The Glass Bead Game
1999-10-01 12:52:53
Crazy! Straight outta the pages of Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi come a whole shitload of Glass Bead Games! What's up with THAT?
I dunno how many folks have read this book (it also goes under the title The Glass Bead Game), but it's pretty OK in that high-flown sappy romantic early-20th-century German way. The crazy premise is that it's the FUTURE and there are these GUYS, see, and they live in a MONASTERY. CRAZY BEGINNING, eh? But it gets BETTER, trust me.
So anyways these guys live in this crazy monastery where they spend all their time learning this bizarre chess-like game, The Glass Bead Game. The deal with this game is that it is intricate and insanely complex, like chess, but instead of having a war metaphor, it's got a metaphor metaphor. Like, each player gets a chance to arrange these glass beads that represent IDEAS in weird crazy patterns. One bead per turn, and so forth. It's all complex and very symbolic and shit.
See, but the deal with this was is that this game is a METAPHOR ITSELF, for all kinds of formal systems and the process of learning to manipulate symbols -- KINDA LIKE WRITING or COMPUTER PROGRAMMING. Unfortunately, this interesting but kind of heavy-handed allegory has been totally weirdly taken too LITERALLY by a whole bunch of people.
Hesse never laid out the rules for the game explicitly, because, like, HOW are you supposed to represent ALL IDEAS in a finite number of beads and spatial relations and whatnot? You can't. Nobody could possibly do it. But, apparently, some people have tried.
There are a whole bunch of glass bead games on the Web. I got a link into the very cool Open Directory page about glass bead games right here. Go check it out, wonder at the amount of literalist fuckhead pills in circulation on our planet, and then go make some patterns of your own.
T O P S T O R I E S
California Glory Hole attracts huge crowds
A glory hole at Napa's Lake Berryessa is drawing huge crowds. According to Chris Lee, the general manager for the Solano County Water Agency, the glory hole hasn't been active since 2019, and only restarted operations on Feb 4. (More...)
Republican State Senator busted after soliciting a teenage girl
Republican State Senator Justin Eichorn of Minnesota was arrested for soliciting a teen girl on Monday just hours after he introduced a bill proposing "Trump derangement syndrome" (TDS) as a form of mental illness. (More...)
Parents claim measles is not that bad after having only one child die
The parents of a Texas girl who died from the measles are defending their decision not to vaccinate their daughter. "She says they would still say 'Don't do the shots,'" an unidentified translator for the parents said. "They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be." (More...)
Delusional rich man tries to fire town staff
"I'm mayor now" said write-in mayoral candidate and founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks Robert Ehrlich after losing the election for Mayor of Sea Cliff, NY. Then he tried to take over the Village Hall and fire everyone. (More...)
Musk claims Xitter security is staffed by idiots
Earlier this month Xitter experienced a massive outage. In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from "IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area." (More...)
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
My experiment is a failure. Rockstar-and-Robitussin tastes like day-after-Halloween bile. I'm trying to choke down enough to discover the effects, but no matter what those are one thing is certain at the outset: what I have discovered is not a Beverage, but a pale green and angry iced abomination.
You were right: science is not for the weak of will nor stomach. (More...)
All this talk about death, wakes and Moloch recently has, frankly, got me a little worried. What if I'm next to go? I could slip on a wet banana peel and slam my head against an enormous brass statue at almost any time. I'm not planning well enough for this sort of thing. Who will talk for me when this terrible day comes? (More...)
It was New Year's Eve and I wanted a signature drink I could hand to my guests. Something that they would accept with no fuss, drink quickly, and then want another. A drink simple enough that I could explain the recipe quickly -- thereby annointing each new guest as a bartender capable of making the drink -- and freeing me to enjoy myself. So I created The MAN-tini... (More...)
We here in SMRL's Beverage Research Lab realize that there is more to life than just drinking spocktails. It's important to have other activities. One such activity that we wholeheartedly support is dancing six or more hours to Trance music. So we have designed a drink to accommodate this. (More...)
What the hell is going on with Sony?
Is anyone else as confused as I am with what's happening with the Sony Playstation network hack? (More...)