Whatever it is it cannot be worse than "the hard drive is the new bling" that Hitachi did. Look that one up... it is heinous. It could only have been worse if they had done it in blackface.
What is legal and what is "offensive" (which is a subset of morality*, so don't think you can wriggle out that, after all, how could a person be reasonably offended by a moral thing?) are very different things. I think many legal things and indeed laws themselves are "offensive", whereas many illegal things are inoffensive to me. It is not automatic that either one is also the other.
Everybody who is, as you say, not a sociopath goes to some degree of attempting 'not to annoy others unnecessarily', but the key definition is 'what is necessary?' That's part of the big culture debate about homosexuality in public. American society has a double standard where people who accept some level of public affection between straight couples balk at the same level of affection displayed by gay couples. It is argued, rightly, that if it is not 'unnecessarily annoying' behavior from straight couples, the special pleading about the same behavior from gay couples must be bigotry.
This doesn't necessarily correlate directly to my argument except that it demonstrates that what people accept is based on irrational personal prejudice and their moral perspective. I conform to laws and policies where I must, but I answer only to my own conscience, not public opinion, for everything else I do.
And further your assignment of blame for overreaching policies and laws onto breakers of the same is misguided and ultimately harmful to society. Nobody should be restricted from actions that are in and of themselves not harmful just because somebody else might have gone too far once. If a criminal did A and B and C, where C was the crime, you do not make A and B illegal too by association, even if they were enabling factors. Everybody has the capacity to make decisions, and people should be punished based on what they do, not on what they might do.
* As a I read your post I can tell you're not speaking American English (nobody here would ever say 'ringer at the cinema') so I don't think we're really working with a common connotation of terms. 'Offensive' in American English carries a much clearer moral connotation than perhaps it does in British/Commonwealth English. Probably because Americans are by and large overconcerned with their personal and collective morality. Aside from situations where the amorality is clear from the context (such as 'that smell is offensive') the use of the term 'offensive' in American English outside of a moral context is quite rare.
What you're changing is a perception. Let me tell you, most of the men you shake hands with have probably masturbated at some point. OH NOES! Have I shattered your ridiculous false perceptions? I mean really. If something is acceptable in private it should be acceptable in public. If something is so truly "bad" in public then why is it "good" in private? It's all bullshit social construction and white lies people tell themselves to maintain false pretenses.
So, by expressing a controversial opinion in public would somebody be making other people a part of their political life without asking them? It's the same 'right not to be offended' mindset and it is unduly controlling. If you don't want to see or hear something, rather than trying to control others, control yourself. Move on.
Your comparison to physical impingement onto property rights is not parallel. It is more or less universally agreed that the right of somebody to swing their fist stops a few feet short of somebody else's face. Consequently, nobody should be allowed to force somebody to look at things they don't want to see (by being literally, not figuratively or subjectively, in their face with it), neither should you complain about being impinged upon when you choose to look over their shoulder. That's blaming somebody else for your choice.
Ah, I see. Morality is what the majority says it is. A great way to justify slavery and chauvinism, just walk back the timeline a bit until you get the moral majority agree with.
Sexual harassment unfortunately has succumbed to the 'I have a right not to be offended' school of thought(crime). There are most certainly legitimate cases of sexual harassment, but I think that the first test of legitimacy needs to be direction/intent. Is the act directed a person? No? Well then it had better be a pretty egregious act bordering on a hate crime in order to be legitimate (such as 'all women are %slurs%' although not directed at a person includes the person as class and therefore is harassing).
However at levels lower than that you arrive at differences of opinion and matters of taste. A man might have a calendar full of attractive women because he thinks they are objects for his cold, uncaring use or because he genuinely thinks that female beauty is a sublime addition to their intellectual capacity and depth of character but can appreciated for its own sake. And while you can start fabricating odds of one or the other depending on your prejudice toward men, in any case you can never indite him for that alone which you believe is in his head without some kind of corroborating statement or behavior. As a corollary, a woman may see such a man with a calendar as a brutish ignorant sexist pig, or may be more pragmatic and think it is natural for men to want to see attractive women and who does it harm. In such a scenario the man is indited depending on the character of the 'victim' as opposed to the act itself, a terrible standard for anything approaching 'justice'.
Therefore while contemporary sexual harassment standards must be borne in mind when considering practical outcomes and impacts consequent to behavior, I maintain that those standards are in excess of what should be permissible in a fair construction of ethics.
Something I neglected to comment on, I'm a parent myself, and while I never dispute any parent's right to raise their child as they see fit (within the law), why would I care if my kid saw a lingerie shoot? Oh no, she's just standing/sitting/lying there, and she's in her underwear! The horror! Surely, the fragile minds of my idiot children will be swayed by her wiles and cause them to become unbound sluts or rapists!
I must make clear, I am not saying that your children are in fact fragile idiots, but rather that you must perceive them to be so, otherwise you would trust that they could handle something as mind-bending as an attractive woman in her underwear. I have always perceived my role as a parent to enable the independence of my children with the greatest degree of wisdom and discernment that they themselves can develop, and that doesn't come from ignorance. My own parents tried desperately to shelter me, and not only was I insulted by that (and I'm not talking about teenage rebellion, but feeling the treatment as indignity from roughly kindergarten age onward), but it drove me to go out of my way to expose myself to what they would forbid me to know or see. Consequently, being resourceful, I was exposed to hardcore porn starting at about age ten, and I learned all about great human atrocities such as the "work" of Joseph Mengele at about the same age. I handled it, but in hindsight it wasn't healthy to have had to introduce myself to these things with no possible input or guidance from my parents, who would have simply been upset that I wanted to know about them.
Those who are not resourceful tend to develop an ongoing disinterest in learning itself. I've seen it happen over and over, and it's the saddest waste of human capacity. Anyway, the point is that the best way to truly prepare children for the world that they must live in is through guided knowledge. They must see and understand (through the opportunity to discuss matters objectively).
You're confusing 'is moving' with 'has moved'. The fact that you cite an example yourself doesn't help you. Bikini baristas are but one piece away from topless baristas, which are in turn another piece away from nude baristas. (Do it one step at a time and you've got stripper baristas.) Your other example doesn't help you either, as there was a time when exposed breasts would have been over the line. Both indicate a change in progress that just isn't done yet. (And if you think movies rated R in the last few years could have ever dreamed of such leniency when the current ratings system was founded in the 60s then I suggest that you are on drugs.)
Why are you talking about laws? I'm talking about social norms. So was the person I was responding to. Neither of us are explicitly interested in whether Hurd is a law breaker or not (let alone corporate policies).
Our society is moving inexorably toward greater acceptance of sexuality in the public square. Thankfully. There is no good reason to get all upset about some skin and thrusting. Porn consumption is acting as a catalyst toward a natural acceptance of sexuality as a positive thing rather than some shameful thing that needs to be hidden at all costs. I think most of urban gen Y and younger are just waiting until they're in the majority and then it will be time for Sexual Revolution Part Deux: Electric Boogaloo.
Europe is almost there as it is, nudity (which I know is not inherently sexual so nobody jump on me for conflation) is socially acceptable in Germany and environs, red light districts in the Netherlands are pretty in-your-face, and neither element is destroying those societies (even though I wouldn't want to live under their political restrictions).
Do you have a point? Or was that just an exercise in crimes against grammar and cohesive thought?
Oh yeah, those 'cycles' that science comes up with, what a crock, like the so-called 'water cycle' that evil 'private research institutions' acknowledge. Everybody knows that rain just materializes in the sky rather than condensing from evaporated surface water.{/sarcasm}
I mean really, are so you so dumb and so blindly focused on attacking 'private interests' (of all things) that the best you can come up with is 'rar! cycles are inventions of corporate fat cats!'
Ugh. I'm getting really sick of all the stupid anti-corporatism for anti-corporatism's sake.
As with most things, the truth lies in between. Humans need minerals, whether from food or dissolved in water, we need zinc, iron, sodium (in moderate amounts), etc. However lead, arsenic, etc. also gets into water and those are harmful. So distilled water saves us from the harms and the benefits both, but as Khyber points out if the water you drink is adding nothing then ultimately it will take the minerals that you have been getting from food and wash them out as systems tend toward equilibrium.
I see this is getting modded down because people don't appreciate critical questions. Quite ironic given the context. Not to speak for Moridineas, but I think the point he is getting at is that science is a process that has no intrinsic position on economics (except where one is applying the scientific method to study economics). Therefore science where conducted properly is no better or worse in a given economic order. Of course where we talking about this issue of the free exchange of information that may help scientists to have access to more data upon which to conduct the process, but it does not change the process itself, only the scope of input.
Even assuming that shipboard sensors wouldn't have found them or were sabotaged not to find them, and that they managed to feed themselves and escape, even given all of that, it would still be a hook that would have to be discussed by Marc and co. explicitly in order to even have a claim on the suspension of disbelief in favor of the framework of the greater Star Trek universe.
I stated not, once, but twice, and in italics, that is a bookcase, not a bookshelf. With such poor comprehension and attention to detail, it is no wonder you are so easily dismissive of the frameworks necessary to make a successful reference.
And I don't think that Marc Okrand, regardless of inventing Klingon, has any more right to inflict poor execution of things outside of his realm of expertise, such as acting, as he clearly sucks at it. I wouldn't take bad acting and poor execution from Matt Jeffries just because he designed the Enterprise.
In all your blather about buying, selling, ownership etc. you failed to put forward any even plausible reason why a random douchebag in some badly affected 'character' in a fan film (if that's how we're supposed to see it) knows about Klingons. That's why it's stupid, that's why it fails from an 'in universe' perspective. If there is no backstory, no 'why' or 'how', then it can only be causally linked to real life and Star Trek as exactly what you keeping harping that it is, a commercial franchise, which completely deflates any dramatic potential from what already is a poorly executed and awkward performance.
(Even if the 'universe reset' applies, that still requires an explanation in that framework. Regardless of where you go with it, there was no reference to any explanatory background, hence no 'in universe' credibility. Even if this would pretend to be another 'universe reset' they still need a background in the framework that they would presume to make up.)
Did I once criticize the opera? No. I criticized some douchebag acting like going to a radio telescope to send a "Klingon" message to Arcturus meant something. If it weren't an act, it would be literally insane. Even as an act it was stupid. It was thematically incongruent, unsourced, poorly executed, awkward, etc. It was a bad act at a minimum and I criticized that. I don't care one whit about marketing or who makes what money off of what. As a fan of Star Trek I was beyond underwhelmed by this poorly executed stunt which failed to capture any of the spirit of the universe or fit into its canon.
If they're trying to do this "in universe" then they have to trace it to part of the canon. They have to say 'I know there are Klingons around Arcturus because of x, y, and z that tie into the Star Trek canon.' Because "in universe" nobody on Earth knows Klingons exist until roughly 2151. Unless this is done, the only logical conclusion is that the person is acting in the real world, wherein he can only know of Klingons from Star Trek fiction, whereby if he actually believes that is real, he is an idiot.
As a Trekkie* myself, and one who frequently defends other Trekkies when they are needlessly persecuted, I have to say I agree with the AC. This level of theater (I really, really hope it's just theater) reaches a pure creepiness. Roddenberry was a very talented, imaginative, and even insightful person, but he was not a prophet divinely revealing truths about the universe. There are no Klingons orbiting Arcturus. That was just a fiction. F-I-C-T-I-O-N. It doesn't matter how good that fiction is, to treat it like it is real is retarded. Klingon is an invented language, a clever one indeed actually designed to buck as many linguistic norms as possible, but to think that some language that was invented for a TV show is actually spoken by extraterrestrial life forms is irredeemably stupid, even as an act.
Star Trek is awesome. I have a bookcase, not a book shelf, a bookcase full of nothing but Star Trek novels, analysis, and reference books. That doesn't make it real, and treating it like it is real is the height of idiocy. These people are twits.
*(Yes, that's Trekkie, not Trekker. Anybody who thinks they are exposing me or correcting me somehow can go fuck themselves. Trekker was coined by a bunch of whiny butt hurt people whose self-esteem was crushed by William Shatner on SNL because they had no sense of humor and couldn't laugh at themselves.)
I shouldn't bother, as you clearly haven't even tried to be sympathetic to the women whose characters you so denigrate, but in the interest of the wider humanity I'm going to try to reach you.
Have you ever watched a woman be introduced on stage? I mean, really watched and payed attention to the context? "And now the beautiful Jane Doe will perform X..." or "And now the lovely Jane Doe is here to talk to you about Y..." Men rarely are introduced in the context of their appearance, usually only if it is their career like male modeling; however women who may have spent decades as office workers of some kind or educators or what-have-you are still introduced this way. The people doing it think of it as polite flattery, but it is an indicator of an element in human society. Women are expected to look good regardless of what they do or how well they do it. Whatever their talents or their careers, they must also be pseudo-models on top of that. And those that actually manage to both do something well and look good doing it are, in general, more highly regarded than those limited by capacity or nature to one or the other primarily.
I do think it is irrational for women to complain about being objectified, if for no other reason than the people we don't know are objects. You don't see a total stranger, say, passing you on an escalator and can then rationally think 'wow they sure are generous/honest/loyal/smart' etc. You can't know people's character or intellect just by looking at them, but you can know of course whether they are attractive or not. If, after getting to know a person one still treats them like no more than an object, then you have a real cause for complaint. In any case, you should learn this lesson yourself. Each person deserves to be judged individually based on known qualities, not caught up in some broad brush antagonism based solely on assumptions drawn from appearances. Doing that makes you worse than a curmudgeon, it makes you a prejudiced asshole.
The real world monetary example she posed to the audience contained negatives, but her experiment had limitations so that it could not be a pure analogue of that example. Have you actually watched the video? She was trying to prove that both humans and monkeys are loss averse, but she could only 'simulate' taking things from the monkeys. This simulation was standing in as analogue for instincts and behaviors relating to loss aversion. I am saying that loss aversion is prioritized above risk aversion for a demonstrable reason that transcends mathematical interpretations of an artificially equivalent scenario. (And as cephus has repeatedly pointed out, if the choices are all truly equal, any distribution or pattern of choices is meaningless, and interpretations of those distributions is subjective.)
There were negatives in the real world monetary example she presented to her audience, and she was trying to demonstrate 'loss aversion' in her experiment but was limited by the format of the experiment.
In any case, you know what, I'm going to take the chance of not getting kicked in the balls. Somehow I don't think that's irrational.
It's not that I don't understand the abstraction, I'm saying that the abstraction is not useful. There is a difference between guaranteed gains and guaranteed losses categorically, a difference which the abstraction seeks to minimize by making the guaranteed states identical between the scenarios.
If these were truly equivalent and subverting categorical instincts, that does not make it logical that one would make the same choice in both or choices equally at random. When the choice doesn't matter, the patterns don't matter either (which cephus has already pointed out).
cephus has already made key points, so I will try not to duplicate them. You are falling for the same assumptions that she falls for. You're basically arguing that in order to be 'rational' you must be consistent. That might even seem true on the face of it, but consistency is worthless where things are consistently bad. That has direct application here. Let's throw out the benign economy and make this a more palpable scenario.
There are two women, one is promiscuous the other is capricious. The latter is a more exciting partner, but if she's not in the mood she will kick you in the balls. Most men would go with the 'safe bet'. Now shift the scenario just as the other one, except now you choose between being kicked in the balls outright by an average person in sneakers, or a 50/50 chance of nothing at all or being kicked in the balls with a steel-toed boot by a soccer player. You want to tell me that choosing less pain because it is consistent is more rational than the chance for no pain at all? I realize that this scenario is not entirely parallel with the conditionally identical scenarios in the example, but the principle is the same. Choosing negative outcomes, I maintain, is not a 'smart' behavior just because the risk 'might' be worse.
That the end states are identical is immaterial. What is real is that where positives are guaranteed, it makes sense to take them. Where negatives are guaranteed, it makes sense to avoid them, even if in trying to avoid them you make things worse, it's better than just waiting for a known and quantifiable failure to happen on the chance that you can avert both. I say that far from being irrational, this is the essence of reason.
There is a certain inevitability in that, primarily because I think that communication and interface via direct neural links is imminent. Neural interfaces can already be used for rudimentary controls, and when they scale up they will not only replace computer peripherals but human speech itself. Once humans start communicating at a baud rate rather than a speaking rate, civilization will change as a matter of course.
However I don't imagine that institutions such as marriage will become things of minutes, if such institutions survive at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever it is it cannot be worse than "the hard drive is the new bling" that Hitachi did. Look that one up... it is heinous. It could only have been worse if they had done it in blackface.
What is legal and what is "offensive" (which is a subset of morality*, so don't think you can wriggle out that, after all, how could a person be reasonably offended by a moral thing?) are very different things. I think many legal things and indeed laws themselves are "offensive", whereas many illegal things are inoffensive to me. It is not automatic that either one is also the other.
Everybody who is, as you say, not a sociopath goes to some degree of attempting 'not to annoy others unnecessarily', but the key definition is 'what is necessary?' That's part of the big culture debate about homosexuality in public. American society has a double standard where people who accept some level of public affection between straight couples balk at the same level of affection displayed by gay couples. It is argued, rightly, that if it is not 'unnecessarily annoying' behavior from straight couples, the special pleading about the same behavior from gay couples must be bigotry.
This doesn't necessarily correlate directly to my argument except that it demonstrates that what people accept is based on irrational personal prejudice and their moral perspective. I conform to laws and policies where I must, but I answer only to my own conscience, not public opinion, for everything else I do.
And further your assignment of blame for overreaching policies and laws onto breakers of the same is misguided and ultimately harmful to society. Nobody should be restricted from actions that are in and of themselves not harmful just because somebody else might have gone too far once. If a criminal did A and B and C, where C was the crime, you do not make A and B illegal too by association, even if they were enabling factors. Everybody has the capacity to make decisions, and people should be punished based on what they do, not on what they might do.
* As a I read your post I can tell you're not speaking American English (nobody here would ever say 'ringer at the cinema') so I don't think we're really working with a common connotation of terms. 'Offensive' in American English carries a much clearer moral connotation than perhaps it does in British/Commonwealth English. Probably because Americans are by and large overconcerned with their personal and collective morality. Aside from situations where the amorality is clear from the context (such as 'that smell is offensive') the use of the term 'offensive' in American English outside of a moral context is quite rare.
What you're changing is a perception. Let me tell you, most of the men you shake hands with have probably masturbated at some point. OH NOES! Have I shattered your ridiculous false perceptions? I mean really. If something is acceptable in private it should be acceptable in public. If something is so truly "bad" in public then why is it "good" in private? It's all bullshit social construction and white lies people tell themselves to maintain false pretenses.
So, by expressing a controversial opinion in public would somebody be making other people a part of their political life without asking them? It's the same 'right not to be offended' mindset and it is unduly controlling. If you don't want to see or hear something, rather than trying to control others, control yourself. Move on.
Your comparison to physical impingement onto property rights is not parallel. It is more or less universally agreed that the right of somebody to swing their fist stops a few feet short of somebody else's face. Consequently, nobody should be allowed to force somebody to look at things they don't want to see (by being literally, not figuratively or subjectively, in their face with it), neither should you complain about being impinged upon when you choose to look over their shoulder. That's blaming somebody else for your choice.
Ah, I see. Morality is what the majority says it is. A great way to justify slavery and chauvinism, just walk back the timeline a bit until you get the moral majority agree with.
Sexual harassment unfortunately has succumbed to the 'I have a right not to be offended' school of thought(crime). There are most certainly legitimate cases of sexual harassment, but I think that the first test of legitimacy needs to be direction/intent. Is the act directed a person? No? Well then it had better be a pretty egregious act bordering on a hate crime in order to be legitimate (such as 'all women are %slurs%' although not directed at a person includes the person as class and therefore is harassing).
However at levels lower than that you arrive at differences of opinion and matters of taste. A man might have a calendar full of attractive women because he thinks they are objects for his cold, uncaring use or because he genuinely thinks that female beauty is a sublime addition to their intellectual capacity and depth of character but can appreciated for its own sake. And while you can start fabricating odds of one or the other depending on your prejudice toward men, in any case you can never indite him for that alone which you believe is in his head without some kind of corroborating statement or behavior. As a corollary, a woman may see such a man with a calendar as a brutish ignorant sexist pig, or may be more pragmatic and think it is natural for men to want to see attractive women and who does it harm. In such a scenario the man is indited depending on the character of the 'victim' as opposed to the act itself, a terrible standard for anything approaching 'justice'.
Therefore while contemporary sexual harassment standards must be borne in mind when considering practical outcomes and impacts consequent to behavior, I maintain that those standards are in excess of what should be permissible in a fair construction of ethics.
Something I neglected to comment on, I'm a parent myself, and while I never dispute any parent's right to raise their child as they see fit (within the law), why would I care if my kid saw a lingerie shoot? Oh no, she's just standing/sitting/lying there, and she's in her underwear! The horror! Surely, the fragile minds of my idiot children will be swayed by her wiles and cause them to become unbound sluts or rapists!
I must make clear, I am not saying that your children are in fact fragile idiots, but rather that you must perceive them to be so, otherwise you would trust that they could handle something as mind-bending as an attractive woman in her underwear. I have always perceived my role as a parent to enable the independence of my children with the greatest degree of wisdom and discernment that they themselves can develop, and that doesn't come from ignorance. My own parents tried desperately to shelter me, and not only was I insulted by that (and I'm not talking about teenage rebellion, but feeling the treatment as indignity from roughly kindergarten age onward), but it drove me to go out of my way to expose myself to what they would forbid me to know or see. Consequently, being resourceful, I was exposed to hardcore porn starting at about age ten, and I learned all about great human atrocities such as the "work" of Joseph Mengele at about the same age. I handled it, but in hindsight it wasn't healthy to have had to introduce myself to these things with no possible input or guidance from my parents, who would have simply been upset that I wanted to know about them.
Those who are not resourceful tend to develop an ongoing disinterest in learning itself. I've seen it happen over and over, and it's the saddest waste of human capacity. Anyway, the point is that the best way to truly prepare children for the world that they must live in is through guided knowledge. They must see and understand (through the opportunity to discuss matters objectively).
You're confusing 'is moving' with 'has moved'. The fact that you cite an example yourself doesn't help you. Bikini baristas are but one piece away from topless baristas, which are in turn another piece away from nude baristas. (Do it one step at a time and you've got stripper baristas.) Your other example doesn't help you either, as there was a time when exposed breasts would have been over the line. Both indicate a change in progress that just isn't done yet. (And if you think movies rated R in the last few years could have ever dreamed of such leniency when the current ratings system was founded in the 60s then I suggest that you are on drugs.)
Why are you talking about laws? I'm talking about social norms. So was the person I was responding to. Neither of us are explicitly interested in whether Hurd is a law breaker or not (let alone corporate policies).
Our society is moving inexorably toward greater acceptance of sexuality in the public square. Thankfully. There is no good reason to get all upset about some skin and thrusting. Porn consumption is acting as a catalyst toward a natural acceptance of sexuality as a positive thing rather than some shameful thing that needs to be hidden at all costs. I think most of urban gen Y and younger are just waiting until they're in the majority and then it will be time for Sexual Revolution Part Deux: Electric Boogaloo.
Europe is almost there as it is, nudity (which I know is not inherently sexual so nobody jump on me for conflation) is socially acceptable in Germany and environs, red light districts in the Netherlands are pretty in-your-face, and neither element is destroying those societies (even though I wouldn't want to live under their political restrictions).
I have a feeling there is going to be a spike in searches for Jodie Fisher for a few days.
Do you have a point? Or was that just an exercise in crimes against grammar and cohesive thought?
Oh yeah, those 'cycles' that science comes up with, what a crock, like the so-called 'water cycle' that evil 'private research institutions' acknowledge. Everybody knows that rain just materializes in the sky rather than condensing from evaporated surface water.{/sarcasm}
I mean really, are so you so dumb and so blindly focused on attacking 'private interests' (of all things) that the best you can come up with is 'rar! cycles are inventions of corporate fat cats!'
Ugh. I'm getting really sick of all the stupid anti-corporatism for anti-corporatism's sake.
Pointless though it may otherwise be, I must say, wow, you owned that guy rather hard.
As with most things, the truth lies in between. Humans need minerals, whether from food or dissolved in water, we need zinc, iron, sodium (in moderate amounts), etc. However lead, arsenic, etc. also gets into water and those are harmful. So distilled water saves us from the harms and the benefits both, but as Khyber points out if the water you drink is adding nothing then ultimately it will take the minerals that you have been getting from food and wash them out as systems tend toward equilibrium.
I see this is getting modded down because people don't appreciate critical questions. Quite ironic given the context. Not to speak for Moridineas, but I think the point he is getting at is that science is a process that has no intrinsic position on economics (except where one is applying the scientific method to study economics). Therefore science where conducted properly is no better or worse in a given economic order. Of course where we talking about this issue of the free exchange of information that may help scientists to have access to more data upon which to conduct the process, but it does not change the process itself, only the scope of input.
Even assuming that shipboard sensors wouldn't have found them or were sabotaged not to find them, and that they managed to feed themselves and escape, even given all of that, it would still be a hook that would have to be discussed by Marc and co. explicitly in order to even have a claim on the suspension of disbelief in favor of the framework of the greater Star Trek universe.
I stated not, once, but twice, and in italics, that is a bookcase, not a bookshelf. With such poor comprehension and attention to detail, it is no wonder you are so easily dismissive of the frameworks necessary to make a successful reference.
And I don't think that Marc Okrand, regardless of inventing Klingon, has any more right to inflict poor execution of things outside of his realm of expertise, such as acting, as he clearly sucks at it. I wouldn't take bad acting and poor execution from Matt Jeffries just because he designed the Enterprise.
In all your blather about buying, selling, ownership etc. you failed to put forward any even plausible reason why a random douchebag in some badly affected 'character' in a fan film (if that's how we're supposed to see it) knows about Klingons. That's why it's stupid, that's why it fails from an 'in universe' perspective. If there is no backstory, no 'why' or 'how', then it can only be causally linked to real life and Star Trek as exactly what you keeping harping that it is, a commercial franchise, which completely deflates any dramatic potential from what already is a poorly executed and awkward performance.
(Even if the 'universe reset' applies, that still requires an explanation in that framework. Regardless of where you go with it, there was no reference to any explanatory background, hence no 'in universe' credibility. Even if this would pretend to be another 'universe reset' they still need a background in the framework that they would presume to make up.)
Did I once criticize the opera? No. I criticized some douchebag acting like going to a radio telescope to send a "Klingon" message to Arcturus meant something. If it weren't an act, it would be literally insane. Even as an act it was stupid. It was thematically incongruent, unsourced, poorly executed, awkward, etc. It was a bad act at a minimum and I criticized that. I don't care one whit about marketing or who makes what money off of what. As a fan of Star Trek I was beyond underwhelmed by this poorly executed stunt which failed to capture any of the spirit of the universe or fit into its canon.
If they're trying to do this "in universe" then they have to trace it to part of the canon. They have to say 'I know there are Klingons around Arcturus because of x, y, and z that tie into the Star Trek canon.' Because "in universe" nobody on Earth knows Klingons exist until roughly 2151. Unless this is done, the only logical conclusion is that the person is acting in the real world, wherein he can only know of Klingons from Star Trek fiction, whereby if he actually believes that is real, he is an idiot.
As a Trekkie* myself, and one who frequently defends other Trekkies when they are needlessly persecuted, I have to say I agree with the AC. This level of theater (I really, really hope it's just theater) reaches a pure creepiness. Roddenberry was a very talented, imaginative, and even insightful person, but he was not a prophet divinely revealing truths about the universe. There are no Klingons orbiting Arcturus. That was just a fiction. F-I-C-T-I-O-N. It doesn't matter how good that fiction is, to treat it like it is real is retarded. Klingon is an invented language, a clever one indeed actually designed to buck as many linguistic norms as possible, but to think that some language that was invented for a TV show is actually spoken by extraterrestrial life forms is irredeemably stupid, even as an act.
Star Trek is awesome. I have a bookcase, not a book shelf, a bookcase full of nothing but Star Trek novels, analysis, and reference books. That doesn't make it real, and treating it like it is real is the height of idiocy. These people are twits.
*(Yes, that's Trekkie, not Trekker. Anybody who thinks they are exposing me or correcting me somehow can go fuck themselves. Trekker was coined by a bunch of whiny butt hurt people whose self-esteem was crushed by William Shatner on SNL because they had no sense of humor and couldn't laugh at themselves.)
I shouldn't bother, as you clearly haven't even tried to be sympathetic to the women whose characters you so denigrate, but in the interest of the wider humanity I'm going to try to reach you.
Have you ever watched a woman be introduced on stage? I mean, really watched and payed attention to the context? "And now the beautiful Jane Doe will perform X..." or "And now the lovely Jane Doe is here to talk to you about Y..." Men rarely are introduced in the context of their appearance, usually only if it is their career like male modeling; however women who may have spent decades as office workers of some kind or educators or what-have-you are still introduced this way. The people doing it think of it as polite flattery, but it is an indicator of an element in human society. Women are expected to look good regardless of what they do or how well they do it. Whatever their talents or their careers, they must also be pseudo-models on top of that. And those that actually manage to both do something well and look good doing it are, in general, more highly regarded than those limited by capacity or nature to one or the other primarily.
I do think it is irrational for women to complain about being objectified, if for no other reason than the people we don't know are objects. You don't see a total stranger, say, passing you on an escalator and can then rationally think 'wow they sure are generous/honest/loyal/smart' etc. You can't know people's character or intellect just by looking at them, but you can know of course whether they are attractive or not. If, after getting to know a person one still treats them like no more than an object, then you have a real cause for complaint. In any case, you should learn this lesson yourself. Each person deserves to be judged individually based on known qualities, not caught up in some broad brush antagonism based solely on assumptions drawn from appearances. Doing that makes you worse than a curmudgeon, it makes you a prejudiced asshole.
The real world monetary example she posed to the audience contained negatives, but her experiment had limitations so that it could not be a pure analogue of that example. Have you actually watched the video? She was trying to prove that both humans and monkeys are loss averse, but she could only 'simulate' taking things from the monkeys. This simulation was standing in as analogue for instincts and behaviors relating to loss aversion. I am saying that loss aversion is prioritized above risk aversion for a demonstrable reason that transcends mathematical interpretations of an artificially equivalent scenario. (And as cephus has repeatedly pointed out, if the choices are all truly equal, any distribution or pattern of choices is meaningless, and interpretations of those distributions is subjective.)
There were negatives in the real world monetary example she presented to her audience, and she was trying to demonstrate 'loss aversion' in her experiment but was limited by the format of the experiment.
In any case, you know what, I'm going to take the chance of not getting kicked in the balls. Somehow I don't think that's irrational.
It's not that I don't understand the abstraction, I'm saying that the abstraction is not useful. There is a difference between guaranteed gains and guaranteed losses categorically, a difference which the abstraction seeks to minimize by making the guaranteed states identical between the scenarios.
If these were truly equivalent and subverting categorical instincts, that does not make it logical that one would make the same choice in both or choices equally at random. When the choice doesn't matter, the patterns don't matter either (which cephus has already pointed out).
cephus has already made key points, so I will try not to duplicate them. You are falling for the same assumptions that she falls for. You're basically arguing that in order to be 'rational' you must be consistent. That might even seem true on the face of it, but consistency is worthless where things are consistently bad. That has direct application here. Let's throw out the benign economy and make this a more palpable scenario.
There are two women, one is promiscuous the other is capricious. The latter is a more exciting partner, but if she's not in the mood she will kick you in the balls. Most men would go with the 'safe bet'. Now shift the scenario just as the other one, except now you choose between being kicked in the balls outright by an average person in sneakers, or a 50/50 chance of nothing at all or being kicked in the balls with a steel-toed boot by a soccer player. You want to tell me that choosing less pain because it is consistent is more rational than the chance for no pain at all? I realize that this scenario is not entirely parallel with the conditionally identical scenarios in the example, but the principle is the same. Choosing negative outcomes, I maintain, is not a 'smart' behavior just because the risk 'might' be worse.
That the end states are identical is immaterial. What is real is that where positives are guaranteed, it makes sense to take them. Where negatives are guaranteed, it makes sense to avoid them, even if in trying to avoid them you make things worse, it's better than just waiting for a known and quantifiable failure to happen on the chance that you can avert both. I say that far from being irrational, this is the essence of reason.
There is a certain inevitability in that, primarily because I think that communication and interface via direct neural links is imminent. Neural interfaces can already be used for rudimentary controls, and when they scale up they will not only replace computer peripherals but human speech itself. Once humans start communicating at a baud rate rather than a speaking rate, civilization will change as a matter of course.
However I don't imagine that institutions such as marriage will become things of minutes, if such institutions survive at all.