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gwern comments on To like, or not to like? - Less Wrong
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Julius Caesar is, like A Few Good Men, mostly building up to the famous speech. But I thought it had interesting - and LW-relevant - things to say about the merits of trusting reason, friendship, or one's moral intuition.
Comedy ages very quickly. I'll be interested to see how Pratchett is regarded in 20 years, but I don't have a lot of hope.
I wouldn't be that pessimistic. As far as British humorous writers go: Douglas Adams wrote decades ago (and died >12 years ago), and he seems to still be regarded as pretty funny. I read the Hitchhiker books 4 or 5 years ago, and enjoyed them. People still enjoy Monty Python and that's pushing half a century now.
Now, 200 years is a different story.
For an even older example of British humor that's still funny, try Gilbert and Sullivan. They're about 100 years old.
Getting closer to 150; Gilbert and Sullivan were both dead 100 years ago.
I want a video of Robin Hanson singing this song:
You say you want it, but your revealed preferences indicate otherwise: I bet you could cash in on a cryonics hour for that 5-minute song. And he'll let you record it and distribute it. But you haven't even signed up for cryonics yet, have you?
My reason for not signing up for cryonics is that I don't think I have the money to do so; I have savings, but no significant income.
In other words: I want it, but not as much as I want twenty thousand dollars (or however much a cryonics membership will actually cost me over a lifetime). In the future, I might be able to afford ongoing insurance payments, but that is not something I want to start today.
Acknowledged up to a point. Adams is still highly regarded, but you certainly lose something even at this remove (e.g. the opening line about a species so primitive they still thought digital watches were a good idea falls flat, at least for me). While some Python sketches are funny, I've read that the BBC felt the series as a whole wasn't funny enough to re-run.
Yes, some of it will age, but a lot of it still remains. I found The Birds somewhat funny when I read it, and it's, what, 2200 years old now?
I have the full boxed set of the TV series and have watched it through. I don't blame them for not re-running the whole thing (it's huge!), and it's also not very 'dense'. But I think if they were willing to edit it down, it could be competitive. Some of the Python sketches are very funny.