Firefly isn't trying to be 'intelligent', if by intelligent you actually mean 'philosophical'.
Trust me, Joss has already gone there. He's out of philosophical points to make. He made them in his morality plays about good and evil called Buffy and Angel. Take a position on free will, on good and evil, on the nature of reality, on the ends justifying the means, on vengence vs. justice, on love, on death...and you will find something supportive of that position in Buffy or Angel, and something unsupportive of it.
Anf Firefly not particularly 'good' sci-fi, if by good sci-fi you mean 'hard'. Sure, his ships don't make sounds in space, but on the other hand, no explaination is given of where all these new worlds came from, and how far apart they are, or if ships go FTL, or even what their fuel is. There's no 'This is how the universe works', because none of the characters actually care about that, anymore than we care about how cars work. (Well, Kaylee, the mechanic, cares, but it's not like she'd have a reason to try to explain it.)
Firefly tries, and succeeds amazingly, at being good drama. With letter-perfect characterizations and amazing plots, and what was shaping up to be an interesting storyline before it was summarily canceled..
Firefly is perfect sci-fi, if you think sci-fi is 'drama set in a universe where differences in science affect the characters and how they act'. It's pretty crappy if your idea of sci-fi is Star Trek Technical Manuals. It's pretty crappy if you go too far the other way and your idea of good sci-fi is the ramifications of your entire life being a lie, aka, The Matrix. (If you want that from Whedon, the Buffy episodes are 'The Real Me' and 'Normal Again' and the entire Connor arc on Angel. And 'Superstar' on Buffy, but that's more a joke than a serious look at it.)
Don't believe the trailer. Three kinds of people are going to watch this movie: Those who've seen the shows, those who watch action movies, and those who watch every sci-fi movie. The first need no ads (Considering the amount of work it was to be a Firefly fan in the first place, they probably build a damn theater if one wasn't handy.) and the third you could show just a drawing of a space ship and say 'Come watch ship fly in space' as the ad copy. The trailer is aimed at the second group, who will get excited by the ad.
If you want to know if it will be worth it, download 'Serenity', the first episode, and watch it. Might want to start the second downloading while the first is coming in.
Did Mr. Clinton every apologize to America? To Monica Lewinsky? To her parents???
Um, yes. He did. At least to America, publically. And his family. And Ms. Lewinsky.
I thought everyone remember that. Google 'clinton lewinsky apology' if you don't.
He also rather infamously lashed out at Ken Starr in the second half of his apology, for dragging out Whitewater, which still hadn't turned up any wrongdoing, into what the independent investigation had become at this point. (A way to ask people under oath about unrelated affairs, and then get them for lying about that, although he didn't say that in so many words.)
Although, if you don't like that one, he's apologized repeatedly since then.
As far as I know he hasn't apologized to her parents, and you are correct...as they are her lawful owners he must ask for their forgivenness and pay them one goat.
Man, I read a great article the other day about the 'rebuilding' of Iraq by young neocons who had no fucking idea what they were doing, or anything about economics or politics beside 'private sector==good', and the claim that that, more than anything, was causing the insurrgency over there.
For example, instead of opening up the government factories, which have people willing to work, they're attempting to sell them, to out-of-country people, which, of course, won't invest in Iraq at all right now. So the factories sit idle.
Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
US Constitution, 9th amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Declaration of Independence is not the law of the land, but the law of the land does say we have any rights that are not listed, and they are in effect also. (The infamous one being 'right to privacy'.)
The Declaration of Independence lists 'overthrowing the government' as a right, and hence it is one of those 'unlisted rights' that people simply possess. Not granted to us by the government, but merely possess by existing. However, in the US, all these mystical rights we have are acknowledged by the US government.
Ergo, the people have the right to overthrow the US Government, under the US Constitution.
Sometimes I have to wonder if people even read these things that created our government.
That's funny, I see new station wagons on the roads.
However, if regulations are standing in the way, we need to get rid of them. I can't imagine how that would be so...they aren't much less fuel efficent than normal cars. It's basically a normal car with a few hundred pounds extra, and there's already that much variation in car weight. If it's really a problem we could give an exception based on the fact they have an extra row of seats. (Much in the same way passenger vans get exceptions.)
And SUVs can't hold anywhere near the amount station wagons can, as anyone who has ever slept in the back of one can attest. Not to mention riding down the road backwards, which is always great fun for kids, unless they get carsick.
All I really know is that it's idiotic for all these people to have 'truck' power, and the corrosponding gas mileage, with the inability to haul loads because they have nowhere to put it, which is the only damn reason we have exceptions for trucks in the first place.
Yes, Microsoft didn't do much R&D, but that didn't really help IBM, now did it?;)
So maybe MS shafted IBM three times. Once, when it resold them an OS they assumed MS would develop, two, when they then resold that OS to others also, when IBM had paid for it with the assumption it would just work on IBM's machines, and three, when they stabbed them in back WRT OS/2.
It's funny. You hear Apple whine about what MS did to them, but it was nothing compared to what MS did to IBM. The first was IBM not understanding PCs and not treating them seriously, the second was no one expecting IBM clones, but the third was just black-hearted malice and greed.
Luckily, IBM has sold their PC division, and now can say 'up yours' to MS.
No, the incoming people have put in nice grandfather clauses so their taxes don't skyrocket in taxes, so the taxes are fine. See, we're a bunch of Republican who don't believe in taxes. Taxes are for those people who are too stupid or poor to move out of Atlanta proper.
And, like I said, this is the place for shoddy houses. Expensive houses get built another 4o miles up SR-400. Overpriced, yes, high property taxes, no.
And, see, we've simply decided not to build new schools. Because that would actually require acknowleding what is going on.
We have instead learned we that, with the proper use of force, you can fit more children in existing schools. We have some sort of automated press being set up, where students can stand in front of the school and be compressed in...
And we've discovered that vehicles can operate just as well on rubble as on concrete, which is great, as construction vehciles have demolished the roads and, of course, we have no money to fix them.
Actually, what's illegal is the act of leaving the US (Which you obviously do while, duh, in the US.) for that purpose.
It's actually a valid defense that you did not leave the country for that reason, but merely decided to do it once somewhere else.
'So, once I landed, I went to my hotel, with the intent of going to sleep so I could get up in the morning to go shopping for computer equipment, which was the purpose of my trip. I started feeling lonely, so I then decided, with no thought of it before that point, to go have sex with a 12 year-old hooker.'
Talk about your pyrrhic victories in court. Explaining when, exactly, under oath, you decided to have sex with a child.
Understandably, most people choose to deny the entire thing instead.
There's also military rules about this that apply to the military in all circumstances, but military code is supposed to apply outside the US to US soldiers.
And they'd want to do that regardless of the amount of recycling, because lumber companies are greedy bastards.
Cutting old trees is cheaper than replanting and growing new ones, which is in turn cheaper than recycling.
But that's mainly for lumber, not paper. Rapid-paper producing trees are easy to grow. Lumber takes a bit longer, because you can't just pulp saplings you planted a few years ago. All tree cutting is not for the same purposes, and what lumber companies want out of the national forest are hundred year old hardwood, which I can assure you they don't want to turn into paper.
What I actually meant, 'all the trees in this country that are cut down for paper are trees grown to be cut down'. Hence recycling paper doesn't save a single tree.
Reusing lumber, on the other hand, could save a few. Especially hardwood.
Did you not read what I said? I quite clearly said SUVs (and fake trucks) were as inefficent as trucks, while at the same time they manage to be missing the reason for trucks to be inefficent...they need to be able to haul big stuff.
I think it is you who are flying off the handle. I have as much a problem with the random and unneeded purchases of SUVs as you do, and in addition I'm opposed to stupid-ass 'trucks' that can't hold an open card table, much let anything useful. Real trucks, sure, they are useful. Not fake trucks.
Of course, you're probably not coming from a place where people are proud to own trucks. I like in Georgia, and you'd be amazed how many people have towering trucks with insane amounts of power that can't fit a damn motorcycle in the back because they're have full size rear seats. They're even worse than SUVs, unless the owner often hauls around lead, gold, or pulls other vehicles....they literally cannot fit enough in the bed to use all their power.
When IBM had M$ write OS/2, IBM paid to have all of the rights to the code so that M$ couldn't sell OS/2 to other manufacturer's.
This, incidently, is why MS jumped ship on OS/2.
IBM had been burned by DOS, where they basically paid the R&D for their competitors, because they never thought there would be a market for PC clones and thus assumed that DOS was going to be basically theirs. (Well, I guess they figured MS might port it to other platforms, but that threat seemed limited.)
When, suddenly, not only are people competing with them, but the people they got their OS from were selling exactly the same OS to those people! Which seems like something reasonable now, but it was a completely new concept at that time. (It didn't help that personal computers weren't taken seriously at all by IBM at this point.)
I doubt this was delibrately, BTW. MS couldn't have predicted the clone market either.
So the next time, they paid MS to make an OS for them, and solely them. Although they would be happy to license it competitors for a 'reasonable' cost.
And, again, MS shafted them, delibrately this time, in a completely different way, with Windows.
You forgot: To recycle paper, you must transport it back to somewhere (As opposed to being transported on the trucks already going to the landfill.), then you have to bleach it.
And then, and only then, can you make it back into paper.
It doesn't save any energy at all. It doesn't save any trees at, as all the trees in this country that are cut down are trees grown to be cut down.
It does save landfill space, but worrying about the size of landfills is idiotic pseudo-science in the first place. the size isn't important, what's important is what's in them and how much they leak. And, frankly, I'd much rather have paper in landfills than batteries...let's fill them up with paper!
If recycling actually saved anything, paper companies would pay for waste paper. There would actually be a profitable industry, and there isn't.
Penn and Teller, like I said, did a Bullshit! story on this. The only thing that it's possibly a good idea to recycle is aluminum cans, energy-wise. (Which, surprise surprise, they will pay you for.)
My favorite recycling idea is the recycling of glass. Because, you know, we might run out of the materials to make that. I mean, when I look out in my yard, I can almost see the molten core of the earth, thanks to all the silicon-dioxide mining.;)
They aren't even trucks. Hell, half of what is sold as a truck isn't a truck.
Trucks can haul sofas. Trucks can haul 8'x4' sheets of plywood. If it cannot do both of those, even with the tailgate open, it's not a truck.
Those weird things that are designed like trucks but have four doors and a five foot long bed? Not a truck. Four doors is fine. A five foot long bed is not.
I don't know why people buy those over minivans with removable seats, some of which could actually count as a 'truck' in my book. At least then you can take the seats out to fit stuff.
Likewise, I don't get why SUVs are better than station wagons. That's all they get used for by most owners.
The only conclusion: People are fucking morons who purchase gas guzzlers they do not need.
I, OTOH, have a horrible gas guzzling extended-bed Chevy S-10 from 1983 that I don't need, although it's my only vehicle, so I have to use it. But at least if someone needs to move big stuff, it can do it.
Gas guzzlers that turned into passenger vehicles and, as such, are crippled and can't haul heavy things and thus don't need to guzzle gas, are just idiotic. It's like buying a safe, cutting off the back, and building a wood box to extend it.
My father has been fighting development in one of the sold-out-to-developer's communities in the US, Forsyth County Georgia.
They refuse to make any sort of impact fee, while developers erect thousands of shoddy, overpriced houses so people can commute to Atlanta (Mass transit? Why would we need any mass transit? We have nice big highways!), and the roads have become completely crippled, and the schools have trouble getting built because in Georgia you're not allowed to build for expected growth, just actual people. The entire county is falling to pieces.
Anyway, it's really funny, because half his allies are just people who moved in earlier....like a year earlier. They seem unable to understand that it is exactly people like them that is causing the problem. (And he doesn't point it out, as he needs allies.) The second they move here, though, they're outraged by all the construction and traffic , and immediately demand a halt to more construction.
Sadly, like I said, we can't appear to pry the government loose from the developers, so that seems unlikely. Luckily, they appear to have actually run out of enough usable roads to bring in construction equipment.
(Before anyone asks, he's been living there like seven years, well before the area exploded.)
Slashdot Mirror
Trust me, Joss has already gone there. He's out of philosophical points to make. He made them in his morality plays about good and evil called Buffy and Angel. Take a position on free will, on good and evil, on the nature of reality, on the ends justifying the means, on vengence vs. justice, on love, on death...and you will find something supportive of that position in Buffy or Angel, and something unsupportive of it.
Anf Firefly not particularly 'good' sci-fi, if by good sci-fi you mean 'hard'. Sure, his ships don't make sounds in space, but on the other hand, no explaination is given of where all these new worlds came from, and how far apart they are, or if ships go FTL, or even what their fuel is. There's no 'This is how the universe works', because none of the characters actually care about that, anymore than we care about how cars work. (Well, Kaylee, the mechanic, cares, but it's not like she'd have a reason to try to explain it.)
Firefly tries, and succeeds amazingly, at being good drama. With letter-perfect characterizations and amazing plots, and what was shaping up to be an interesting storyline before it was summarily canceled..
Firefly is perfect sci-fi, if you think sci-fi is 'drama set in a universe where differences in science affect the characters and how they act'. It's pretty crappy if your idea of sci-fi is Star Trek Technical Manuals. It's pretty crappy if you go too far the other way and your idea of good sci-fi is the ramifications of your entire life being a lie, aka, The Matrix. (If you want that from Whedon, the Buffy episodes are 'The Real Me' and 'Normal Again' and the entire Connor arc on Angel. And 'Superstar' on Buffy, but that's more a joke than a serious look at it.)
Don't believe the trailer. Three kinds of people are going to watch this movie: Those who've seen the shows, those who watch action movies, and those who watch every sci-fi movie. The first need no ads (Considering the amount of work it was to be a Firefly fan in the first place, they probably build a damn theater if one wasn't handy.) and the third you could show just a drawing of a space ship and say 'Come watch ship fly in space' as the ad copy. The trailer is aimed at the second group, who will get excited by the ad.
If you want to know if it will be worth it, download 'Serenity', the first episode, and watch it. Might want to start the second downloading while the first is coming in.
As far as I can tell, the rural side lost, and the urban side won. Just like in the American Civil War.
'alien ass'?
I would have thought that would have been obvious, but apparently some people aren't paying attention.
I thought they put tea in milk.
That's probably quite a bit easier.
Um, yes. He did. At least to America, publically. And his family. And Ms. Lewinsky.
I thought everyone remember that. Google 'clinton lewinsky apology' if you don't.
He also rather infamously lashed out at Ken Starr in the second half of his apology, for dragging out Whitewater, which still hadn't turned up any wrongdoing, into what the independent investigation had become at this point. (A way to ask people under oath about unrelated affairs, and then get them for lying about that, although he didn't say that in so many words.)
Although, if you don't like that one, he's apologized repeatedly since then.
As far as I know he hasn't apologized to her parents, and you are correct...as they are her lawful owners he must ask for their forgivenness and pay them one goat.
For example, instead of opening up the government factories, which have people willing to work, they're attempting to sell them, to out-of-country people, which, of course, won't invest in Iraq at all right now. So the factories sit idle.
I can't recall where I read this, through.
The president cannot be charged with a crime until he is impeached.
He also, incidently, cannot pardon himself.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
US Constitution, 9th amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Declaration of Independence is not the law of the land, but the law of the land does say we have any rights that are not listed, and they are in effect also. (The infamous one being 'right to privacy'.)
The Declaration of Independence lists 'overthrowing the government' as a right, and hence it is one of those 'unlisted rights' that people simply possess. Not granted to us by the government, but merely possess by existing. However, in the US, all these mystical rights we have are acknowledged by the US government.
Ergo, the people have the right to overthrow the US Government, under the US Constitution.
Sometimes I have to wonder if people even read these things that created our government.
The last time we tried that, we lost. It happened about 140 years ago.
However, if regulations are standing in the way, we need to get rid of them. I can't imagine how that would be so...they aren't much less fuel efficent than normal cars. It's basically a normal car with a few hundred pounds extra, and there's already that much variation in car weight. If it's really a problem we could give an exception based on the fact they have an extra row of seats. (Much in the same way passenger vans get exceptions.)
And SUVs can't hold anywhere near the amount station wagons can, as anyone who has ever slept in the back of one can attest. Not to mention riding down the road backwards, which is always great fun for kids, unless they get carsick.
All I really know is that it's idiotic for all these people to have 'truck' power, and the corrosponding gas mileage, with the inability to haul loads because they have nowhere to put it, which is the only damn reason we have exceptions for trucks in the first place.
So maybe MS shafted IBM three times. Once, when it resold them an OS they assumed MS would develop, two, when they then resold that OS to others also, when IBM had paid for it with the assumption it would just work on IBM's machines, and three, when they stabbed them in back WRT OS/2.
It's funny. You hear Apple whine about what MS did to them, but it was nothing compared to what MS did to IBM. The first was IBM not understanding PCs and not treating them seriously, the second was no one expecting IBM clones, but the third was just black-hearted malice and greed.
Luckily, IBM has sold their PC division, and now can say 'up yours' to MS.
And, like I said, this is the place for shoddy houses. Expensive houses get built another 4o miles up SR-400. Overpriced, yes, high property taxes, no.
And, see, we've simply decided not to build new schools. Because that would actually require acknowleding what is going on.
We have instead learned we that, with the proper use of force, you can fit more children in existing schools. We have some sort of automated press being set up, where students can stand in front of the school and be compressed in...
And we've discovered that vehicles can operate just as well on rubble as on concrete, which is great, as construction vehciles have demolished the roads and, of course, we have no money to fix them.
It's actually a valid defense that you did not leave the country for that reason, but merely decided to do it once somewhere else.
'So, once I landed, I went to my hotel, with the intent of going to sleep so I could get up in the morning to go shopping for computer equipment, which was the purpose of my trip. I started feeling lonely, so I then decided, with no thought of it before that point, to go have sex with a 12 year-old hooker.'
Talk about your pyrrhic victories in court. Explaining when, exactly, under oath, you decided to have sex with a child.
Understandably, most people choose to deny the entire thing instead.
There's also military rules about this that apply to the military in all circumstances, but military code is supposed to apply outside the US to US soldiers.
I always print to PDF when I'm going to need to print copies elsewhere.
And they'd want to do that regardless of the amount of recycling, because lumber companies are greedy bastards.
Cutting old trees is cheaper than replanting and growing new ones, which is in turn cheaper than recycling.
But that's mainly for lumber, not paper. Rapid-paper producing trees are easy to grow. Lumber takes a bit longer, because you can't just pulp saplings you planted a few years ago. All tree cutting is not for the same purposes, and what lumber companies want out of the national forest are hundred year old hardwood, which I can assure you they don't want to turn into paper.
What I actually meant, 'all the trees in this country that are cut down for paper are trees grown to be cut down'. Hence recycling paper doesn't save a single tree.
Reusing lumber, on the other hand, could save a few. Especially hardwood.
I think it is you who are flying off the handle. I have as much a problem with the random and unneeded purchases of SUVs as you do, and in addition I'm opposed to stupid-ass 'trucks' that can't hold an open card table, much let anything useful. Real trucks, sure, they are useful. Not fake trucks.
Of course, you're probably not coming from a place where people are proud to own trucks. I like in Georgia, and you'd be amazed how many people have towering trucks with insane amounts of power that can't fit a damn motorcycle in the back because they're have full size rear seats. They're even worse than SUVs, unless the owner often hauls around lead, gold, or pulls other vehicles....they literally cannot fit enough in the bed to use all their power.
j/k
This, incidently, is why MS jumped ship on OS/2.
IBM had been burned by DOS, where they basically paid the R&D for their competitors, because they never thought there would be a market for PC clones and thus assumed that DOS was going to be basically theirs. (Well, I guess they figured MS might port it to other platforms, but that threat seemed limited.)
When, suddenly, not only are people competing with them, but the people they got their OS from were selling exactly the same OS to those people! Which seems like something reasonable now, but it was a completely new concept at that time. (It didn't help that personal computers weren't taken seriously at all by IBM at this point.)
I doubt this was delibrately, BTW. MS couldn't have predicted the clone market either.
So the next time, they paid MS to make an OS for them, and solely them. Although they would be happy to license it competitors for a 'reasonable' cost.
And, again, MS shafted them, delibrately this time, in a completely different way, with Windows.
And then, and only then, can you make it back into paper.
It doesn't save any energy at all. It doesn't save any trees at, as all the trees in this country that are cut down are trees grown to be cut down.
It does save landfill space, but worrying about the size of landfills is idiotic pseudo-science in the first place. the size isn't important, what's important is what's in them and how much they leak. And, frankly, I'd much rather have paper in landfills than batteries...let's fill them up with paper!
If recycling actually saved anything, paper companies would pay for waste paper. There would actually be a profitable industry, and there isn't.
Penn and Teller, like I said, did a Bullshit! story on this. The only thing that it's possibly a good idea to recycle is aluminum cans, energy-wise. (Which, surprise surprise, they will pay you for.)
My favorite recycling idea is the recycling of glass. Because, you know, we might run out of the materials to make that. I mean, when I look out in my yard, I can almost see the molten core of the earth, thanks to all the silicon-dioxide mining. ;)
Trucks can haul sofas. Trucks can haul 8'x4' sheets of plywood. If it cannot do both of those, even with the tailgate open, it's not a truck.
Those weird things that are designed like trucks but have four doors and a five foot long bed? Not a truck. Four doors is fine. A five foot long bed is not.
I don't know why people buy those over minivans with removable seats, some of which could actually count as a 'truck' in my book. At least then you can take the seats out to fit stuff.
Likewise, I don't get why SUVs are better than station wagons. That's all they get used for by most owners.
The only conclusion: People are fucking morons who purchase gas guzzlers they do not need.
I, OTOH, have a horrible gas guzzling extended-bed Chevy S-10 from 1983 that I don't need, although it's my only vehicle, so I have to use it. But at least if someone needs to move big stuff, it can do it.
Gas guzzlers that turned into passenger vehicles and, as such, are crippled and can't haul heavy things and thus don't need to guzzle gas, are just idiotic. It's like buying a safe, cutting off the back, and building a wood box to extend it.
They refuse to make any sort of impact fee, while developers erect thousands of shoddy, overpriced houses so people can commute to Atlanta (Mass transit? Why would we need any mass transit? We have nice big highways!), and the roads have become completely crippled, and the schools have trouble getting built because in Georgia you're not allowed to build for expected growth, just actual people. The entire county is falling to pieces.
Anyway, it's really funny, because half his allies are just people who moved in earlier....like a year earlier. They seem unable to understand that it is exactly people like them that is causing the problem. (And he doesn't point it out, as he needs allies.) The second they move here, though, they're outraged by all the construction and traffic , and immediately demand a halt to more construction.
Sadly, like I said, we can't appear to pry the government loose from the developers, so that seems unlikely. Luckily, they appear to have actually run out of enough usable roads to bring in construction equipment.
(Before anyone asks, he's been living there like seven years, well before the area exploded.)
Um, the reason we're in the mess in the first place is because the government decided to outlaw cracking DRM.
I'm fairly certain that would translate better as 'copy prohibited'.