From: Ross A. Finlayson (extropy@apexinternetsoftware.com)
Date: Mon Nov 04 2002 - 15:40:29 MST
On Monday, November 4, 2002, at 07:53 AM, spike66 wrote:
> Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
>> As the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz said to Dorothy: "we shall
>> see, my pretty, we shall see.." -Mitch
>
> Wicked witch? You should be more specific. If one
> views the movie, one realizes that the "wicked" witch
> wasn't, really. Consider, the first time we see
> her, Dorothy had just landed upon and slain her
> sister. The witch did not commit a revenge murder
> on the spot, altho presumably she could have, or
> at the very least turned Dorothy into a frog, as
> witches are known to do.
>
> Secondly, she rescued the travellers from a poppy
> field, which could be considered analogous to to
> helping someone free themselves from a drug habit.
>
> Granted, setting the scarecrow afire was a bit
> on the wicked side, but the PETA people would defend
> that action, for his very name implied a form of
> animal cruelty. (Bumper sticker: We should Looove
> crows, not scare them).
>
> Consider Glenda the "good" witch. What was so good
> about her? I mean other than her clothes and her
> Hollywood smile? She withheld some pretty critical
> information from Dorothy right at the start, a
> grossly unethical inaction which could have gotten
> Dorothy killed.
>
> So the green broad could have slain Dorothy and
> didn't, the northern babe could have saved her,
> and didn't, until Dorothy already proved she had
> the right stuff. Who ya callin wicked?
>
> spike
>
>
There are like thirty Oz books.
The live wicked witch might have just been an apparition, powerless in
projection. The good witch might have known enough to know that the
quest would be better for all.
There are all kinds of Oz books. Several of them have Dorothy in them.
Surrounding Oz is this desert, the sands of which are poisonous, there
are even books about the lands beyond Oz. The desert is crossed
variously by airships, sand boats, and other methods.
For example, there is Tik-Tok the Mechanical Man, found by Dorothy in
the lands beyond Oz, to the East, the Sawhorse, animated by dust ala the
Scarecrow. The Tin-Man just lost body part by body part, replaced by
tin, a cyborg, there are other tin men in Oz. There are the people that
live on stairs, the Rushing River, many more. I remember being a seven
or eight year old kid and the library had many of the Oz books, I read
each one. Happily they're mostly not musicals except for the
Oompa-loompas, or whatever they were called, musical underground gnomes.
The East and West witches were wicked and evil, the North and South
witches were good, as fictional characters they had few or no moral
quandaries. Oz itself is divided into four quadrants, where Dorothy
landed was the land of the Munchkins, who inhabit only their own
quarter, I don't recall the names of the other peoples of Oz, Winkies,
Quadlings, Gillikins, and all, but the stories variously took place all
over Oz.
http://www.welcometooz.net/
http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/ozites/ozite4.htm
I guess I've read more Baum than Tipler. Let's see, what is that
called, "The Third Wave"? Oh, my bad, that's Alvin Toffler,
quasi-singulatarian. Tipler appears to be more of an immortalist.
These words are saying he claims the Omega Point to be a godhead.
That's similar to George Cantor, infinite set theorist, who claimed a
proof of God from one of his paradoxes.
It appears the Omega Point theory has some parallels to be drawn to
Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld. Heh, one of the protagonists in the
Riverworld is a Peter Jairus Frigate, anyways, the other protagonists
are every person who ever lived to five before 1987 or so, all
reanimated at age 25 along a winding river over a whole planet, the
purpose of which is a large experiment by more advanced humans to work
on their spirit or ka, administrated by twelve immortals and X. The
Sufi got into the Tower.
Then there's the Ringworld, unstable as it may be, stamped upon the
ribbon of the Ringworld scrith is a bas-relief of each planet harboring
human-style (carbon-based, liquid water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, or
nitrogen breathing) life, each seeded with that kind of life by Niven's
Pak, a form of the alien progenitor myth.
When I want to understand physics, I read about Clifford algebras.
Ross
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