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You might want to throw the Asian Anti-Defamation League in to the mix as well. I seem to recall a flap over TPM's Trade Federation (Neimoidians) population being sterotypical Asians. Lucas had claimed that he had never noticed the similarity, despite their broken Engrish, flat faces and "slanted" eyes.

Lucas has been borrowing too liberaly from the serials of the 1930's, methinks.

I've met a lot of people from many different countries. I've been in many different countries myself. And I have *never* seen anyone who talks or acts like Jar-Jar binks.


I highly recommend that you read this article:
http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Racism.html

It was a shoddily-written piece of shit that shamelessly copied from other, better Trek films. The plot made absolutely no sense. Go here for a nice, pictorial plot analysis.

You're reinforcing my point; I'm not sure if you know that and are posting to amplify my point or trying to disagree with it. Sorry.

A soundtrack is very, very different from a live musical performance. The idea that all revolutions are superior to all old methods is quite wrong; probably the clearest comes out of science fiction and the idea that all technologies are totally superior to old ones, but this is just a specific instance of the general misconception. That soundtracks are a revolution doesn't mean that it invalidated all old ways of doing things, just that it opened brand new vistas that could not be understood with an understanding of live performance.

(Whereas truthfully, it's probably pretty easy to understand what a live performance can do based on soundtrack experiences. You may underestimate the personal connection live performances can engender, but that's about all you might miss.)

And a nit...

It's different, not just a change in quality.

On the "qualitative/quantitative" scale, "quality" pretty much means "fundamental difference", whereas "quantity" means that it's not a fundamental difference. I think you meant "It's a qualitative change, not just a quantitative change", which was my whole point.

(This is the source of my confusion at the beginning of this post; you seem to just be posting re-inforcements and clarifications but this last sentence leads me to believe you think you are disagreeing with me, when you really aren't.)

For some more along those lines, check out this article about "intelligent design theory".

Given a choice, I'd go with giving the teens choice. Parents: while you aren't the only influence on your projeny, you are a major factor in their view of the world. If you screw your kids up young, they're going to have a hard time getting unscrewed. If you give them a good start and continue to be good parents, that can make more of a difference than you might think. The internet doesn't automatically corrupt.

Some quickies: "because I say so" isn't an answer unless you're in an argument with a toddler. Don't use web filters; they block harmless sites and they let slashdot through. Respect is a good thing. If you make it known that you don't trust your teen, he/she won't trust you either.

OTOH (I haven't read the comment you're responding to, threshold 1, remember), it seems like a disconcerting number of people think that peaceful opposition of Israel somehow makes you "anti-semitic". Not that I'm accusing you, but that was just something I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while. :-)

Sep. 11, 2001, to be precise. How could anyone forget that with people like you always waving it in our faces all the time? Hopefully one day it will be the sole province of history books and old geezers.

I would prefer that the US stay alert and defend itself!

The funny thing about the US department of defense is that it seems to devote most of its money to attacking other countries. Don't get me wrong, Saddam Hussein and friends deserved what they got, and the US pulled off the invasion nigh perfectly. I still wish that the US could try subtler tactics in Syria or whoever is next in line, like asassinating (or capturing and bringing to an international war crimes trial; I won't be picky, and that's probably more humane) the worst of the leaders, which would stir things up a bit while being less invasive than... well, an invasion.

Hell, lots of things are better than just declaring "Guarded" status and attacking people. Oh well, I've mostly stopped caring and resigned myself to being powerless to affect anything political.

While we're at it, I'll just say this: Israel and Palestine both stink!

Spam amounts to a distributed denial of service attack. Are you going to argue that DDOS should be legal as well? Additionally, you're using a classically weak "slippery slope" argument. Here are a few links on the subject of slippery slopes:

link1
link2
link3

Speaking of "playing God", why shouldn't we?

They follow a Jem-Hadar ship into a wormhole and end up in the middle of a huge battle taking place amongst gargantuan ships. Then just as the crew is recovering from pissing themselves from fear a huge sphere jumps into view and blasts a planet into hamburger.

When we can transform Mars into a haven for space nerds with a Genesis device!

Not only will we create a new planet, then we can take Venus and make it into Rura Penthe, thus finding a place for the RIAA executives to live.

People's bodies do not have strong resonance frequencies. Without that, nobody's going to be "knocked over" by a sound wave.

"Stun" devices remain science fiction. In fact the idea that a person's nervous system could be somehow incapacitated with sound dates at least back to the late fifties, and you might be able to push it back to the forties or further with some research. (I know I've read fifties-era sci-fi that has sonic stun guns, though, so I'll stick with that.) In fact, it stems from the same misunderstanding promulgated by Star Trek, that everything has a resonance frequency and is just waiting to have havoc done to it by a passing vibrating object. It should not surprise you that the idea has fared about as well as the contemporary rocket jet packs and meals in pill form have fared in real life... what faint vestiges of them exist hardly resemble the '50's conception of them.

This page has a pretty good analysis on the topic, and should probably be considered required reading for all of the budding psuedo-science stun gun designers on Slashdot today.

(By contrast, simply blasting soldiers or rioters with high-energy sounds, distracting sounds, or even (perhaps ideally in the military sense) misleading sound is quite practical, even if less sexy.)

Stagnation is one theory in the Star Wars rationalization camp. The other major theory is the idea that they've effectively maxed out their technology. It is established canon that a trip across the galaxy is a matter of hours at most, the energy specs on the weapons are absurdly large, computers have reached human-level intelligence (and we can assume there is no higher intelligence possible for the sake of argument), and the Empire could build most of a "small-moon sized" battlestation in 8 months.

Granted, we believe that more progress could be made in the AI department in the real world, for instance, but for the sake of suspension of disbelief it is plausible to accept that human-level intelligence is the maximum possible, and that the other demonstrated limits are indeed the insuperable maximums of the universe.

(Note I am neither propounding nor defending either theory, just pointing out their existance.)

This site and this site are kick-ass explorations of Star Wars (and the first site does Star Trek in passing) rationalizations. Do not go if you have work to do; if you merely like science or Star Wars, those sites will suck you in for a couple of days.

Actually the Federation has already done a strategic analysis of the military-industrial complex of the Empire.

Mike Wong has a good rant about this percieved racism in Star Wars. I think it pretty well addresses the issue: you can see racism there, or you can fail to see any. I didn't see any, but perhaps I'm abnormal because I found Jar Jar to be funny.

Read this.

For more arguments that pornography shouldn't be illegal or anything like that, check out this rant from Mike Wong.

You are funny!

"Slippery slope" is the name of a logical fallacy. You believe in deliberately making errors in your argument. The reason why "slippery slope" is defined as a logical fallacy is very simple. You cannot reason such an extreme conclusion from such an innocuous premise. You have not demonstrated all of the intervening steps. In particular, you've just pulled out "mix in cloning" out of your ass. Here is a fine definition. And here is another. All of the examples read just like yours. But go ahead. Your foot appears to suit your mouth well.