Homo Novus: Where Is He Now?

[Tuesday Pajamas]

There's just something about that smile that makes him look like he's lost IQ points. I know Jim is being directed to act a certain way, but it just makes me sad that they make Sheldon APPEAR SO THICK now! He's a moron

[Toad]

This vaguely reminds me of those lenticular rings I used to get when I was a child. The kind where if you held it a certain way you saw one image and if you tilted it a smidge you saw another.

Same with Sheldon. Only now the little points have been ground down to such a degree that only in certain settings *coughPennycough* can you still spy the dignified, autonomous, beautiful mind guy, and even then not so much.

For someone once prone to weep for the intellectual decay and attendant emotional chaos he saw swirling about him, I have to wonder what he would make of Future!Sheldon. Distracted, dependent... De-Sheldonized essentially. Given to unseemly spurts of maudlin sentimentality just so a portion of the remaining audience can "aww" in unison.

But, by all means, let's bend and contort the fellow every which way until he's barely recognizable, even physically and physiognomically, let's force him into the mating rites and rituals of a NORMAL, something he was patently disinterested in for most of his life, let's set him on the candy- and Tardis-lined path to Coitus where the quivering, and one assumes insatiable, loins of AFF await, and then let's all exult in his quote unquote growth as all the remaining vestiges of his character are subsumed into a gaping buffoon.

[ricardo shillyshally]

Another branch of science that has a bad name is eugenics/evolution. It's strange that if a fascist party uses vague scientific allusions to a theory, it becomes tainted. Strange that same party also developed the most advanced rocket systems,( ie:rocket science), but that isn't tainted, but hailed, and adopted worldwide. The fact that our increasing understanding of DNA, will lead to us taking control of our evolution, is science fiction(Brave New World to Gattaca), but happening. We will want designed astronauts, and scientists, children. It happens now, in a sort of natural random way. As machines do physical work people will be leaner, and bigger brained. Sheldon. just found this looks interesting> http://www.davidakirby.com/26.1kirby.pdf

[wellplayedpenny]

I believe in evolution. It's the reason why I'm here today.

Under an eugenics program, I wouldn't have been born at all.

[ricardo shillyshally]

Well obviously I'm no advocate of parties using science to excuse themselves, but all of warfare is science in one form or another, and all warfare is slaughter. Interesting that Sheldon says some outrageous statements that remind of dictator speak, yet he gets away with it. Must be the face!

[Tuesday Pajamas]

I don't really get what you mean by 'warfare is science' surely warfare is older than any known science.

Sheldon has/had a dislike for the human race. They had never liked him because he was different, so he distanced himself. TPTB also suggested his genius was close to madness. Yet I preferred the character back then, because he was funny. I think once a show has been around a while, we forget that it's meant to be entertaining and that the characters are outside of morality because of this. We start rationalising and imagining them as real people. Sheldon as a real person would be horrendous but as a character he's wonderful, he goes places we can't. I have to admit over the years I have liked him less.

[ricardo shillyshally]

There's footage somewhere, of what it takes to carve a flint arrow head, since then we have been in a science/tech, great leap forward, to using a laptop in Idaho to kill using a drone. The greatest leaps occurred during wartime, as all resources and intellect are focused. What's interesting in that article is that; the idea is to remove the animal part of humans, presumably so that we no longer wish to kill each other,etc. They already screen out diseases. I think Sheldon would like a world of the future; conception and birth in lab, order and uniformity, where super intelligent rule. But as article points out it could be very boring, and life and humans are equally cunning and find a way(referring to Gattaca).

[Tuesday Pajamas]

It WOULD be very boring and that's where Penny comes in. The chaos in his plan. And I think that's why I find these two so interesting. They seem designed to experience an awakening through learning about the other.

[Idle Miscreant]

For Ricardo

[ricardo shillyshally]

Yes, Orson, another homo novus. Speeches like that stick in our minds. I think BB in a cultural eddy type of way has reminded me of many forgotten ideas, programmes, people. And it's certainly sent me down many tangents. I read about a tribe, who refuse to have children because they believe it's beneath their dignity. They are a high ranking tribe. So they adopt children from lower caste tribes, and thus propagate their culture. The cultural gene taking presidence over the biological gene.