Interesting Links for 24-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• On Originality - people have been complaining that all the stories have been told for over 4000 years...
  (tags: stories neilgaiman writing )
• The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute
  (tags: theft research funny teaspoons )
• When Batman met The Muppets
  (tags: muppets batman )

Comments

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

Originality is a much more interesting a problem than that.
People didn't go to Shakespeare's plays, even when they were new, to find out how they ended. Even Shakespeare re-used plots. (Pyramis & Thisbe = Romeo & Juliet) It's how the story is told.
And it's especially funny that this is a link to Neil Gaiman, one of the leading contemporary recyclers. Sandman has a quick sampling of "Western Literature" very much right out in the open.

In the Middle Ages, if you wanted to convince someone of something, you said that Aristotle had said it. Since the printing press, "originality" has become the value. But now with everything digitally available to everyone (ok, it's rapidly heading that way; it's not there yet), performance and storytelling are booming. People who knew Spaulding Grey's stories by heart paid good money to go watch him tell them over again.

(Yeah, this is an area I've been mentally chewing over.)

[andrewducker]

You seem to be agreeing with the article - that it's not necessarily the story which is interesting, it's the way it's told.