Massif: Good point, films in the “Schindler’s List” mould are a bit dodgy because they’re so closely linked to real, recent events people think they’re “real”. Anyone who thinks that about 300 is nuts.

Weasel: I’m at work so I didn’t follow you link… because I have a horrible idea I know what it is.

Alabaster: Thanks, if my anger can educate others, I’m happy.

Mike: Exactly. One variation on that theme is how often people who gain fame say “I used to believe what I read in the papers now I see blatant lies written about me every day.”

Range: Futurama is possibly the greatest achievement of western civilisation I read about those novels recently too, they sound good as well.

Engtech: I’d hate to be the guy who has to hang the letters on a cinema screen for a title that long. They must love short titles like “300”. It doesn’t actually open here for another two weeks – I’m going to see it in IMAX when it comes out.

“Leonidis’ balls are 300 times bigger than any other man’s”

(saw the movie on sunday, loved it)

I have read 300 the comic book and I enjoyed it. There is no need to analyze it, just to enjoy it. Currently I am watching it and I like it.

Frank Miller does great stuff.

Naturally, some people have a tendency of saying:
“Oh, I’ve seen it in a movie, so it must be true!”

There is nothing that you can do with those idiots. If the movie gets a few people interested in history and Sparta, well that is great.

Personally, I really enjoyed Ilium and Olympos from Dan Simmons. Those are novels, science-fiction novels and I recommend them. Why do I mention them? They have to do with The Iliad.

If future histories are going to be based upon press and TV reporting then they will be equally flawed. However there are no alternate accounts in most instances and no mechanism to determine that any
alternate accounts are more accurate in any case.

So we just have to accept that “History is Bunk”.

Actually, yes I do. It’s so we can view religiosity as a continuum, with very clueless religious people at the beginning and very clever secular ones at the end. We’ve got to see everything as a progression, with us being the fabulous end-product our whole species was striving toward all along. Feh!

I’m guessing religiosity rises and falls periodically, like hemlines and haircuts. For chrissakes, the ancients had exactly the same big brains we’ve got, they just didn’t have as much collected data.

I bet the Venus of Willendorf was the Stone Age mud flap girl.

To put that in context, Herodotus has two nicknames:
“The Father of History” (because he wrote stuff down about what had happened in the past! Gasp!)
“The Father of Lies” (because he made shit up all the time to make the stories better.)

Although I haven’t seen 300 I doubt it veers into that dangerous category of “entertainment disguised as fact.” which many films belong to. It looks melodramatic and over-the-top, no-one’s going to mistake it for an accurate portrayal, in the same way that people mistook Schindler’s List for a documentary.

Another pearler of literary genius, Mr Angry!!