Grex Agora47 Conference

Item 70: Name the person.

Entered by debayan1 on Mon Oct 6 23:16:20 2003:

"Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this
ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth" Albert Einstein.
23 responses total.
#1 of 23 by cross on Tue Oct 7 00:34:51 2003:

This response has been erased.


#2 of 23 by cmcgee on Tue Oct 7 02:18:56 2003:

Oh, let's rehabilitate the mysterious quote item!

#3 of 23 by remmers on Tue Oct 7 10:45:37 2003:

It would have to be done with care.  Web searching has become
so fast and powerful that the author of virtually any public-domain
quote can be looked up in seconds.  Google is what killed off the
mysterious quote item.

(For the benefit of newbies:  "Mysterious Quote" was a long-running
guessing game in Agora.  People would post short quotes from published
works, and the challenge was to name the author.)

#4 of 23 by cross on Tue Oct 7 14:16:05 2003:

This response has been erased.


#5 of 23 by cmcgee on Tue Oct 7 14:53:30 2003:

Pfooey.  Maybe we could open an item in books, and NOT link it here.  Make
it an honor code "won't use the Web" or some other reasonable rules.

#6 of 23 by polygon on Tue Oct 7 16:06:05 2003:

Oh, come on.  Only a small percentage of the usable quotes can be found
on the Web.

#7 of 23 by rcurl on Tue Oct 7 16:40:02 2003:

In an earlier day in the Mysterious Quote I actually went to a *library*
to do some research.

#8 of 23 by anderyn on Tue Oct 7 16:45:10 2003:

I was going to say that I bet you couldn't find most quotes if the person
posing them took care to take them from the middles of books.

#9 of 23 by flem on Tue Oct 7 17:05:11 2003:

I don't seem to remember googling as the solution method in the mysterious
quote items, at least not until a number of more-searchable clues were given.

#10 of 23 by aruba on Tue Oct 7 18:12:23 2003:

No, I think the reason the MQ dried up is that most players were out of
ideas for good quotes, and din't want to reuse authors.  Now that some time
has past, reusing authors should be OK.

#11 of 23 by remmers on Wed Oct 8 16:31:16 2003:

Not true, at least for me.  Got plenty of good quotes from unused
authors that I never got to post.

If a literary work has stature and is public domain, I think the
chances are pretty good that it's on the web in its entirety
somewhere (e.g. as part of the Gutenberg Project) and that Google
has indexed it.  Give Google a fairly unique-looking phrase or
two from the quote and it will probably find it.

Consider this, from a page chosen at random from a book pulled at
random from my bookshelf:

        I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail,
        I swear to you they will understand you and justify you,
        The greatest among them shall be eh who best knows you,
            and encloses all and is faithful to all,
        He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive
            that you are not an iota less than they,
        You shall be fully glorified in them.

Google found the phrase "architects shall appear without fail"
in no time flat.

These days, the mysterious quote item would probably do best if
it sticks to quotes from more recent, copyrighted works.  That's
a big restriction, though.  Dunno how well cmcgee's suggestion
of tucking it away in a specialty conference would work in
practice, but I'd be game to try.

#12 of 23 by gelinas on Wed Oct 8 18:09:45 2003:

(That looks like somthing from the Gnostics.  I wonder . . . Nope; but
something worth taking the time to read in depth, rather than just skim, as
I did.)

#13 of 23 by aruba on Wed Oct 8 20:58:55 2003:

I sit corrected.  I say, let's start another item in Agora, and use the
honor system with respect to Google.  If it generates party poopers, well,
then, we'll do something else.

#14 of 23 by polygon on Thu Oct 9 12:50:25 2003:

My approach will be to choose quotes which Google hasn't found yet.
I expect that worthwhile examples are hugely plentiful.

#15 of 23 by remmers on Thu Oct 9 13:48:52 2003:

But will they be reasonably guessable?

#16 of 23 by md on Thu Oct 9 14:30:54 2003:

That was why I kept losing interest in the MQ items.  In a good MQ item 
quote, either the subject matter or the style should be enable a 
liberally educated reader to guess the author, or at least slap his 
forehead when the author's identity is revealed.  But more and more of 
the quotes were from unguessably undistiguished writers -- some generic 
scifi/fantasy hack or bland South African nobody the person was 
currently plowing through.  

Some of the quotes were very interesting or amusing and made me want to 
go read the whole book, but they still didn't work as MQ quotes.  There 
should be a separate item for "quotes from books I'm reading that I 
hope you enjoy as much as I do."

#17 of 23 by mynxcat on Thu Oct 9 14:50:33 2003:

Actually, that's not a bad idea

#18 of 23 by polygon on Thu Oct 9 15:00:05 2003:

The concept of MQ, I thought, was to post an obscure (yet interesting)
quote from a famous writer that everyone was likely to have heard of.
The style, subject matter, etc., offer important if sometimes misleading
clues.

Posting quotes by unknown and unguessable writers kind of defeats the
purpose.

#19 of 23 by polygon on Thu Oct 9 15:01:37 2003:

Also agreed that a separate item of interesting or thought-provoking or
enjoyable or outrageous or otherwise worthwhile quotes would be good.

#20 of 23 by remmers on Thu Oct 9 15:33:47 2003:

Obscure quotes from famous authors are still quite apt to be on the
web somewhere, if the works that they're from are public domain.
After all, the web contains tons of obscure information.  There's
this guy I know who runs a "Political Graveyard" website that's
full of it.  :)

#21 of 23 by jp2 on Thu Oct 9 16:05:37 2003:

This response has been erased.


#22 of 23 by tsty on Sat Oct 11 04:38:06 2003:

die famous .. errrr, get famous then die.

#23 of 23 by willcome on Thu Nov 27 08:05:40 2003:

die fucking a WHORE

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