"The only nerds getting women that attractive are the rich ones."
From personal experience, not so. The universe contains more surprises than you would think.
My experience, socially inept nerds of either sex end up hooked up with, including but not limited to marriage, people in a "helping" profession; doctors, nurses, shrinks, teachers, social workers, etc. emotionally needy folks and codependents; a match truly made in heaven.
I think it's pretty funny. Not perfect, but nothing is.
As for the haters, I dunno, but we seem to have a cadre of regulars here who don't have much in the way of a sense of humour and who seem to get pissed off at anything they can't take literally.
WTF would possess anyone to complain to the FCC about Big Bang Theory, not the network, but the FCC, fucking seriously? Those complaints should go directly to the garbage bin, because anyone who writes one is clearly too stupid to be allowed to have the means of communicating with other humans.
this gives me an idea. from now on, whenever a cop show or whatever has a murder, I'm going to write the FCC to complain that there was a murder televised and the police (real police) are not investigating.
I'm such a geek that I honestly thought this discussion would be about the real big bang theory.
I haven't watched sitcoms or network television in over twenty years.
i would love to see the real big bang, with a laugh track. super awesome.
Laugh tracks manipulate the audience into laughing at jokes that might not actually be perceived as funny without the laugh track. There's a reason that major motion pictures don't use laugh tracks.
because they use musical tracks which are more manipulative than laugh tracks ever could be.
This show reminds me of "Friends" in so many ways it's frightening. It's a cookie-cutter production, seemingly. You just have different personality experts working this show.
the vast majority of tv comedies these days are Friends ripoffs. that's the way hollywood works.
before that, it was Seinfeld ripoffs.
I've always considered the show to be "blackface" for nerds.
The show has evolved over the years. While it used to be a compare and contrast of geeks versus normal people, it's now a show about relationships.
Leonard and Penny's benchmark "normal, but nerdy" relationship compared to Howard and Bernadette's cuckolding relationship, compared to Amy's needs with Sheldon, and finally to Raj's struggle to find a keep a girlfriend.
It used to be geeks v. world. Now it's geeks v. geeks. It's why Raj talks to women now, and why we rarely see them interact with "normies" except to setup a problem that each couple treats differently -- or that the boys treat differently than the vastly-more-normal girls.
[For what it's worth, I never found it be nerd blackface. We both laughed at and with them...]
Ah, the true Scotsman and all that. I do enjoy The Big Bang Theory and I dislike Mr. Robot. Also, I only liked Star Trek when I was a little kid. Ditto for Dr. Who.
Oh, that's simple, your polarity is wrong,, that's all.
as someone who lives and works around those types, it's partially accurate.
The problem with BBT is the lazy writing and shoddy two dimensional characters. They lean on so many tropes it's like watching a drunk man trying to escort a paraplegic through an obstacle course.
I welcome depictions of those kinds of nerds in media, however, I don't welcome shitty writing and hackneyed jokes.
any TV show which becomes popular will asymptotically approach lazy writing and shoddy two dimensional characters. It's necessary to acquire the large quantity of viewers which keep a show on the air. it's the 80/20 rule; 80% of the viewing public have 20% of the brains.
I'm an old fogie and used to laugh tracks. Most "light" comedies seem awkward without them. It guess it's hard to make every generation happy.
But as far as the show, I sometimes get a "geek" kick out of it. You get dialog similar to:
A: "Rats, according to my carefully considered forecasts, I'll probably die before they can upload human conscientiousness into androids so one can live forever."
B: "Oh great, you'll really want to mill around as an awkward, annoying robot?"
A: "You claim I'm awkward and annoying now. How is that a change?"
B: "You sleep a third of the day now."
the first line I heard on BBT I thought was "special" was when the guys were debating whether Sheldon was actually a robot but didn't realize it. I think it was Raj who asks, "Consider; have you ever harmed a human, or through inaction allowed a human to come to harm?"
Sheldon: "Of course not."
Raj: "I put it to you, then, that you probably are a robot."
Sheldon looks surprised and thoughtful.
I find Seinfeld and That 70s Show, both filmed in front of a live studio audience to be funny and the audience laughter doesn't bother me in the slightest. There's something different about TBB. Maybe it's the writing, maybe the audience is prompted to laugh at every joke no matter how mediocre - either way, it's missing something or this thread wouldn't exist.
I've watched Seinfeld - it wasn't funny. People just really, REALLY wants it to be.
That show where George W. Bush pretended to be president wasn't all that funny either, but it went for 8 seasons before they canceled it.
They spend 20-30 minutes getting the audience ready with a stand-up comedian and other fluffers.
So what else is new? Judging by my own personal experience, studios (at least in Hollywood) have been doing that for well over half a century.
gotta time it for the drugs to kick in at the right time.
Yes, they make a big deal about their "live studio audience", but that doesn't mean it isn't annoying as hell. In fact, I'd prefer it if they used a laugh track, because at least then they'd adjust it so it doesn't sound like a bunch of inebriated hyenas. Of course, just because they have an audience doesn't mean it isn't rigged:
A friend of mine has been to a taping of the show. They spend 20-30 minutes getting the audience ready with a stand-up comedian and other fluffers. Their whole purpose is to get the audience excited and in a laughing mood. They really pile on the hype about their laughter making the show successful and how important the reaction is. They talk about the microphones needing big loud laughs. Etc.
When the show finally starts filming, it's a rare scene that's filmed in one take. Therefore when the show is edited, they will independently choose the "best" laugh and use that for final take. In that sense they do use an edited laugh track, it's just one that's created by the current audience.
Then there's the dialog pacing, which is constructed to suit the exaggerated laughing instead of the comedy. This awkwardly false nature can be easily seen if you take away the laugh track or (less subtley) replace it with a caricature laugh. This is a problem with a lot of sitcoms, but Big Bang Theory seems to be especially bad.
Now take a look at John Cleese's approach on handling audience laughter while filming Fawlty Towers. Here's an example from A Room with a View. Compared to that, Big Bang Theory feels stilted and forced, while Fawlty Towers has a more natural rhythm that's so much easier to laugh at.
Of course, it also helps that Fawlty Towers had good writing and actually is funny. Two things Big Bang Theory can rarely claim.
I bet walking dead has a dead studio audience. that would be awefuckingsome.
I think that's the main reason I can't watch that show, and to this date haven't watched a full episode yet. Every time I hear the laugh track I want to gag. What is this, 1965? If they're going to do it that way, at least have a live studio audience like Married with Children had that actually responds appropriately to what's happening when it's genuinely funny.
Wait a moment. There's at least EIGHT people who appear twice in that photo, and it's not a simple stitch together either. Check it out. Definitely the "live studio audience" isn't all that it's made out to be.
you're right. this is like 4 shots of what ought to be overlapping frames, stretched out sideways.
that would be an example of the terrible overreach of the tyrannical EPA that every Republican hates to the breadth and depth of his or her soul, that's killing jobs in America.
It's not only the housing but costs for providing social security is unsustainable with the current flow of asylum seekers. It doesn't take more just few years and even 100 % taxation wouldn't be enough to provide social security for these asylum seekers. Although some of the asylum seekers may be able to find jobs, the traditional levels of employment have been very low for many of these groups (for example, the biggest asylum seeker groups in Finland are Iraqis and Somalis and even during better economic times, they have had about 15 % employment (not unemployment) rate).
And within surprisingly short time, the local population would become minority, unless the social security system collapses before that and the flood of asylum seekers stops. And if history tells something, it quite often means very bad times for the original population (e.g. Palestinians, Indians, Aboriginals etc).
I am afraid that if it this flood is not stopped in one way or another soon, there will chaos or even wars in large parts of Europe.
Is this because they refuse to work, or because the locals won't hire them? I find it a bit hard to believe that somebody who was a pediatrician in Syria will come to Sweden and decide to go on welfare.
The second hit is a piece in the Wall Street Journal.
The piece mentions nothing of immigrants, Muslims, or anyone else filing a petition or calling for a ban.
It does mention that Christian Conservatives want to exclude all immigrants from festivities and Bavaria in general.
Having read ALL the first 20 links, it appears that the petition to ban Oktoberfest was submitted by the same Christian Conservatives and that all names and signatures were fraudulent. But I guess since these fraudsters aren't brown, we can now pretend the petition never happened.
I see it now.
Monday "Conservatives ban immigrants from Oktoberfest"
Tuesday "Muslim alcohol-hating immigrants boycott Oktoberfest"
Wednesday "Conservatives demand compulsory Oktoberfest attendance from immigrants"
The petition to cancel Oktoberfest is a fake created by someone attempting to aggravate tensions against the refugees which gathered far more attention than it deserves.
"How about we relocate some ISIS scumbag next to your house or apartment?"
According to TFA, Jobb not only hates European countries for letting those "refugees" flood in, but he also hates the US for fighting back agains the same set of forces.
My reasons:
(1) I want to protest against American imperialism, which I regard as the cause of most of all evil in the world: wars, tyranny, poverty, migration.
(2) I want to protest against EU tyranny, which is mostly the result of US imperialism.
(3) I want to demonstrate my sovereignty, something I would welcome to see much more often in science and politics.
In particular, I dislike that the USA and the EU aggressively promote a way of life that conflicts with my own way of life. I dislike the flood of immigrants they caused to come here - come here to replace unprofitable Europeans like me.
After so many years of hard work on TREEFINDER, I have still not been paid any reward.
I want to stress that this license change is not against my colleagues in the USA, but against a small rich elite there that misuses the country's power to rule the world.
The USA is our worst enemy. I have collected many links to background information, including some in English language, here.
http://www.treefinder.de/
There are basically 3 choices in Syria; side with Iran and restore Assad's Shiite reign of terror. Side with ISIS and institute a new, Sunni reign of terror. Of support one of the "moderate" rebel groups, who wouldn't have a snowball's chance in Hell even if they all got together.
So I can't blame Obama for taking a "I don't need this crap" attitude. Let the world's Sunni terrorists turn their sights on Russia for a while when Putin starts bombing ISIS.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was "Opt-Out From Glowing GM Crops"
"The only nerds getting women that attractive are the rich ones."
From personal experience, not so. The universe contains more surprises than you would think.
My experience, socially inept nerds of either sex end up hooked up with, including but not limited to marriage, people in a "helping" profession; doctors, nurses, shrinks, teachers, social workers, etc.
emotionally needy folks and codependents; a match truly made in heaven.
I think it's pretty funny. Not perfect, but nothing is.
As for the haters, I dunno, but we seem to have a cadre of regulars here who don't have much in the way of a sense of humour and who seem to get pissed off at anything they can't take literally.
who here thinks Stuart is the funniest one?
I dislike it because it's not funny. Like, at all.
I'm going to write my own complaint to the FCC: AUTOTROPHS DO NOT DROOL!!!!!
WTF would possess anyone to complain to the FCC about Big Bang Theory, not the network, but the FCC, fucking seriously? Those complaints should go directly to the garbage bin, because anyone who writes one is clearly too stupid to be allowed to have the means of communicating with other humans.
this gives me an idea. from now on, whenever a cop show or whatever has a murder, I'm going to write the FCC to complain that there was a murder televised and the police (real police) are not investigating.
I'm such a geek that I honestly thought this discussion would be about the real big bang theory. I haven't watched sitcoms or network television in over twenty years.
i would love to see the real big bang, with a laugh track. super awesome.
Laugh tracks manipulate the audience into laughing at jokes that might not actually be perceived as funny without the laugh track. There's a reason that major motion pictures don't use laugh tracks.
because they use musical tracks which are more manipulative than laugh tracks ever could be.
This show reminds me of "Friends" in so many ways it's frightening. It's a cookie-cutter production, seemingly. You just have different personality experts working this show.
the vast majority of tv comedies these days are Friends ripoffs. that's the way hollywood works. before that, it was Seinfeld ripoffs.
I've always considered the show to be "blackface" for nerds.
The show has evolved over the years. While it used to be a compare and contrast of geeks versus normal people, it's now a show about relationships.
Leonard and Penny's benchmark "normal, but nerdy" relationship compared to Howard and Bernadette's cuckolding relationship, compared to Amy's needs with Sheldon, and finally to Raj's struggle to find a keep a girlfriend.
It used to be geeks v. world. Now it's geeks v. geeks. It's why Raj talks to women now, and why we rarely see them interact with "normies" except to setup a problem that each couple treats differently -- or that the boys treat differently than the vastly-more-normal girls.
[For what it's worth, I never found it be nerd blackface. We both laughed at and with them...]
cuckolding? what did I miss?
Ah, the true Scotsman and all that. I do enjoy The Big Bang Theory and I dislike Mr. Robot. Also, I only liked Star Trek when I was a little kid. Ditto for Dr. Who.
Oh, that's simple, your polarity is wrong,, that's all.
as someone who lives and works around those types, it's partially accurate.
The problem with BBT is the lazy writing and shoddy two dimensional characters. They lean on so many tropes it's like watching a drunk man trying to escort a paraplegic through an obstacle course.
I welcome depictions of those kinds of nerds in media, however, I don't welcome shitty writing and hackneyed jokes.
any TV show which becomes popular will asymptotically approach lazy writing and shoddy two dimensional characters. It's necessary to acquire the large quantity of viewers which keep a show on the air. it's the 80/20 rule; 80% of the viewing public have 20% of the brains.
I'm an old fogie and used to laugh tracks. Most "light" comedies seem awkward without them. It guess it's hard to make every generation happy.
But as far as the show, I sometimes get a "geek" kick out of it. You get dialog similar to:
A: "Rats, according to my carefully considered forecasts, I'll probably die before they can upload human conscientiousness into androids so one can live forever."
B: "Oh great, you'll really want to mill around as an awkward, annoying robot?"
A: "You claim I'm awkward and annoying now. How is that a change?"
B: "You sleep a third of the day now."
the first line I heard on BBT I thought was "special" was when the guys were debating whether Sheldon was actually a robot but didn't realize it. I think it was Raj who asks, "Consider; have you ever harmed a human, or through inaction allowed a human to come to harm?" Sheldon: "Of course not." Raj: "I put it to you, then, that you probably are a robot." Sheldon looks surprised and thoughtful.
I find Seinfeld and That 70s Show, both filmed in front of a live studio audience to be funny and the audience laughter doesn't bother me in the slightest. There's something different about TBB. Maybe it's the writing, maybe the audience is prompted to laugh at every joke no matter how mediocre - either way, it's missing something or this thread wouldn't exist.
I've watched Seinfeld - it wasn't funny. People just really, REALLY wants it to be.
That show where George W. Bush pretended to be president wasn't all that funny either, but it went for 8 seasons before they canceled it.
They spend 20-30 minutes getting the audience ready with a stand-up comedian and other fluffers. So what else is new? Judging by my own personal experience, studios (at least in Hollywood) have been doing that for well over half a century.
gotta time it for the drugs to kick in at the right time.
Um, they do have a live studio audience [imgur.com]
Yes, they make a big deal about their "live studio audience", but that doesn't mean it isn't annoying as hell. In fact, I'd prefer it if they used a laugh track, because at least then they'd adjust it so it doesn't sound like a bunch of inebriated hyenas. Of course, just because they have an audience doesn't mean it isn't rigged:
A friend of mine has been to a taping of the show. They spend 20-30 minutes getting the audience ready with a stand-up comedian and other fluffers. Their whole purpose is to get the audience excited and in a laughing mood. They really pile on the hype about their laughter making the show successful and how important the reaction is. They talk about the microphones needing big loud laughs. Etc.
When the show finally starts filming, it's a rare scene that's filmed in one take. Therefore when the show is edited, they will independently choose the "best" laugh and use that for final take. In that sense they do use an edited laugh track, it's just one that's created by the current audience.
Then there's the dialog pacing, which is constructed to suit the exaggerated laughing instead of the comedy. This awkwardly false nature can be easily seen if you take away the laugh track or (less subtley) replace it with a caricature laugh. This is a problem with a lot of sitcoms, but Big Bang Theory seems to be especially bad.
Now take a look at John Cleese's approach on handling audience laughter while filming Fawlty Towers. Here's an example from A Room with a View. Compared to that, Big Bang Theory feels stilted and forced, while Fawlty Towers has a more natural rhythm that's so much easier to laugh at.
Of course, it also helps that Fawlty Towers had good writing and actually is funny. Two things Big Bang Theory can rarely claim.
I bet walking dead has a dead studio audience. that would be awefuckingsome.
I think that's the main reason I can't watch that show, and to this date haven't watched a full episode yet. Every time I hear the laugh track I want to gag. What is this, 1965? If they're going to do it that way, at least have a live studio audience like Married with Children had that actually responds appropriately to what's happening when it's genuinely funny.
Um, they do have a live studio audience
Wait a moment. There's at least EIGHT people who appear twice in that photo, and it's not a simple stitch together either. Check it out. Definitely the "live studio audience" isn't all that it's made out to be.
you're right. this is like 4 shots of what ought to be overlapping frames, stretched out sideways.
a 14 year old Muslim kid put it together from spare parts. he took it to school and told everybody he built a Windows 7 update.
that would be an example of the terrible overreach of the tyrannical EPA that every Republican hates to the breadth and depth of his or her soul, that's killing jobs in America.
Simply haul a trailer with another ton or two of charged batteries.
It's not only the housing but costs for providing social security is unsustainable with the current flow of asylum seekers. It doesn't take more just few years and even 100 % taxation wouldn't be enough to provide social security for these asylum seekers. Although some of the asylum seekers may be able to find jobs, the traditional levels of employment have been very low for many of these groups (for example, the biggest asylum seeker groups in Finland are Iraqis and Somalis and even during better economic times, they have had about 15 % employment (not unemployment) rate).
And within surprisingly short time, the local population would become minority, unless the social security system collapses before that and the flood of asylum seekers stops. And if history tells something, it quite often means very bad times for the original population (e.g. Palestinians, Indians, Aboriginals etc).
I am afraid that if it this flood is not stopped in one way or another soon, there will chaos or even wars in large parts of Europe.
Is this because they refuse to work, or because the locals won't hire them? I find it a bit hard to believe that somebody who was a pediatrician in Syria will come to Sweden and decide to go on welfare.
Pretty bad, I'd say.
But then I am a Cherokee.
Go back where you came from!
The second hit is a piece in the Wall Street Journal.
The piece mentions nothing of immigrants, Muslims, or anyone else filing a petition or calling for a ban. It does mention that Christian Conservatives want to exclude all immigrants from festivities and Bavaria in general.
Having read ALL the first 20 links, it appears that the petition to ban Oktoberfest was submitted by the same Christian Conservatives and that all names and signatures were fraudulent. But I guess since these fraudsters aren't brown, we can now pretend the petition never happened.
I see it now.
Monday "Conservatives ban immigrants from Oktoberfest"
Tuesday "Muslim alcohol-hating immigrants boycott Oktoberfest"
Wednesday "Conservatives demand compulsory Oktoberfest attendance from immigrants"
The petition to cancel Oktoberfest is a fake created by someone attempting to aggravate tensions against the refugees which gathered far more attention than it deserves.
http://nypost.com/2015/04/03/c... damn immigrants!!!
"How about we relocate some ISIS scumbag next to your house or apartment?"
According to TFA, Jobb not only hates European countries for letting those "refugees" flood in, but he also hates the US for fighting back agains the same set of forces.
My reasons:
(1) I want to protest against American imperialism, which I regard as the cause of most of all evil in the world: wars, tyranny, poverty, migration.
(2) I want to protest against EU tyranny, which is mostly the result of US imperialism.
(3) I want to demonstrate my sovereignty, something I would welcome to see much more often in science and politics.
In particular, I dislike that the USA and the EU aggressively promote a way of life that conflicts with my own way of life. I dislike the flood of immigrants they caused to come here - come here to replace unprofitable Europeans like me.
After so many years of hard work on TREEFINDER, I have still not been paid any reward.
I want to stress that this license change is not against my colleagues in the USA, but against a small rich elite there that misuses the country's power to rule the world.
The USA is our worst enemy. I have collected many links to background information, including some in English language, here.
http://www.treefinder.de/
There are basically 3 choices in Syria; side with Iran and restore Assad's Shiite reign of terror. Side with ISIS and institute a new, Sunni reign of terror. Of support one of the "moderate" rebel groups, who wouldn't have a snowball's chance in Hell even if they all got together.
So I can't blame Obama for taking a "I don't need this crap" attitude. Let the world's Sunni terrorists turn their sights on Russia for a while when Putin starts bombing ISIS.