That's no garauntee. If the movie's in 11D all that needs to happen is one good Sierpinski gasket on the amp and then FOOM.. you really ARE singin' wit' da druids.
I can perfectly see 'unobtanium' becoming the jargon term for it amongst the subset of the population that we saw on screen. Heck, the proper name for the material is probably something like hexagermanium qunitofullericarsenide... crystallosulfate. Or something equally mouth-bending.
There are a lot of theories as to the radical differences between the Na'vi and everything else in the Pandoran biome. The main one is that the Na'vi aren't *entirely* natural or native. How that works out, who knows? It's been implied that it's a topic for exploration in the sequel, however.
That being said, yes, you can make sympathetic characters without making them blue catgirls.
It's harder than most, depending on the interpretation you have of Eywa. Listening to Sigourney Weaver's dialogue underscores that; what WOULD a world-spanning biological electrochemical network look and act like?
Actually, they're pretty specific that the starships used by Humans were all slower-than-light, just really, really fast, in that it takes six years to get to Alpha Centauri where Pandora is. Specificaly, they use a sort of antimatter-enriched fusion torch (possibly proton-proton fusion) that cruises at 1.5G for about half a year. So it's pretty far out there as far as current material and propulsion sciences. But 'unobtanium' is also noted as being used in building the starships; with room-temp superconductors, maybe AM-enriched PP fusion torches are possible in some way.
The design of the starship itself was spot-on, too. It's a variant of the Valkyrie design, though it didn't have the droplet-expelled micrometeorite shield or the specific drive that Valkyrie uses. Still, it doesn't look like a traditional Hollywood spaceship, and I have to say I'm diggin' it. =)
I could *never* see movies with the red/blue 3D glasses. My eyes just aren't able to handle it.
That being said, somehow, this worked. I wore the glasses over my own, and a few times I found myself trying to whack away insects on the screen that looked like they were a bit too close.
The glasses fit reasonably well over mine and did not impair viewing the movie at all.
(Typically when they hear screaming, they purposely delay in intervening.)
A part of that is self-preservation. When the screaming starts, someone is being sent to the great beyond in a slow and violent fashion, and even one or two prison guards are not getting paid enough to wade into that Hell-on-Earth to try and stop it. The guards call for backup, usually in riot gear.
Of course, a part of it might sometimes be the guards thinking, 'Bastard had it coming,' and letting the inmates vent a little pent-up frustration.
Mind you, it'd be best if the second one wasn't entirely true, but... there you go.
I don't care if his name was 'Dick.' That has got to be one of the coolest names in American history. It deserves to make weak men tremble and strong women curse when he announces who he is.
Mmm... I disagree in some ways. While the ages of consent are somewhat arbitrary, there is a more important condition to be taken into account here: Ted Klaudt chose to put himself in a position of responsibility and authority over two girls whom the law says must have a guardian. If he had any inkling that he would want to molest them, then he would need to recuse himself from that responsibility. Instead, he chose
While I do agree that the American advertising culture is really rather sick, we are not machines. We are not some sort of Pavlov's monkeys, conditioned to screw at the drop of a dress. We are sentient beings, and Ted Klaudt is (ostensibly) an adult who, at various points in his adult life, has been considered capable of making his own decisions for right or for wrong, and for choosing for himself what he should or should not do. Regardless of what Klaudt has seen on television or in magazines, he -- just like everyone -- is responsible for his own actions. At the very least, he is responsible for recognizing himself as capable of molesting females to whom he has a legal responsibility for.
Moreover, he lied to the girls and tricked them into this situation. Again, he abused his position of authority.
The bottom line is that this was not consensual. It was rape. You might call them 'morons,' but there was nothing I saw in the articles that said that his molesting of them was consensual. They didn't want it, he did it anyway: Rape, pure and simple. It was his choice.
All this being said... I do agree that incarceration should be rehabilitative rather than punitive. IN the vast majority of criminal cases, locking someone up does no go whatsoever, and in fact has been shown to make a person even worse. In addition... not to put too fine a point on it, but Klaudt is not a spring chicken. American prison populations have a justly-deserved reputation of being incredibly bad (to put it mildly) for child rapists. I would not bet Vegas odds on Klaudt getting through even one of his prison terms. And for the record, I do not approve.
So, in conclusion: He chose of his own free will to rape his stepdaughters, and he needs to be put away so that, somehow, that can be rehabilitated out of him so that the thought of it never happens again. No magic moving-pictures box put those ideas into his head, nobody forced him to be a rapist. At the same time, locking him away and throwing away the key does society no good. We need better rehabilitative incarceration rather than punitative. How, though, I'm afraid I don't know.
Plenty more. Mind you, these are 'disorderly conduct' arrests, rather than 'traitor to the state' arrests. While you can be arrested for speaking out against the government in the US, you are highly unlikely to be disappeared; more likely highly inconvenienced. Still, it could happen.
Get back to me when Joe Biden assassinates Barack Obama so he can seize power.
This, fortunately, is vanishingly unlikely to happen.
But I wouldn't have put it past Dick "Dick" Cheney. =)
Grandparent post, though, was expressing valid frustration. These days, it seems like Congress is only listening to the lobbies, Wall Street, Big Oil, etc.... In other words, everyone except us poor dumb schmucks who, oh yeah, ELECTED them to office. It grates on a person, and it gets frustrating and maddening. Protests, petitions, screaming at the top of our lungs... none of it is apparently making an impact.
While I certainly share the sentiment -- having benefit at the cost of another's life, liberty, and/or pursuit of happiness -- the woman is about as detached from the misery caused by those she supports as the typical Western citizen is from the civilian casualties in Iraq. She doesn't identify with the crews of those ships she's indirectly helping to board, terrorize, brutalize, and murder. I doubt if she can; most people can't identify or sympathize with total strangers they don't know the names of, let alone have never met.
It can also be argued that Somalia is a very badly broken place, and I don't mean the lack of government. It's been theorized that every currently-living Somali basically has PTSD. The years of chaos, of anarchy, of infighting, of atrocity... gah. I say this not to excuse the pirates or their supporters, but understanding the people involved in an issue is a critical step in resolving the issue... even if it's just as intelligence gathered on the enemy.
There are a lot of passing correspondences between the Somalia situation and post-11SEP01 United States, actually... but I hasten to repeat that feeling 'happy' at the cost of another's pain is indeed wretched.
Having worked on smokers' computers, I can say that the only time this would cause a problem for the repair person would be if it was utterly, obnoxiously prevalent in the computer. Normally we couldn't tell if the computer came from a smoker's home. But I've seen a few -- only a very few -- where there was literally ash in the casing. I have no idea how it could have gotten there, either, but there you go, and it *reeked*. Seriously reeked; I think only one other tech could bring himself to work on that computer for more than a few minutes. Once someone brought in a laptop and it was painfully obvious the moment they cracked the lid that they smoked pot; I don't think you could hang around the laptop for long without getting an incidental buzz. For a tech who might be allergic to pot smoke, I don't know if it would cause problems, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant.
So, in summation: When the person complains that their computer had it's warranty voided because they're a smoker, I would hazard a guess to say that they were a VERY heavy smoker and the computer was suffused with ash and reeked. This is NOT the computer of an idle, cigarette-now-and-then smoker, but someone who more or less chain smokes while browsing the web. It probably made working in the GR next to impossible.
As I recall, the Chinese government has recognized the shocking levels of female infanticide that took place with their one-child rule, and have either rescinded that policy or are amending it; I think they're giving subsidies for having female children, but I could be wrong. Either way, both China and India both have issues with too many boys.
But that is a good and interesting point. The chemical 'feminization' of males in a population vastly unbalanced in favor of males would be interesting to study.
Part of this, in some parts of the world, is due to female infanticide, because there is the continuing view that there must be a son to inherit and carry on the family (i.e. the father's) name. Female children are seen as a liability to be married off after paying a hefty bribe -- I mean, dowry. Not everywhere, of course, but in a good chunk of the world.
Why do you think India and China both have severe issues with gender imbalances in their populations? It's not all the fault of chemicals....
It's possible this was a public way to do a proof-of-concept. Showing it's possible to invisibly implicate someone, and, if not erase ALL evidence it was a frame job, then at least conceal who did the framing.
Of course, making it a proof-of-concept relies upon knowledgable defense teams and justices who are even willing to accept the possibility... but it seems the cat, as they say, is out of the bag. Now people with child pornography found on their computers have a legitimate claim to say that it's not theirs, they didn't do it and they don't know how it got there.
Which may in and of itself be a proof-of-concept... of the 'The Virus Did It!' defense.
Well, there was also the 'honor system' mentioned in the manual, which originally was supposed to deter high-level characters from ganking low-level characters, but that wasn't added until well after Battlegrounds. There was also the 'Hero Class' which was missing until the recent second expansion.
Also, WoW had a lot of bugs and glitches, in addition to missing several minor features, which hindered it's release. As I recall, it became so bad that Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade withdrew their support for the game because of all the problems.
WoW might not have had the worst launch ever, but it was certainly 'up there' for a major title from a major developer.
"Apparently 98% of the votes isn't enough to determine how the remaining 2% voted, after all."
And why should they be? Not every country has a 'winner take all' simple majority voting system. And even if Finland doesn't, every vote has to be understood to have been counted even if they didn't go to some arbitrary clear-cut winner.
Besides, that race might very well have been neck-and-neck. 2% of the vote either way might have decided it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's no garauntee. If the movie's in 11D all that needs to happen is one good Sierpinski gasket on the amp and then FOOM.. you really ARE singin' wit' da druids.
I can perfectly see 'unobtanium' becoming the jargon term for it amongst the subset of the population that we saw on screen. Heck, the proper name for the material is probably something like hexagermanium qunitofullericarsenide... crystallosulfate. Or something equally mouth-bending.
They're getting better. I can't see red/blue 3D worth jack, but this style of 3D seemed to work really really well.
There are a lot of theories as to the radical differences between the Na'vi and everything else in the Pandoran biome. The main one is that the Na'vi aren't *entirely* natural or native. How that works out, who knows? It's been implied that it's a topic for exploration in the sequel, however.
That being said, yes, you can make sympathetic characters without making them blue catgirls.
But it helps!
It's harder than most, depending on the interpretation you have of Eywa. Listening to Sigourney Weaver's dialogue underscores that; what WOULD a world-spanning biological electrochemical network look and act like?
Actually, they're pretty specific that the starships used by Humans were all slower-than-light, just really, really fast, in that it takes six years to get to Alpha Centauri where Pandora is. Specificaly, they use a sort of antimatter-enriched fusion torch (possibly proton-proton fusion) that cruises at 1.5G for about half a year. So it's pretty far out there as far as current material and propulsion sciences. But 'unobtanium' is also noted as being used in building the starships; with room-temp superconductors, maybe AM-enriched PP fusion torches are possible in some way.
The design of the starship itself was spot-on, too. It's a variant of the Valkyrie design, though it didn't have the droplet-expelled micrometeorite shield or the specific drive that Valkyrie uses. Still, it doesn't look like a traditional Hollywood spaceship, and I have to say I'm diggin' it. =)
This is an increasingly common theory.
For further grist for the mill, consider this:
Why are all the animals hexapedal and quadrocular... EXCEPT the Na'vi? And yet, they can all interact with those tendrils....
I could *never* see movies with the red/blue 3D glasses. My eyes just aren't able to handle it.
That being said, somehow, this worked. I wore the glasses over my own, and a few times I found myself trying to whack away insects on the screen that looked like they were a bit too close.
The glasses fit reasonably well over mine and did not impair viewing the movie at all.
By all means, see it in 3D if you possibly can.
It's not just the communists that get a hardon from making gay folk into some kind of second-class citizenry....
(Typically when they hear screaming, they purposely delay in intervening.)
A part of that is self-preservation. When the screaming starts, someone is being sent to the great beyond in a slow and violent fashion, and even one or two prison guards are not getting paid enough to wade into that Hell-on-Earth to try and stop it. The guards call for backup, usually in riot gear.
Of course, a part of it might sometimes be the guards thinking, 'Bastard had it coming,' and letting the inmates vent a little pent-up frustration.
Mind you, it'd be best if the second one wasn't entirely true, but... there you go.
MLPWDW
(My Law Prof was Dick Wolf)
I don't care if his name was 'Dick.' That has got to be one of the coolest names in American history. It deserves to make weak men tremble and strong women curse when he announces who he is.
Mmm... I disagree in some ways. While the ages of consent are somewhat arbitrary, there is a more important condition to be taken into account here: Ted Klaudt chose to put himself in a position of responsibility and authority over two girls whom the law says must have a guardian. If he had any inkling that he would want to molest them, then he would need to recuse himself from that responsibility. Instead, he chose
While I do agree that the American advertising culture is really rather sick, we are not machines. We are not some sort of Pavlov's monkeys, conditioned to screw at the drop of a dress. We are sentient beings, and Ted Klaudt is (ostensibly) an adult who, at various points in his adult life, has been considered capable of making his own decisions for right or for wrong, and for choosing for himself what he should or should not do. Regardless of what Klaudt has seen on television or in magazines, he -- just like everyone -- is responsible for his own actions. At the very least, he is responsible for recognizing himself as capable of molesting females to whom he has a legal responsibility for.
Moreover, he lied to the girls and tricked them into this situation. Again, he abused his position of authority.
The bottom line is that this was not consensual. It was rape. You might call them 'morons,' but there was nothing I saw in the articles that said that his molesting of them was consensual. They didn't want it, he did it anyway: Rape, pure and simple. It was his choice.
All this being said... I do agree that incarceration should be rehabilitative rather than punitive. IN the vast majority of criminal cases, locking someone up does no go whatsoever, and in fact has been shown to make a person even worse. In addition... not to put too fine a point on it, but Klaudt is not a spring chicken. American prison populations have a justly-deserved reputation of being incredibly bad (to put it mildly) for child rapists. I would not bet Vegas odds on Klaudt getting through even one of his prison terms. And for the record, I do not approve.
So, in conclusion: He chose of his own free will to rape his stepdaughters, and he needs to be put away so that, somehow, that can be rehabilitated out of him so that the thought of it never happens again. No magic moving-pictures box put those ideas into his head, nobody forced him to be a rapist. At the same time, locking him away and throwing away the key does society no good. We need better rehabilitative incarceration rather than punitative. How, though, I'm afraid I don't know.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=11796
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-defends-six-men-arrested-during-protest-president-bush-rally
And one more, for good measure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Plenty more. Mind you, these are 'disorderly conduct' arrests, rather than 'traitor to the state' arrests. While you can be arrested for speaking out against the government in the US, you are highly unlikely to be disappeared; more likely highly inconvenienced. Still, it could happen.
This, fortunately, is vanishingly unlikely to happen.
But I wouldn't have put it past Dick "Dick" Cheney. =)
Grandparent post, though, was expressing valid frustration. These days, it seems like Congress is only listening to the lobbies, Wall Street, Big Oil, etc. ... In other words, everyone except us poor dumb schmucks who, oh yeah, ELECTED them to office. It grates on a person, and it gets frustrating and maddening. Protests, petitions, screaming at the top of our lungs... none of it is apparently making an impact.
While I certainly share the sentiment -- having benefit at the cost of another's life, liberty, and/or pursuit of happiness -- the woman is about as detached from the misery caused by those she supports as the typical Western citizen is from the civilian casualties in Iraq. She doesn't identify with the crews of those ships she's indirectly helping to board, terrorize, brutalize, and murder. I doubt if she can; most people can't identify or sympathize with total strangers they don't know the names of, let alone have never met.
It can also be argued that Somalia is a very badly broken place, and I don't mean the lack of government. It's been theorized that every currently-living Somali basically has PTSD. The years of chaos, of anarchy, of infighting, of atrocity... gah. I say this not to excuse the pirates or their supporters, but understanding the people involved in an issue is a critical step in resolving the issue... even if it's just as intelligence gathered on the enemy.
There are a lot of passing correspondences between the Somalia situation and post-11SEP01 United States, actually... but I hasten to repeat that feeling 'happy' at the cost of another's pain is indeed wretched.
Having worked on smokers' computers, I can say that the only time this would cause a problem for the repair person would be if it was utterly, obnoxiously prevalent in the computer. Normally we couldn't tell if the computer came from a smoker's home. But I've seen a few -- only a very few -- where there was literally ash in the casing. I have no idea how it could have gotten there, either, but there you go, and it *reeked*. Seriously reeked; I think only one other tech could bring himself to work on that computer for more than a few minutes. Once someone brought in a laptop and it was painfully obvious the moment they cracked the lid that they smoked pot; I don't think you could hang around the laptop for long without getting an incidental buzz. For a tech who might be allergic to pot smoke, I don't know if it would cause problems, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant.
So, in summation: When the person complains that their computer had it's warranty voided because they're a smoker, I would hazard a guess to say that they were a VERY heavy smoker and the computer was suffused with ash and reeked. This is NOT the computer of an idle, cigarette-now-and-then smoker, but someone who more or less chain smokes while browsing the web. It probably made working in the GR next to impossible.
As I recall, the Chinese government has recognized the shocking levels of female infanticide that took place with their one-child rule, and have either rescinded that policy or are amending it; I think they're giving subsidies for having female children, but I could be wrong. Either way, both China and India both have issues with too many boys.
But that is a good and interesting point. The chemical 'feminization' of males in a population vastly unbalanced in favor of males would be interesting to study.
'Round these parts, beef apparently gets butchered....
Part of this, in some parts of the world, is due to female infanticide, because there is the continuing view that there must be a son to inherit and carry on the family (i.e. the father's) name. Female children are seen as a liability to be married off after paying a hefty bribe -- I mean, dowry. Not everywhere, of course, but in a good chunk of the world.
Why do you think India and China both have severe issues with gender imbalances in their populations? It's not all the fault of chemicals....
(Seriously. Google for it, it's pretty shocking.)
It's possible this was a public way to do a proof-of-concept. Showing it's possible to invisibly implicate someone, and, if not erase ALL evidence it was a frame job, then at least conceal who did the framing.
Of course, making it a proof-of-concept relies upon knowledgable defense teams and justices who are even willing to accept the possibility... but it seems the cat, as they say, is out of the bag. Now people with child pornography found on their computers have a legitimate claim to say that it's not theirs, they didn't do it and they don't know how it got there.
Which may in and of itself be a proof-of-concept... of the 'The Virus Did It!' defense.
And don't forget a beowulf cluster of Mae Ling Mak not touching this with a ten-foot Natalie Portman with hot grits....
Steal? From *whom?*
Well, there was also the 'honor system' mentioned in the manual, which originally was supposed to deter high-level characters from ganking low-level characters, but that wasn't added until well after Battlegrounds. There was also the 'Hero Class' which was missing until the recent second expansion.
Also, WoW had a lot of bugs and glitches, in addition to missing several minor features, which hindered it's release. As I recall, it became so bad that Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade withdrew their support for the game because of all the problems.
WoW might not have had the worst launch ever, but it was certainly 'up there' for a major title from a major developer.
And why should they be? Not every country has a 'winner take all' simple majority voting system. And even if Finland doesn't, every vote has to be understood to have been counted even if they didn't go to some arbitrary clear-cut winner.
Besides, that race might very well have been neck-and-neck. 2% of the vote either way might have decided it.
Interesting. A lot of those strings look like registry keys.
Specifically, a quote from Bill Hicks that was used in Freeland's song.