Update 2024-03-27: Greatly expanded the "Samples" page and renamed it to "Glossary".
Update 2024-04-04: Added 5 million mid-2011 posts from the k47 post dump. Browse (mostly) them here.
Update 2024-04-07: Added ~400 October 2003 posts from 4chan.net. Browse them here.
Welcome to Oldfriend Archive, the official 4chan archive of the NSA. Hosting ~170M text-only 2003-2014 4chan posts (mostly 2006-2008).
The book 108 Rock Star Guitars demonstrates that six-stringed instruments owned by celebrities and virtuoso sidemen can look as good as they rock.
The 17-year undertaking by photographer Lisa S. Johnson partly benefits the Les Paul Foundation, which supports msuic education, engineering and innovation as well as medical research.
Paul, the Rock Hall musician-inventor, wrote the foreword before he died.
Not a guitar geek? Don't fret.
Whether you define "pickup" as a truck, a dating technique or a guitar part, you can revel in the glitz-and-grit world where these prized possessions reside.
The instruments (one's named Baby) evoke tender talk from macho musicians. But some of these battle-axe beauties have seen more action than a roller derby queen: They bear the gashes and sweat stains to prove it.
The author, who grew up in a musical family, underscores musicians' emotional attachment to their instruments.
"I don't believe any serious musician feels that his instrument is an inanimate object," Tom Scholz of the group Boston told Johnson.
The 396-page book lauds the instrument-makers, called luthiers, and the techs, along with the guitars.
Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik resurrected a broken Stratocaster into a four-string. The word "Ouch!" is splayed over its torso. Its name? Halfcaster.
"I was amazed when I threw the guitar in the air and the top portion split right off," Rzeznik recalled.
"I had my guitar tech take it to a luthier in LA who sanded off the rough edges and fixed the electronics.
"I used it on a song called Big Machine for a couple years after that. Surprisingly, the tone didn't really change.
"It was a cheap guitar that didn't sound that great to begin with. Haha!"
The appreciation of instruments as visual art is an age-old concept.
They "may evoke status, identity, or indicate events - sacred or profane", said Mr J. Kenneth Moore, the Frederick P. Rose curator in charge of the Department of Musical Instruments at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
"They become sounding, tangible works of art - telling many stories of the life and times of those who used them," he said. - AP
1. A double-neck guitar owned by Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen. The figure named Uncle Dick, is a caricature of Nielsen.
2. Before a Rage Against the Machine performance, Tom Morello scrawled "Arm The Homeless" on his guitar. The words co-exist with his drawings of happy hippos.
3. A guitar owned by James J.Y. Young of the group Styx. It has an elaborate carving of Cerberus, ancient mythology's three-headed underworld guard dog.
4. A guitar owned by John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls.
5. Country singer Willie Nelson's Trigger, named for cowboy actor Roy Rogers' horse, has a hole worn through it. The guitar bears dozens of autographs, including those by Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash.
6. A guitar covered with fake fur, owned by Billy Gibbons of the group ZZ Top.
The art of telling a tale effectively can be valuable in the business world
WE LIVE in the age of celebrities - big and small; long-lasting and flash-in-the-pan. You can have your own webpage, channel, followers and fans.
Snapshots have become "selfies", every minute detail of your life can be tweeted to eager followers, every interaction becomes a story worthy of a Facebook post. And, let's be honest, most of us are over it! We have been numbed by irrelevant stories about unimportant issues.
But this should never cause you to doubt the value of the right story told at the appropriate time. Those who can tell a story effectively have a powerful business skill.
Here are some reasons why stories are so valuable:
STORIES MAKE THE INTANGIBLE BECOME TANGIBLE
Love, passion, trustworthiness, discipline are all concepts that are difficult to define. Mention "loyalty" and you introduce an abstract concept. Tell a story about a pet watching the front door of the apartment all day until its owner returns and the abstract, suddenly becomes real.
STORIES SELL YOU SUBTLY
Some of the most important stories are the stories about you. We all want others to appreciate our expertise and exerience. But most of us feel uncomfortable praising ourselves.
If, however, you share a relevant story, and inherent in that story are messages about your experience, your expertise, your values, then your listeners will get the message. Your stories define the "brand" that is you.
STORIES ENGAGE
Stories really are the secret weapons of communication because they engage listeners where other methods fail. Even when the story is bad, the engagement factor is still high.
Remember watching a movie on television and recognising early that it was not a good movie? Yet, an hour and a half later you are still watching it - because you want to find out what happens. That is the engagement power of narrative.
STORIES ENGAGE THE WHOLE LISTENER
Stories can create physical reactions in the listener (gasp, facial expression, change of body position) that are rarely seen in other forms of oral communication.
A touching story will warm your heart, a frightening one will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, a sad one will bring a tear to your eye. Because more of you is involved in the listening process, you are more likely to remember it.
STORIES MAKE DIFFICULT MESSAGES EASIER
Stories provide one of the few formats where you like being wrong. Stories with twists and turns and unexpected endings entertain you. So the brain experiences pleasure for being wrong.
Because of this, you are more likely to listen to challenging message in a story format than in any other. More than that, if you find the story relevant, you are more likely to act on it.
USING STORIES TO ADVANCE YOUR CAREER
Stories are important in many key points in your career. Here are some obvious ones:
In the recruitment interview
Often candidates fall into the "sameness trap" by filling their answers with instantly forgettable platitudes. Have a story to tell about every one of the key selection criteria. This is the best way to show them your experience and expertise in a way that is memorable.
As a leader
The stories about you are the greatest gift you can give to your staff - particularly in the early days. In the stories, you can demonstrate your values, priorities, problem-solving approaches and any other characteristics you would like them to understand and emulate.
As a change agent
The only thing certain about the future is the accelerating pace of change. Those who can facilitate change will have increasing value in the workplace.
One of the most effective change - management tools is the "change story". These are the stories - present in every industry - where change has been met with initial resistance yet has resulted in improvements that can now be seen clearly in hindsight. Those who can tell these stories are best equipped to help other see future change with a positive attitude.
As a salesperson
One of the oldest - and truest - sayings in sales is: every buying decision is an emotional decision. Stories touch the emotions where dispassionate lists of features and benefits often struggle. Part of showing off your new acquisition is telling the story behind it. Stories sell.
Anyone have any tips on speed reading? When I try to speed read I get lost. It's like my brain can't keep up with my eyes. I know you aren't supposed to read the words out loud in your head, but does anyone have any more suggestions?
[someone mentioned that the /lit/ board was "the slowest board on 4chan. So I'm crossposting here in case anyone doesn't bother to go there.]
In the near future when search engine giants and advertising juggernauts have finally gone fully rogue, one person races against time to create a new identity and find out what it means to be human in a world of intelligent machines.
2. Why is being too sure of one's abilities like an addiction?
3. Why does being open, curious and generous lead to success?
4. When should you be, and not be, a team player?
5. How and why should you challenge flawed ideas of geniuses?
Don't be afraid of mistakes, says astrophysicist Mario Livio; blunders actually lead to innovation
Albert Einstein stunned with his theory of gravity, but Livio chose to discuss his blunder, along with those of other scientists, to show even geniuses fall again and again before their Eureka! moments.
Even the brilliant naturalist Charles Darwin was not spared by Livio. But the seemingly shaming take serves to demonstrate that even the most gifted persons are human.
Brilliant Blunders
WHEN the Greek scientist Archimedes leapt out of his bathtub and ran through the streets of his city naked, yelling "Eureka!" (Greek for "I have found it!"), little did he know that that cry would come to mean scientific success.
Archimedes was so elated because he had hit on a way to solve a problem that the tyrannical King Hiero II had set him, that is: Find out if the king's goldsmith had cheated him by mixing silver into his golden crown.
As Archimedes sank into his tub, he realised that the volume of water splashing out as he did so was equivalent to his weight. So he weighed the gold crown against a pure gold ingot in water, and found that the goldsmith had indeed corrupted the heavier crown with silver.
While Israeli-American astrophysicist Mario Livio does not feature Archimedes in this artfully articulated book on five geniuses and their blind spots, he takes issue fiercely with society's long acceptance that breakthroughs are necessarily successful. "The bigger the prize, the bigger the potential blunder," the fiercely erudite Livio warns at the beginning of this ever-elegant book.
Livio, whose day job is studying what happens when stars explode, has chosen to spotlight superstar scientists Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle and William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin (after whom the unit of measurement for temperature is named).
But unlike other biographers of great minds, Livio has made it his mission to spotlight the quintet's most mind-boggling failures, not to denigrate them but to reassure everyone that even geniuses had to flop again and again before they had their Eureka! moments.
"I want to show that blunders actually lead to innovation: Do not be afraid to make mistakes," says Livio, who is much sought after as a speaker on science. So his seemingly shaming take on Darwin and company has a noble aim, and one that is especially crucial in an age when those who pay billions for R&D insist on big ideas that can be commercialised quickly and for massive profits.
He has chosen his blunderers with care, as is evident in the unforced way he is able to link all of them to create a compelling narrative as the most skilful novelist would.
Of course, the Western scientific community in the 19th and 20th centuries was relatively small and everyone would have at least heard of almost everyone else. Livio acknowledges that but has gone further by digging deep into its archives of letters and scientific papers and come up with anecdotes that are as telling of each blunder as they are of society's attitudes to failure at the time.
So, for example, while it is not immediately apparent how Darwin, the father of natural selection, would ever rub shoulders with bumptious Lord Kelvin, who specialised in marine technology, Livio manages to paint them into the big picture of the West's quests for scientific truths. For instance, the author found that Lord Kelvin had actually been goaded by Darwin's book The Origin Of The Specie's to seek the Earth's age. The peer pooh-poohed Darwin's idea that humans had evolved, insisting that some force had "designed" the universe and everything and everyone in it.
Darwin's defender was none other than his fifth son, physicist George, who was an expert in calculating how fast the Earth spun, which helped it cool down. George Darwin showed how Lord Kelvin had mistakenly assumed that once the Earth cooled completely, it could no longer change its shape as it spun. Not so, George proved decisively, exposing Lord Kelvin as fallible after all. That emboldened other scientists to criticise the latter's views.
Livio's flair for spotting and telling good stories is helped by the fact that his five chosen subjects were obsessed with answering humanity's most intriguing questions, including:
• How do parents who are both brunettes produce a child with platinum white hair?
• How old is the Earth?
• How was the universe created and what is its shape?
• What is the seed of life?
Livio lays bare the individual blunder of all five thinkers, then picks at it the way a bird pecks at grains, and rounds everything off by associating each genius with the mind trap each fell into, which everyone else would do well to steer clear of. These traps include:
Failing to grasp fully implications of certain assumptions
DARWIN, always a poor mathematician, did not put two and two together at the most crucial point in his intellectual life. His idea was that only those species which adapted best to change would survive, and would ensure their offspring's survival by transferring their single strongest characteristic to them.
But as Livio explains beautifully in the book, other scientists in Darwin's time assumed that when a man and woman created a child, the act blended their traits in the embryo, as one would mix paints in a pot.
But, Livio notes, Darwin did not realise that even if the fittest of a species passed its strongest trait on to the next generation, that inherited trait would surely be swamped by other existing average or weaker traits in the species.
"As with gin and tonic, if you keep mixing the drink with tonic (water), you eventually no longer taste the gin," Livio points out in the book.
Shutting one's mind to possibilities proposed by others
LORD Kelvin wanted to know how old the Earth was. To do so, he first had to calculate how long it took the Earth to cool down enough to support life. This was because scientists thought that the Earth was a chunk of the sun that had been sent flying into space after a comet collided with the sun.
Lord Kelvin managed to devise a formula that could determine the age of the Earth but grossly underestimated the planet's age because he would not listen to his former pupil, John Perry. Perry pointed out that Lord Kelvin had assumed that the distance from the Earth's molten core to its crust, or surface, was the same wherever one was on the planet. Not so, said Perry, because the crust had peaks and vales.
Perry's own calculations showed that the Earth should be about 4 billion years old - close to the estimate of 4.5 billion years by today's scientists, compared to Lord Kelvin's 40 million years.
Insisting on making the problem fit one's theory
EINSTEIN stunned everyone in the early 20th century by showing that gravity was the overarching force at work in the universe. Unfortunately, he then had to answer why the universe was not caving in on itself if that were so. So he suggested that there was a repulsive force at work too, cancelling out the collapsing effect of gravity.
The problem was, if Einstein was correct, then the universe was highly unstable, akin to "a pencil standing on its tip", says Livio. Scientists who built on Einstein's ideas later found that the universe was expanding all the time, which did away with the need for a repulsive force to counter gravity.
The thing is, the ideas in this book and the questions they try to address are so big that Livio should have written an extra chapter to sum up all the lessons for those who are out of touch with such deep concerns. As he points out in the book, science is so relentlessly progressive that those who embark on its journeys of discovery are actually signing up for a lifetime of pin-sharp bends and dead ends. What a relief it is, then, to learn from Livio that even the most gifted of people are as nakedly human as you and me.
