magnetic personality might be today had I been born a generation before my allotted time and actually walked side by side with MacArthur in danger and with our fear along the northern shore of New Guinea.
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