Museum visitor in England trip, falls, breaks priceless Vases

[Granite]

I know it's impolite to laugh at other people foibles, but you gotta admit this is a bit funny...

From CNN

A museum visitor shattered three Qing dynasty Chinese vases when he tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and brought the vases crashing to the floor, officials said Monday.

The three vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had been donated to The Fitzwilliam Museum in the university city of Cambridge in 1948, and were among its best-known artifacts. They had been sitting proudly on the window sill beside the staircase for 40 years.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident, but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed," said Duncan Robinson, the Fitzwilliam's director.

The museum declined to identify the man who had tripped on a loose shoelace Wednesday.

Asked about the porcelain vases, Margaret Greeves, the museum's assistant director, said: "They are in very, very small pieces, but we are determined to put them back together."

The museum declined to say what the vases were worth.

[editman]

I really don't find this funny at all.

Thousands of years of efforts of perservation ruined by one bumbling clown. It's jerks like this that cost us and our children historical artifacts of unaccountable values.

Such damage which can't be paid back even with the blood of his, and his children's, and his children of children's.

Then again, putting delicate displays around stairways is always a dodgy idea.

[WorkShed]

If they were so priceless, they should have put them in cases. Some protection is necessary. I blame the museum.

[Lafce]

Such damage which can't be paid back even with the blood of his, and his children's, and his children of children's.

Woah...!!!

[editman]

Woah...!!!

Yep. It's pure maths when you think about

3 generations = ~100 years versus

3 vases of 300 years old = 3 x 300 = 900 years.

Quoting Preston from Equilibrium: "I'd pay gladly".

[Kn'thrak]

who cares. A cold object is insignificant to a humans life. That trumps that editman. Sorry. Can't put a price on a human life but u can on a stupid especially ugly vase/s.

And I wouldn't say something so 200 years old is important. If it was like over 1000 years then its something to be unhappy about but thats all. Make another one.

[editman]

A cold object is insignificant to a humans life.

Not true.

Life comes and goes. It's what the deeds, thoughts and creations life leaves behind for other lives that matters.

Any well-perserved inorganic object can last longer than any human life.

That goes with artworks, commodities and any artificial objects in any medium or any form.

Can't put a price on a human life but u can on a stupid especially ugly vase/s.

Do you even know what a Qing-dynasty Chinese vase looks like when you say that.

LOL. Of course you can put a price on any human life. Say, don't you work for a living? You sell your time/skills/creativity/physical strength/body to someone so you can keep on living. That is your price.

It's only that in 'civilised' countries men are being traded in 'civilised' ways.

But it's not about the value of life versus the value of objects. It's about careless people costing the rest of us significant cultural legacies (which is being considered to be 'funny').

I wouldn't say something so 200 years old is important. If it was like over 1000 years then its something to be unhappy about but thats all. Make another one.

Fine. Make me another Qing dynasty Chinese vase then.

But you cannot even if you have the long-lost Chinese vase-making skills and the materials uniquely available at the time in that region, unless you're in Qing dynasty China.

I know some people don't care about the past, be it a day ago or 5000 years ago. I'm just not one of them.

[WorkShed]

Okay, I can't believe that I'm actually responding to this STUPID argument (!), but editman makes no sense!

LOL. Of course you can put a price on any human life. Say, don't you work for a living? You sell your time/skills/creativity/physical strength/body to someone so you can keep on living. That is your price.

That is not your price; that is the price of the work you do. So if someone destroys one of my films, then they deserve to lose years of their blood? That doesn't make sense.

Let me guess what your stance on things like Wellfare are...

It's gone. It happened. Boo hoo, that's why museums get insurance. So guess what? It's paid back already. Whoa! What a concept!

Again, it was the museum's FAULT for not placing the vases under proper protection. Having them teeter along a staircase isn't the best place to be. Accidents happen. The museum realized that, which is why they refuse to release the guy's name. They're moving on. Why aren't you, editman?

Things are just that... things. It's a human idea to place value in things. Diamonds are just rocks. Gold is just another metal. Money is particular paper with particular ink with particular printing on it. Vases are fired clay. People are irreplaceable. Sure, you can find new people, but they won't be the same (better or worse).

Again, people are priceless but the work they do or things they make have value. Not the person.

[jmcc]

who cares. A cold object is insignificant to a humans life. That trumps that editman. Sorry. Can't put a price on a human life but u can on a stupid especially ugly vase/s.

And I wouldn't say something so 200 years old is important. If it was like over 1000 years then its something to be unhappy about but thats all. Make another one.

Make another one? Are you sure?

Then, when the tourism has destroyed such relics as Angkor Wat and Macchu Picchu, can we build it again?

I'm not angry, Kn'thrak. Don't worry. But what you have said is incredible.

[editman]

LOL, Workshed. By the end of your post you're already paraphrasing what I said.

That is not your price; that is the price of the work you do.

Then your work is more important than yourself, because take out the value of your work/creativity/intelligence, you are just as good as a stray animal. (Take out the physical strength as well you are just as good as a piece of dirt.)

(Then again, Some people are paid to sit on their a$$ 8 hours a day to do nothing and wait for work or something to come up. What do they worth?)

Which brings back to my point: a reckless person causing damage to cultural legacies is inexcusible, accident or no accident, for the works (a cold object) has more value than the person who causes the damage ('life').

So if someone destroys one of my films, then they deserve to lose years of their blood?

Yes, if (and that's a big IF) your films are of tremendous value, are groundbreaking landmarks in the cinematic history of mankind which outweighs the value of your own existence, then whoever destorying them is inexcusible.

For unless your son/daughter tapes over your 'films' when you're 80, or if the DVD masters get rotten in the year 2100, (or worse, someone tripped themselves over breaks them,) your work will outlast you. Only nature, careless or malicious people, including yourself, can destory your work. Perseve them properly and they'll still exist 200 years later .

It's gone. It happened. Boo hoo, that's why museums get insurance. So guess what? It's paid back already. Whoa! What a concept!

Yeah, you said it yourself: What a concept!

You think it's all about monetary value? You really think that it'll be alllllllright when the museum gets paid back by insurance? If so, you shouldn't even be an 'emerging' filmmaker. You should be an 'emerging' businessman. A person who fails to see the value of an object beyond its monetary value doesn't truly appreciate art, or anything other than money.

Read the thread subject. It says "priceless vases", meaning the value of those vases are greater than any insurance pay. At least Granite (or whoever wrote the headline) knows that.

Again, it was the museum's FAULT for not placing the vases under proper protection. Having them teeter along a staircase isn't the best place to be.

The fact is, unless you did pay a visit to Fitzwilliam Museum you don't know if they didn't put the vases under proper protection.

Maybe the window sill was made of safety glass. Maybe it wasn't. The fact is that the vases were already there for 40 years. Nothing happened in the past 40 years until the person got himself tripped over came crashing down. If it's the museum's fault, its their fault of not forseeing that in 40 years time people will have more wardrobe malfunctions than they did in the 60s.

Accidents happen. The museum realized that, which is why they refuse to release the guy's name. They're moving on. Why aren't you, editman?

Sure, they move on, but probably not the way you think. The articles says, "we are determined to put them back together." So they're not going to just claim the insurance, be silly happy beavers and throw the pieces away. They'll still strive to restore and continue to perseve the broken artifacts, because they know how valuable of those cold broken objects are, (and I bet not of monetary value). You said it yourself:

people are priceless but the work they do or things they make have value. Not the person.

I'll move on when people who don't know what they're talking about stop babbling.

Okay, I can't believe that I'm actually responding to this STUPID argument (!)

Then don't. Who's asking anyway?

but editman makes no sense!

Really shows you who your friends are in a thread like this. You use one bold figure of speech and everyone comes jumping on, flogging you like a freaking lynch mob. And it's always the ones who don't like you or hold a grudge against you that protest the loudest.

[WorkShed]

I wouldn't consider many on this forum to be my friend. I've never met them personally. I have my own friends. However, it is humorous when you, editman, accuse me of babbling considering I have written far less on this topic than you have.

It is funny that one bold figure of speech can cause people to come crashing on you...

like "white power" or "heil Hitler." Silly phrases that mean nothing, right?

Words hold meaning. You can't just state whatever you feel and not expect that someone is going to hold a differing opinion. That's why I expect you would write back to my previous post and to this one.

You think it's all about monetary value? You really think that it'll be alllllllright when the museum gets paid back by insurance? If so, you shouldn't even be an 'emerging' filmmaker. You should be an 'emerging' businessman. A person who fails to see the value of an object beyond its monetary value doesn't truly appreciate art, or anything other than money.

Did you even read what you quote? I said that people are worth more than objects. A diamond is just a rock. A vase is just fired clay. I didn't put any monetary value on it. Sure there is a value on it, but it's a human value. It's psychological not physical. I place value on people, not objects. Money is an object, so how can I only care about money?


By "people are priceless but the work they do or things they make have value. Not the person.", I meant a defined monetary value. People are above money. Sorry, I have work to go do so I didn't write eloquently enough. I'll make it more defined here.

My big point (and I'll try to paraphrase):

We don't know exactly WHAT happened. So to make personal statements about the people involved is unnecessary. And to place objects over people is immoral (This is an argument that you completely ignored, editman).

[editman]

it is humorous when you, editman, accuse me of babbling.

It's not my problem if you consider yourself as one of those people who don't know what they're talking about.

like "white power" or "heil Hitler." Silly phrases that mean nothing, right?

Ooooooo... all of a sudden I'm a Nazi.

Well sorry to disappoint you but I don't burn books or put Jews into concentration camps, gas chambers and open graves. I don't verbally insult and beat Asians up in dark alley streets as a hobby. I don't invade another country in the name of racial purity, 'justice', God or profits. And certainly I'm not one who's being reckless destroying things that has historical, artistic and/or aesthetic values.

Guess that makes me a Nazi, is that what you imply? No, I don't consider myself as a Nazi, or endorse Nazi beliefs.

Words hold meaning. You can't just state whatever you feel and not expect that someone is going to hold a differing opinion.

Say that to yourself - I'm not the one who said in the first place that this is a "STUPID argument", telling people to "move on" and then comes back and keeps the argument going on. I didn't tell everyone to shut up and not to counter-rebuke what I posted. Of course I expect someone to hold a different opinion. I don't expect to convince anybody. I just made a point (reckless person causing damage to cultural legacies is inexcusible) and I stood by it. I'm not the one who's blowing it out of proportion.

So what's your excuse of making self-contradictory, self-righteous counter-arguments, implying that I'm an irresponsible attention whore that endorses racism and Nazism? (I don't know whether it should be funny or pathetic that someone naming me personally saying 'editman makes no sense' accuse me of stating whatever I feel.)

Did you even read what you quote?... I didn't put any monetary value on it... And to place objects over people is immoral.

Did you read what you wrote?

It's gone. It happened. Boo hoo, that's why museums get insurance. So guess what? It's paid back already.

What you're implying is that the accident is excusible once the museum gets insurance payback. Which is not what I believe. I don't think the accident would happen if the person took good care of his shoelaces. I don't think the vases are gone. And certainly I don't think everything will be okay when the museum gets paid back by insurance.

It's a human idea to place value in things. Diamonds are just rocks. Gold is just another metal. Money is particular paper with particular ink with particular printing on it. Vases are fired clay.

You're comparing vases with diamonds, gold and money (objects that apparently has monetary values), which I don't think is appropriate in the first place.

Firstly, a vase is not just an object. It's a piece of craft.

Secondly, they're not just vases. They're cultural legacies which had been well-perserved for about 300 years and damaged in one careless accident.

So despite what you said later on that you're not putting monetary value on the broken vases, you are making comparison of the vases as objects of monetary value, instead of vases as articifical work (as books, films, artworks, machines, tools, etc).

But most importantly, 'placing objects over people' is, probably to your surprise, NOT my point.


Here are my points:

1) Granite posts the news article as a joke post, which I don't find it funny. (N.B.: I never said that it's inappropriate, that he shouldn't post.)

2) The damage costed by the accident is inexcusible and incompensatible, but that's my opinion.

3) Kn'thrak says objects are insignificant to life. I said it's what life brings to the world and his/her fellow people that counts.

4) My '3 generations versus 3 300-year-old vases' claim was not weighed of monetary value. Nor am I implying that 3 generation of people should die for damaging 3 300-year-old Chinese vases. What I'm putting forward is that 100 years of living (and hopefully contributing to mankind) versus 300 years of already-made (and now wasted) efforts of perservation. How many generations of people strived to keep a 300-year-old vase in one piece? Don't know. How many people to break a vase? One. How long to perseve a 300-year-old vase? 300 years. How long to break it? In a moment.

5) RE: the 'price on people' thing. You don't have to agree with me but that's how I feel about some people.

However, I never said or imply that the broken vases should be paid back by the blood of the person who damaged them (and his children's). What I was saying is that even if it's paid back by blood, the damage is still greater than the compensation.

And then people started going crybaby, poking at my nose and implying that I'm a monster and that I'm wrong, wrong, wrong.

I wouldn't consider anyone on this forum my friend. I've never met them personally. I have my own friends.

So I guess Mark Strube posting those student film trailers of yours cannot be regarded as 'doing a favour to a friend' (since I don't see anyone else posting student film trailers encoded by M-L encoders to the Forum)? All those posts about your mastering and re-mastering your student films on DVDs were merely cheap self-promotion instead of telling your friends here about your work?

Fair enough. I guess everybody should take note: Workshed does not consider anyone in the Movie-List Forum as his friend.

Well that's only you and Jimmy crack corn. Doesn't represent how other members regard and should regard their fellow forum members.

[WorkShed]

Okay, editman. This is the LAST time.

First: I did say that I did not consider anyone on the forum to be my friend. However, I changed what I said to say "many" because I remembered the awesome favor that Mark did for me. I remembered that and I changed my post in honor of his work. He is a friend. I wrote a little too quickly on that remark and I changed it within minutes of originally posting it.

If you want to say that posting my films on this website are cheap self-promotion, then go ahead. I can't convince you otherwise. Except, I kept in touch about what people said about my work. I didn't just spam the forums and not care. I've held an active role in the forum and not all of it is about my work. In fact, I've pretty much held back all of that type of posting for over a half-year now. You even made comments about my work saying you liked it. I appreciated those comments.

Just because I don't consider many forum members to be my friends, doesn't mean I consider them worthless (I was rather upset when Radstar left). I just don't believe that an internet forum consistutes close intimate contact between two people. Now, if I had met many outside of the forum, that's a different story. But yes, I have friends outside of the forum that I value more than people in this forum. I'm sure most others do as well.

Second: I wasn't calling you a Nazi. It would be rash and highly inappropriate of me to do so. Give me enough credit on that one. I'm just saying that if you're talking about the blood of generations of people not being able to repay the debt this man owes to the broken vases, you might want to consider that those words have weight and could be considered a form of hate speech. I'm not the only one who read that to be a little much.

Third: I'm trying really hard to not just quote you and pick every word apart. I admit it. Sometimes my thoughts aren't as well thought out as I would like. It's because I'm treating this more as a verbal conversation (where I'm formulating my opinions while I speak) than an essay. No one wants to read an essay. Think about that, editman, as the length of your posts far outweigh the length of mine.

Fourth: Are we going to risk the well-being of the forum through a trivial argument? It's tiring and pointless. Yes, I'm saddened that the vases were destroyed. Accidents happen, but the vases will be fixed. Many other priceless vases have been restored (heck, most were found broken to begin with). Who knows, maybe this vase was found broken originally and put back together.

In conclusion... I like the people on the forum, I have friends outside the forum, editman is not a Nazi, I didn't call him a Nazi, people are worth more than things, and just because something is broken doesn't mean it's lost forever.

editman. What happened to you? You used to be cool, but now you've gotten yourself an angry streak.

[Kn'thrak]

I think my fellow editman is one of those ppl that is jealous of this man that broke the vase. He's getting alot more attention than he is

But watch this Workshed, editman is going to break apart and misquote your whole post. How much time do you really have editbabe? Your arguing over a piece of junk that no one cares about. Yeah it was destoryed but hey.. look @ that... the musem was more concerned about the safety and well being of the individual. Thumbs up for them. An example to corporate hags.

[jmcc]

Your arguing over a piece of junk that no one cares about.

I'm a bit disappointed, Kn'thrak, If that thing was a piece of junk, why it was in a museum? It seemed that you have almost no idea about the value of things. At least, of some things. I'm not angry, Kn'thrak, I'm only astonished.

Those vases are (were?) things of high value. Maybe it represent the high handwork/industrial capacity of its time/country or even more.

Of course that the safety of people is more important that "things", but every thing has its own value.

And if it really was a normal accident, then is the fault of the museum to place the vases in the site it were. In fact, was the fault of the museum in any case. A bit of protection were needed to protect the vases.