Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!shelby!bloom-beacon!UCSCC.UCSC.EDU!stewarte From: stewarte@UCSCC.UCSC.EDU (The Man Who Invented Himself) Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa Subject: Re: Kruel irony: ied shoT down by own pop idol Message-ID: <8912150320.AA20293@ucscc.UCSC.EDU> Date: 15 Dec 89 03:20:42 GMT References: <8912122118.AA06054@EDDIE.MIT.EDU> Sender: root@athena.mit.edu (Wizard A. Root) Reply-To: stewarte@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (little electric god) Organization: Burst Continuous Forms -- We're not small, we're just far away Lines: 23 Approved: love-hounds@eddie.mit.edu IED0DXM@OAC.UCLA.EDU will no doubt deny ever having said: > As though she had been listening in on the recent argument >in Love-Hounds, Kate Bush said in the new VH-1 interview: "_Nature_ >is perfect. Anything we human beings do can never really be perfect." > Hmm...IED will need a little time to find a way out of this mess... Clearly, Kate must be operating under a different definition of perfection than that recently proposed here by Julian. While that definition was interesting, I found it quite different from what I think of as perfection. With the "local maximum" rule, assuming that what is being maximized is some absolute, quantifiable measure called "quality", a work can be perfect but still be of very low quality. This I found quite unsatisfying, conceptually speaking. Perhaps Kate thinks of perfection as representing a global, rather than a local, maximum. Julian's definition does have the advantage of being better for stimulating discussion -- since it effectively disallows the suggestion "throw it away and start over" as a means to improve a song (or whatever). -- "Don't forget this shit." -- James Blood Ulmer /* uunet!sco!stewarte -or- stewarte@sco.COM -or- Stewart Evans */