• Do you know who James Thomson is? What about James Cameron?
    46 replies, posted
The more important people tend to be less famous. The more famous people tend to be less important.
Look to my avatar, then back to me. Look to my posts, then back to me. Look to my started threads, the back to me. Then ask yourself, do I know who James Cameron is?
Yes, you do.
I know who Cameron was cos he made that awesome film The Abyss
Hmmmm. Titanic and... oh! That one avatar movie... ew.
The reason we put value on people like Cameron is because they contribute to the culture of our society. James Thomson doesn't; he's making advancements that are far more valuable than Cameron, however what he's doing (according to what you're saying) has few social cultural implications. People are naturally more interested in what's culturally important to them; and in America and many Western societies, film is vitally important. And, in fact, I think you're undermining the importance of film in our culture. It has the ability to shape the world; look at the propoganda of the WWII era and tell me it didn't help to legitimize racism on both sides of the war; on one hand you've got German films advocating the aryan race, and on the Allied side you've got American films portraying Japanese as incompetent, racially impure fools. In the past thirty years there's been a huge upturn of postcolonial films, all criticizing colonial powers like Britain, France, Spain, and Italy. These films are things that are [I]popular [/I]in society and bring important concepts out of the woodwork. Of course, James Cameron's films are hugely unimportant and display few moralities other than "herf, don't hurt the forest for yourself!" but to completely ignore the impact of film in the last century and what it's done as a form of mass media? The advent of television, film, and mass media is hugely important to the very future of our society. Think of it this way; if it wasn't for that mass media, no one would know who James Thomson is anyway!
Stupid biology neeeeerds don't deserve my attention!
It's the media. Sure everyone knows all about the Media from celebrities to fast food companies only because they are around that kind of thing all the time (Ads, Commericals).Now if you replaced all the ads with names of famous scientists, then everyone would know about those people. It's just how much of a spoon-fed society we've become. No one's to blame except the structure. And besides even if the structure didn't exist, not everyone is going to have the passion to find out about cell-biology or medicine sciences or famous people relating to it.
Woo. You know who two people are. Do you know what the Armenian Genocide is? The Rwanda Genocide? Doubt it.
[QUOTE=Kagrenak;28433832]I said respect/recognition. Clearly that wasn't my point. Also no I'm not James Thomson, but I'm going in to a similar field as he is in. (Stem cell biology/biomedical research in general).[/QUOTE] QUICK name the architect that worked on the twin towers WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! oh, right, you're not interested in the subject and it's his accomplishment that's important, not his name, silly me for thinking everyone would/should know that
You make it sound like they both died in an accident together. "I knew ...."
His name was James Thomson.
where's the option for who cares
Are these people supposed to be somehow related because their first names are both James? And I know more about James Clerk Maxwell than I do James Cameron therefore your argument is invalid.
It isn't our problem. It's the media's. I have never heard of that man, but I HAVE heard of Friedmann, Boltzmann, Newton, Einstein, Kepler, Copernicus, Heisenberg, Tesla, Feynman, Sagan, Hawking, Huygens, Galileus, Ptolomeu, Archimedes, etc. And the media does not necessarily reflect the people. In fact, the media feeds the people shit, they grow up with shit in their mind, which fuels the media shit. And I'm willing to say it began with society, since media boosted on a time of liberal revolution, where people gave a lot more importance to their desires and personal happiness, which allows the hedonistic, selfish and brainless attitute most people have towards life to flourish. A truly sad thing. But it isn't irreversible. Look at Sagan, look at how many minds the man inspired to start thinking. We need more people like him, who focus on stopping this. I mean, it's a sad world where people idolize soccer players, where the number one rated show is some stupid love story told a million times before, where teenage girls shriek and shout for someone who mastered the art of producing sound from themselves. I mean seriously, people, expand your fucking minds. This is heavily influenced by genetics, it is, but education is much more important. This is one of the reasons I love facepunch. Considerably less idiots here.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;28447220]Are these people supposed to be somehow related because their first names are both James? And I know more about James Clerk Maxwell than I do James Cameron therefore your argument is invalid.[/QUOTE] The point is that in their respective fields, they're both seen as important people in this day. And yes their names are both James so it makes the point a little better. Replying to BrickInHead: I don't undervalue film, if at some point I deemed it completely unimportant, I now retract that because that clearly isn't the case. I don't think there needs to be some clause where if I think entertainment celebrities are overvalued that I have to think they're completely useless on a large scale. [QUOTE=Android phone;28445739]QUICK name the architect that worked on the twin towers WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! oh, right, you're not interested in the subject and it's his accomplishment that's important, not his name, silly me for thinking everyone would/should know that[/QUOTE] Actually, while the point about the architect of the twin towers seems rather facetious to me, it made me think, "Why don't I know the person or people behind the first modern skyscrapers? Something so important as to shape our society into mega-cities as we have now." To me, that is also important. Understanding the mechanisms behind these events is also important. My example with James Thomson isn't supposed to be exclusive to him; it was simply an illustrative example.
The "idea" behind skycrapers isn't really revolutionary; "lets make a really tall building that uses land more efficiently". The real breakthrough was the invention of safe elevators and the idea of using a steel skeleton to hold a building up rather than relying on heavy load-bearing elements like brick walls.
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