I like traditional and brilliant finishes but I souls love to see one that is kind of in-between the two. Do you know of one?

cymbals are gorgeous,, nothing is as great as a good cymbal
i am no drummer,,,,,but dude,,,,so much satisfaction comes from

For me it’s the scene in Se7en when John Doe first comes into the police station. He calls out "Detective… Detective… DETECTIIIIIIVE!!!" Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman whirl around and there is Kevin Spacey with his hands in the air, covered in blood, turning himself in.

In less than one minute, the ENTIRE game changed!

A brilliant movie scene!

For me, it likely is the ending of "Planet of the Apes" (1968).

"Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

It is difficult to explain how powerful it was to see this in the theater in 1968. Talk about being blown away~stunned~didn’t-see-that-coming! People were talking about that everywhere we went, and they still talk about it. Wow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31QUOUxqz2M

Blaise Pascal was one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived. And he came up with something as stupid as his Wager.

CS Lewis was a brilliant writer of allegorical fiction and an eminent literary scholar, and he popularized the ridiculous Trilemma Argument.

What is it about religion that makes even geniuses silly?

Lewis’ version of the trilemma isn’t ridiculous. Lewis addressed it to an audience which he knew was mostly made up of people who believed the bible and claimed to have some respect for Jesus. He never proposed it as any sort of proof of the existence of God, or proof of Jesus’ divinity. It has been taken up by many self-appointed apologists since Lewis’ time, and is widely addressed by them to a very different audience. With fairly unsurprising lack of result.

You could equally welll ask, why does Stephen Hawking think that because he is highly-regarded theorist in physical science, he can get away with ill-educated waffle when he talks about metaphysics. The same question applies to Dawkins.

I think the problem is that people who reach an advanced level of work in one discipline tend to think of themselves as people whose minds operate at that level, and therefore their thoughts on other subjects or disciplines must be equally impressive. It’s a fallacy, but one we probably all fall into to some extent. I think when you’ve worked your way up in a discipline, through Ph.D work, university teaching, publishing, and so on, you begin to forget how much you’ve taken on board along the way, and how much your current ideas depend on having been shaped in a collegiate environment where people, in seminars and in response to papers and so on, very quickly expose the weak areas in your reading or thinking. People can easily look very silly when they wander into other disciplines - even adjacent fields - where they haven’t had the benefit of years of exposure to the main issues.

A trivial example, but I’ve recently been reading a book by two of the leading authorities on archaeology in ancient Israel, about the relationship between the archaeology, and the biblical histories. Because in recent years there’s been (at last!) something of a crossover between studies of the Levant and studies of the Aegean, with some interesting evidence of a ‘Homeric’ influence on the David narratives, these two very eminent scholars talk briefly about Greek military history. And make, in the course of a few paragraphs, a string of fundamental blunders which would fail a sixth-form essay, let alone an undergraduate essay. They’re not stupid, they just don’t have thirty years of Greek history under their belt.

Personally I think you’re unfair to both Pascal and to Lewis, in that you’re reading them through the lens of a culture that has shifted dramatically away from the presuppositions they assumed in their audiences. Neither of them is remotely silly.

I went to a shop today to buy an engagement ring, I saw that the number of round brilliant cuts are higher then any other cuts. What do you think, why it is?

The round brilliant cut is now considered the “traditional” diamond shape, having been around since at least the mid-17th century. The ideal modern round brilliant has a total of 58 facets. In some cases, additional facets may be added in order to conceal the diamond’s flaws.

http://easydiamondguide.com/diamond-ring-shapes/round-brilliant-diamonds/

Any movies made in the 21st century, crime action drama genre, with really really smart, brilliant crime plots?

If you’ve seen ‘Inside Man’, that’s a good example. Or even ‘21′.

Movies to do with people who trick the cops, or the baddies who win in the end type ot thing.

1. Law Abiding Citizen
2. Gone in 60 Seconds
3. Running Scared
4. The Italian Job
5. Taken
6. Leon: The Professional
7. Machete
8. Four Brothers
9. Gone Baby Gone
10. Lucky Number Slevin
11. Oceans 11
12. Smokin’ Aces
13. Pulp Fiction
14. Point of No Return
15. The Usual Suspects
16. Spy Game
17. Con-Air
18. The Rock
19. Domino
20. Heat

I have a nikon D3100,
I’d love to get a better lens, I want one that would have brilliant focusing
Can anyone help me? X x :3

For your camera, check out the 35mm AF-S lens from Nikon. It’s not terribly expensive. I use the 35mm f/2.0 D lens (among others) and it is extremely sharp.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/tags/35/

See especially: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/2180549371/
and: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/2856056395/

What does this quote mean?
I’m throughly confused, can someone with a higher intellect please explain?
"a brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball what doe it mean?"

Well…a solemn platitude is basically a profound statement of some sort, but since–in the case of an epigram–it is used to express a truism about a work of fiction, then this could have two meanings.
1. That a brilliant epigram is really only a truism to the made-up world of the novel or story. or
2. That the solemn platitude is being taken out of context of its original meaning (aka in disguise) in order to become a brilliant epigram.

Something along those lines, although I’m sure others might have their own interpretations due to the ambiguity of the language.

Like, brilliant people who become doctors and do research, but do abnormal things, such as smoke weed, express darkly to the public, support something that is radical? I am just wondering if there are any who are well known rocker-type individuals, or something like that.

Linus Pauling is both brilliant and as unconventional a possible. His odd choices have even rankled established scientists, who found Pauling encroaching on their field, far enough to call Pauling a quack.

Pauling was a physicist who realized the next great field of endeavor was the complexity of life. His entry into the study of biology was considered by some to be the start of molecular biology and biotechnology as a distinct field. He is one of the few to take two Nobel prizes and both were unshared.

His blog
http://paulingblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/linus-pauling-and-the-search-for-ufos/

Rupert Sheldrake is a cell biologist who publicly courts the odder fringes of parapsychology with research into telepathy. He believes the mind is an emergent property of the biological construct but the final consciousness extends beyond into morphic fields able to impact the developing egg & fetus. He believes the maternal influence is more than just proteins and preset genetic expression during embryogenesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

I feel this is the third brilliant film of his which has not exactly done well at the BO(Fiza and Lakshya being the other 2). On the other hand his not so good films like Krrish,Dhoom-2 and K3G have all turned out to be blockbusters.

I think Hrithik can not make happy all people in the world, so he is focusing on making happy to himself….Thats why a wonder-piece like Guzaarish came out. Just similar to his two other films like Fiza and Lakshya. Rather every real actor sometime do some good work for self satisfaction, remember "Swadesh" of SRK also didn’t make a magic on BO. Indians are not so matured yet to smell the breeze of such flowers of Indian movies

I mean those brilliant minds that won noble peace prizes and solved human kind toughest problems.
would it be a double edged sword, besides all the biological logistics?

I would argue that it would be a double edged sword. First, the truly brilliant-if you have ever had the pleasure-are often awkward socially. Second, many people have carved out comfortable existences obeying their hegemon’s directives, and often times it is the truly brilliant who challenge these status-quos. While challenging oppressive, destructive, and dangerous structures may be romantically remembered as the achievements of the truly brilliant do not make the erroneous assumption that really brilliant people are a unanimously moral lot. Rather some of the most brilliant minds to grace the earth have been deeply conflicted or even downright evil. Furthermore, it is my experience that with having too much time our imaginations regularly encourage devious behavior. I can only imagine that over an eternity the inability to solve basic human problems due to a dumbed-down majority would lead to criminal depravity. Finally, most of us are conscious enough to know the problems that face the world today brilliant, immortal, or most likely not; nonetheless, our inaction speaks loudly to the current state of the human condition. War, famine, ozone depletion, human trafficking, and the list goes on. As someone who has seen some of the atrocities humanity has conjured up I would simply say that we are all brilliant vessels for change, or at least we have the ability to be. The time is now. Perhaps it sounds cliche but if hope for a future dies in romantic fantasy about immortal geniuses it would be truly tragic. If you have time for a movie and you want a very interesting take on your question watch "The Man From Earth"