LNH20/Meta: the silver and bronze ages

Lalo Martins lalo.martins at gmail.com
Sat Dec 3 14:04:41 PST 2011


quoth Dave Van Domelen as of Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:17:17 +0000:

> In article <74r9dopr2nzm.1bih2dgdy931j$.dlg at 40tude.net>, Andrew Perron 
> <pwerdna at gmail.com> wrote:
>>On Fri, 2 Dec 2011 19:04:57 +0000 (UTC), Adrian James McClure wrote:
>>
>>> The Four Horseman of the ApocaLISP: Flamewar (effectively the LNH20
>>> version of OMAR), Virus (the LNH20 version of Melissa), Lag (not
>>> officially a new version of Lagneto), and Spam (a gigantic Validus-
>>> like being made out of actual spam).
>>
>>Hmmmm.  I like the idea, but the names are bland. (Yeah, I know it's
>>supposed to be like War, Death, Famile, and Pestilence, but without the
>>resonance of that quartet, it doesn't quite work.) I'd go... Flamewar,
>>Vector, L2, and... hmmm.  Something.
> 
>      War = Flamewar (obvious)
>      Pestilence = Virus (also obvious)
>      Famine = Lag/Latency (lack of nourishment) Death = Censorship
>      (Biblical Death was given authority to destroy a
> quarter of the Earth)
> 
>      But that's just their roles, not necessarily their names.  Even in
>      the
> Bible, the only Horseman explicitly named was Death.

Yeah, the whole War/Pestilence/Famine thing is apocryphal, if you look at 
the passage with critical eyes it's very hard to interpret it that way. 
But in this case, the popular story is more important :-)

>      How about Flamewar, Vector, Latency and Cen-Zor the Obliterator?

Me likey.

But those would be the modern Horsemen, right? If there were horsemen in 
the early 60s, I imagine some might have different names at least. Cen-Zor 
can easily be the one that's been around for a while. Lag... I imagine 
was just the status quo back then :-P And flamewars hadn't yet discovered 
the potential for extra vitriol inherent in not seeing the people you're 
discussing with, I guess. The closest would be argument by publication, 
especially in reporting and academics.

Or maybe go for a completely different metaphor for the times... keeping 
with the information-centric metaphysics but dealing with the concerns of 
the period. So the 60s horsemen could be: Cold War (invisible?), 
Propaganda, Emptiness (beatnik, the horsemen looks James Dean-ish), and 
Cen-Zor (McCarthy Edition).

-- Lalo “writer without a cause” Martins


More information about the racc mailing list