Welcome to the forum.
Glad to hear that you also hold Mr Knopfler in high regard #hecandonowrong
Always fascinated by thread drift, but is Mark Knopfler’s distance from ‘Jewish Space Lasers’ greater than that of any previous thread drift?
Oops! Maybe after all not - according to Wikip, Knopfler had a (Hungarian) Jewish father;
OTOH historically memorable egs of extreme SF thread drift over the years might make for a great new nostalgic thread…
I confess I’m not really interested in his parentage, just the music. Musicians are a breed all their own. I met John Carin and had a discussion about Pink Floyd. Really interesting guy. I also met Steve Carr. Now if you watch the Concert In Central Park, he is sitting next to Dave Brown on rhythm guitar. Lovely chap who died of cancer. Anyway, are the Jewish Space Lasers in the same talent league as Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Roxette, Heart, Bryan Adams, Tears for Fears,ELO, Supertramp, not to mention Simon and Garfunkel. Please don’t get me onto music. It’s like asking Raymond Reddington to become a pacifist!!!
Well, that one fell at the first hurdle…
And I’d so hoped, albeit perhaps a tad optimistically, that it could have evolved into a popular, money spinning franchise that would have solved all our financial problems…
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I almost understood what you were saying until the tears for fears bit:wink:
They are halfway between The Teardrop Explodes and Devo 
Roland was an accomplished guitarist . Curt Smith had that very distinctive vocal. I quite liked them.
There are two types of tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want, and the other is getting it
What hurdle would that be Mark? The measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience, but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges. People say money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to sail right up to it.
Very philosophical.
Wilde I believe, though sometimes credited to George Bernard-Shaw
Neither Oscar nor George I’m afraid. It’s Raymond Reddington
As Reddington was fictional he didn’t actually say anything per se.
But it’s definitely Wilde
“Lady Windermere’s Fan: A Play About a Good Woman”, Oscar Wilde, 1892. Third act.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/790/790-h/790-h.htm
Research courtesy of the Quote Investigator
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Sorry no, I had to look RR up and discovered he’s a 21st century fictional person, whereas OW wrote it at the end of the 19th century. Then GBS wrote something fairly similar a while after OW.
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Spot on Véro - reference supplied above 
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Glad to see that academic standards are being rigorously maintained on SF, albeit in increasingly few places elsewhere 
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