I watched "Futurama" for a while. I have to admit that it was (usually) funnier than "The Simpsons" was at the same time. (But, let's face it, my old college roommate after a few beers is funnier than "The Simpsons" has been in the last few seasons.) And sometimes, usually when it was making fun of some current or not-so-current event, it achieved a cockeyed kind of greatness (e.g. the _Titanic_ parody, or the episode where Bender does a Joe Hazelwood, only by not drinking.)
But "Futurama" was a mean, nasty little show in comparison to "The Simpsons" at its best. "The Simpsons" in its early seasons was wicked, but it never lost sight of the essential humanity of its characters. Homer was dumb and often small-minded, but he'd occasionally come through and do the right thing. Lisa was there to remind us that even the worst of families can sometimes produce something right. Hell, even Bart had his moments.
But "Futurama" had nothing but contempt for its characters. Fry has never been anything else but an idiot. Bender is...well, Bender; if he ever deviates from his cruel, mean-spirited ways, it's for the sake of a cheap joke. Leela provides some counterbalance, I suppose, but more often than not the show seems bent on finding some way to humiliate her (qq.v. any episode with Zapp Brannigan, the "Married with Children" parody episode.)
Hey, but if you get your kicks from cruelty masquerading as comedy, then you'll be sorry to see "Futurama" go. I won't be.
I first attended college at the California Institute of Technology; I was a chemistry major, but most of my friends were majoring in physics.
By the time I finally graduated from (a much lesser) college, only one person from that group was still a scientist, and he'd gone into astronomy. Nearly all of them had been sucked into the computer industry, including myself.
I think the computing field attracts those who couldn't hack it at a real science; the promised land, where one could earn a six-figure salary for writing ten lines of code a day (not to mention the agreeable prospect of not having to master any difficult mathematics) beckons. The withering of the high-tech job market in Washington has hurt me, but in a way I'm glad it happened--maybe the truly good people will keep on _earning_ their salaries, while the dime-a-dozen computer geeks who got into the business because they though they could make easy money playing with their toys (I include myself in that group) get weeded out.
You forgot the last reason Bork is important--he was the Nixon flunky (Solicitor General, I believe), who acted in the capacity of Attorney General to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, after Elliott Richardson refused to do it, and his deputy Ruckelshaus also refused. How anyone could "widely respect him for his integrity" after that is a mystery to me.
"The Rapture for atheists"
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True Names
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· Score: 2, Insightful
This is how someone I've forgotten (perhaps someone here on Slashdot) summed up Vinge's notion of the Singularity. It's an accurate description.
I think it's all nonsense, anyway. Various technological revolutions have come and gone, and we humans are pretty much the same as we always were, as any student of history, ancient literature, or anthropology could tell you.
"First, from what book did you get Dec 25 for Christ's Birthday?? Quote me the scripture/verse if you got this from the Bible."
Of course it's not in there. It's well known that the date of Christmas was made roughly to coincide with the dates of pagan religious holidays which occurred in winter, like the Saturnalia. Modern neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice, 21 or 22 December (I can never remember when exactly), and this possibly has some basis in ancient practice. Indeed, if the Four Gospels are taken as evidence, they do not support a winter date for the birth of Christ (q. v. Luke 2:8, which says that the shepherds were in the field tending their flocks, which isn't likely to have happened in winter.)
But that's really missing the point. Of course the date of Christmas is arbitrary, just as the dates of a number of our holidays are arbitrary (Thanksgiving and Memorial Day come to mind.) But Jesus was born at some time roundabout A.D. 1, and there happen to be people who think that the anniversary of his birth is an event worth celebrating. 25 December happens to be the date which tradition has set for that celebration, and that's what Christmas _used_ to be about.
"Secondarily, if Christ wanted us to celebrate his birthday, *why* isn't it mentioned at ALL in the New Testament?"
True, it isn't really. Someone else in this thread quotes some verses from chapter 2 of Luke, but I don't think they call for any sort of annual celebration of Christ's birth. Again, though, this is missing the point. Christian tradition comes from many other sources than the Bible. The lack of Biblical precedent hardly invalidates the tradition, I should think.
"If you can't even do proper exegesis, don't even bother posting."
Ooh, ten-cent word that, "exegesis". I think you're showing off.
...as a bunch of horny, nerdy, male adolescents. Who else would wank over a "Terminatrix" (undoubtedly to be played by some pretty actress with large bosoms and little talent; q. v. _Tomb Raider_), but the same crowd for whom Seven of Nine was written into "Voyager".
Science fiction gets it wrong far, far more often than it gets it right. The pages of SF are full of statements which have either become ridiculously outmoded (futuristic computers with vacuum tubes, futuristic engineers using slide rules, &c.) or claims for the future which just never came true (that we'd have colonized the solar system by now, that we'd have flying cars, &c.)
The plain fact of the matter is that the predictive value of SF just isn't there. SF writers don't make intelligent predictions; they take wild stabs in the dark, and their guesses are right probably about as often as a professional psychic's.
One might claim that Clarke's and Kubrick's 2001, say, or Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, somehow "predict" the advent of artificial intelligences which can pass the Turing Test, in the characters of Hal and Mycroft. Nonsense. Hal and Mycroft are simply human characters with the serial numbers filed off; it took no insight into technology to write those characters, only wishful thinking that some day computers will act like people.
A lot of science fiction tech stems from that sort of wishful thinking, the wistful hope that some day, a way can be found to contravene various inconvenient physical laws or technological barriers; hence SF has given us faster-than-light travel or communications, hand-held laser-like weapons capable of killing a man, shields, not to mention human colonies on just about every celestial body which might conceivably harbor us. Maybe, some day, there will be discovered ways to effect some of these things. But if they happen, they will happen at their own pace, in despite of the dreams of SF and not because of them. Science fiction writers since the early days of the genre have indulged the wistful hope that we'd be living on the Moon or Mars by now--look how influential _that_ dream has been!
The best SF keeps the wild dreams of futuristic tech in the background and concentrates rather on character. That's why C. J. Cherryh's CYTEEN is my favorite SF novel; the one claim for the future which makes the plot possible--that we'll eventually be able to clone humans and imprint desired behavior upon them--is eminently plausible; for the rest, Cherryh dwells upon the struggles of the characters, not on wowing readers with visions of futuristic toys.
...the gift of the English language. Take time out from your day and teach a poor, semiliterate computer nerd how to spell. Make space in your day to instruct him on the difference between "loose" and "lose". Get him a Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
The editorial staff of Slashdot certainly could use this gift, from what I've seen.
I was interested to see the "Barking Dog" reaction, because my high school chemistry teacher performed a chemical demonstration which produced a dog-bark sound. The reaction was different, though, and I'm wondering if anyone here has seen anything like this.
What my teacher did was to dissolve white phosphorus in carbon bisulfide, soak a circle of filter paper in the solution, and lay the paper over the mouth of a large (maybe 1 liter) graduated cylinder. The carbon disulfide quickly evaporates, leaving a residue of phosphorus on the filter paper, which spontaneously ignites, sucking the air out of the graduated cylinder...and making a sound like the barking of a dog.
"('Are you an Angel?' is bad dialogue made unbearable by bad performance)"
In "Perceval" by Chretien de Troyes, when young Perceval first sees a group mounted knights riding in the forest, he takes them for angels, because he's never seen a knight before.
"Are you an angel?" isn't bad dialogue; it's dialogue with special resonance, and I think it very likely that the resonance with "Perceval" is deliberate. (Another point of similarity: when Perceval leaves his mother and rides off to try to become a knight, he looks back to see his mother falling as if dead. Anakin's mother's advice to her son is, "Don't look back. Don't look back.")
I can only quote here the succinct and contemptuous reply of a poster to rec.arts.sf.written who answered, "It's the Rapture for atheists." I agree with the succinctness, and with the contempt.
hyacinthus.
I've said this before in another Slashdot post (a long time ago, &c.), but I'll say it again, more emphatically. Jar Jar Binks is one of the only reasons THE PHANTOM MENACE is worth watching.
He is, at least, a unique creation. Can you say that about any other character from the movie? Anakin Skywalker has little to do aside from playing the precocious brat. Qui-Gon delivers the occasional gnomic utterance and then dies. Young Obi-Wan twirls his lightsaber now and again. Amidala is barely a character. Darth Maul reprises the Jack Palance role from SHANE. Ian McDiarmid _does_ suggest unspoken depths to Senator Palpatine, as does Pernilla August to Shmi Skywalker, but Lucas doesn't develop either character; as it is, McDiarmid and August comes across as professionals stranded among amateurs.
But Jar Jar...he's _interesting_. Yes, he's also annoying as hell, but even this trait, in a film populated with bland nonentities, is in his favor. Consider that Jar Jar is the only major character who isn't boringly supercompetent. Think about that. There's never any question, for example, about Queen Amidala's leadership. Here's a young, very inexperienced monarch, surrounded by older (and presumably more politically experienced) advisers, making rash decisions in the face of a grave threat from a foreign power; Lucas _could_ have explored these depths, but no. Amidala is never shown as anything but a strong and righteous leader with utterly devoted advisers; she's even good with a gun, while her enemies, the Trade Federation, are weak and cowardly. Even the fight scenes are boring, because the good guys are too good. Anakin is never in any credible danger, while the lightsaber fight between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Maul is more like a routine display of technical skill (and expensive special effects) than a tense battle between unevenly matched foes, as was the battle between Luke and Vader in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
But Jar Jar isn't supercompetent; quite the opposite. Because he doesn't always do the right thing, he actually generates a little suspense in an otherwise bland movie--is Jar Jar going to do something which wrecks everything? He comes pretty close, a couple of times.
He's even got a bit of depth going for him, which other characters don't have. We find out he's an outcast among his own people, and yet later he says to Amidala, "We're not going down without a fight. Gungans have a _grand_ army." There's something touching about this outcast still retaining a sense of pride for the people who have rejected him.
And it's quite clear that the computer animators who created Jar Jar went ridiculously overboard; Jar Jar never stops moving, and even asleep, he's prey to involuntary gestures and nervous tics. But I found even this endearing. At least Jar Jar is never boring to watch.
I think the real reason so many geeks loathe Jar Jar (as loudly and as excessively as possible) is because he _is_ a character for the children. Geeks hate children--having been, in many instances I suppose, children so recently themselves. I'm reminded of J. Michael Straczynski and "Babylon 5"; fanboys of that show delightfully took to heart JMS's avowed "no children" policy. But what was the point of that? It didn't make B5 any better a program.
Anyway, up with Jar Jar Binks, I say. I hope that, despite the tremendous amount of vitriol flung in his direction after the release of THE PHANTOM MENACE, Lucas brings him back for the sequels. It would be almost a wise a decision as would be Lucas's committing Episode II to the hands of a different writer.
hyacinthus.
Re:Orson Welles: A Mircrosoft open-source nay-saye
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Interview w/Jim Gettys
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· Score: 1
I was about to post the exact same quote here, but you beat me to it. Hats off to a fellow CITIZEN KANE fan!
"Now I'm not disbuting [sic!] that Douglas Adams is a great author..."
I'll dispute it. I loved the "Hitchhiker's Guide" radioplays when I was younger, and the first two "Hitchhiker's" books, the ones which hew closest to the story told in the radioplays, are worth reading. From there, the "Hitchhiker's Books" grow progressively more pointless. I think that Adams came to possess a real contempt for his audience (q.v. the line in SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH, where he finishes a paragraph with the words something like, "If you don't care to read this, skip ahead to the last chapter, which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.") And it shows, in his increasing disregard for continuity and narrative coherence.
I should say that I've never read the Dirk Gently books, which have been highly recommended to me. Judging from what Adams I _have_ read, however, he strikes me as a sort of second-string Terry Pratchett--possessing Pratchett's ability to create insane characters and situations, but lacking Pratchett's commitment to telling a good story.
Dorothy Heydt's A POINT OF HONOR, in which shady dealings in an virtual role-playing gaming world escalate into real-life crimes and eventually attempted murder.
"I know a lot of you love the books, but put that aside and look at the movie. It looks hokey. Elijah Wood? Come on. I really cannot understand why the "geek/nerd" community is jonesing for this movie so hard? Matrix 2, Spider-Man I can understand. But why this?"
Because it's based on what I, and many other slavering Tolkien fans, believe to be one of the best and richest works of fantasy. When I was a thirteen-year-old nerd laboring through a colorless life at home and at school, THE LORD OF THE RINGS was like a ray of sunshine; it was nourishment for my imagination, and it gave me something to be enthusiastic about. And there's more to the LOTR besides imaginative descriptions of fantastic lands, and action set-pieces. There are depths in the LOTR amply to repay repeat readings: he conflicts tearing at Gollum, for example; or the contrast between the headstrong Boromir and his younger, more thoughtful Faramir; even a little romance (although a teacher of mine once said tartly that Tolkien wrote about women as though he'd heard of them, but never met one.)
THE MATRIX appeals to baser instincts; it appeals to the foolish person in me who likes to see things blowed up real good. What else is there to THE MATRIX, really, other than intricately choreographed violence, Carrie-Ann Moss in leather, and Keanu Reeves in a trenchcoat?
And as for Spider-Man--don't get me started. Rule Number One of comic-book movies: they're none of them any good. _None_ of them. Not SUPERMAN, not BATMAN or any of its bastard children, certainly not SPAWN (which has the added disadvantaged of being based on a pretty bad comic book.) Well, I'll make some allowance for X-MEN.
To my mind, THE LORD OF THE RINGS' big competition is the Harry Potter movie, coming out a month earlier. The Harry Potter books are relatively light-weight, but they're entertaining and (especially in the later volumes) start digging into darker territory, with more emotional and moral depth. But I can't imagine that Harry Potter, being after all "children's literature", appeals too much to the geek crowd. One thing that the adolescent geek tries hardest to prove is that he is not a child. (Often, he fails.)
"I'm as geek as they come but I've always found superhero comics childish and reeking of latent homosexual undertones."
Well, sure, I've got to have _some_ excuse for reading them! (Ah, let me bask in the glow given off by a geek trying pathetically to prove his masculinity, by those two time-honored methods, profanity and homophobia.)
At least one other would agree with you, and he would be Alan Moore, who loads WATCHMEN with allusions to the perception of superheroes as all being a bunch of queers.
The Moon's crust is lacking in heavy metals in comparison to the Earth. Tectonic action, on the Earth, brought valuable minerals near the surface; not so on the Moon. The crust of the Moon consists mostly of silicates of lighter metals, and silicate minerals are difficult to use as ores (most good ore minerals are either sulfides and arsenides, like chalcopyrite or skutterudite, or oxides, like bauxite or hematite.) In short, there's nothing there to mine that we haven't got plenty of.
"I am a firm follower of evolution and Darwinism. (Go listen to a few George Carlin albums.) People do stupid things. It's a function of evolution that people who do stupid things DIE so their stupid genes don't spread around the pool and irritate the rest of us."
The idea of anyone declaring himself a "follower of evolution and Darwinism" strikes me as exactly as ludicrous as the idea of someone declaring himself a "follower" of the law of gravitation.
I have a feeling that the process of evolution will get along just fine without your faithful service, my friend. Not that I think that you're serving anything, but merely employing social Darwinism as a weak excuse to justify your being an asshole where "people who do stupid things" are concerned.
"If we are to believe the Conservative view of what America should be, then it should not have changed since the 1950s, when the nuclear family ruled, Daddy worked, Mommy kept the house in order, 'everyone' had a house and two cars with some money in the bank, 'nobody' was gay (or at least nobody talked about it)..."
Not true! In Howard Hawks's BRINGING UP BABY, Cary Grant exclaims at one point (when he's caught wearing a peignoir by the aunt of the Katharine Hepburn character) that "I just went GAY all of a sudden!" And that was 1938! Somewhere I've read that this is the first known use of the word "gay" in something like its modern meaning.
Some months ago, I read a story in...U. S. News and World Report, I think it was. It dealt with the fairly recent decision in Vermont to establish a separate-but-equal legal status for same-sex couples. Aside: I am queer, and in a same-sex partnership, but I've never really felt moved to agitate for any kind of legal or social recognition of that partnership. I'd probably feel differently, if there were (say) some difficulty over inheritance of money or property, or child custody; but at the moment, all I really ask is to be let alone.
But, anyway, this magazine article told the story of a mother who took her children out of the Vermont public schools because, she said, she did not want them learning that "that sort of behavior" was acceptable. I was angry, when I read that, and said as much to the friend I was with. My friend, in reply, told me sharply that I did not understand this woman, that I had no compassion for her--_that_ brought me up short. And then my friend proceeded, quite memorably, to explain herself.
You have to understand, my friend said, that this Vermont mother felt that, as a mother, she had been given...a sacred trust, you might say. She truly believed that, at the latter day, she would stand before her God, and He would ask her, "Where are your children? What have you done with the children I gave you?" And thus she strives to protect her children, to guide them into becoming right-minded and God-fearing adults--because otherwise she will have failed her sacred trust.
There is no logic in this, you will say; it is irrational. (Anyone who thinks, in such arguments as these, that he is motivated entirely by "logic or actual evidence", ought to examine his secret thoughts very closely.) But it is what this Vermont mother believes. Those of us who disagree, disagree because we think it's all right for children to find out about homosexuality (or pornography, or violent videogames, or whatnot.) Who's to say we're right?
Slashdot Mirror
I watched "Futurama" for a while. I have to admit that it was (usually) funnier than "The Simpsons" was at the same time. (But, let's face it, my old college roommate after a few beers is funnier than "The Simpsons" has been in the last few seasons.) And sometimes, usually when it was making fun of some current or not-so-current event, it achieved a cockeyed kind of greatness (e.g. the _Titanic_ parody, or the episode where Bender does a Joe Hazelwood, only by not drinking.)
But "Futurama" was a mean, nasty little show in comparison to "The Simpsons" at its best. "The Simpsons" in its early seasons was wicked, but it never lost sight of the essential humanity of its characters. Homer was dumb and often small-minded, but he'd occasionally come through and do the right thing. Lisa was there to remind us that even the worst of families can sometimes produce something right. Hell, even Bart had his moments.
But "Futurama" had nothing but contempt for its characters. Fry has never been anything else but an idiot. Bender is...well, Bender; if he ever deviates from his cruel, mean-spirited ways, it's for the sake of a cheap joke. Leela provides some counterbalance, I suppose, but more often than not the show seems bent on finding some way to humiliate her (qq.v. any episode with Zapp Brannigan, the "Married with Children" parody episode.)
Hey, but if you get your kicks from cruelty masquerading as comedy, then you'll be sorry to see "Futurama" go. I won't be.
hyacinthus.
I first attended college at the California Institute of Technology; I was a chemistry major, but most of my friends were majoring in physics.
By the time I finally graduated from (a much lesser) college, only one person from that group was still a scientist, and he'd gone into astronomy. Nearly all of them had been sucked into the computer industry, including myself.
I think the computing field attracts those who couldn't hack it at a real science; the promised land, where one could earn a six-figure salary for writing ten lines of code a day (not to mention the agreeable prospect of not having to master any difficult mathematics) beckons. The withering of the high-tech job market in Washington has hurt me, but in a way I'm glad it happened--maybe the truly good people will keep on _earning_ their salaries, while the dime-a-dozen computer geeks who got into the business because they though they could make easy money playing with their toys (I include myself in that group) get weeded out.
You forgot the last reason Bork is important--he was the Nixon flunky (Solicitor General, I believe), who acted in the capacity of Attorney General to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, after Elliott Richardson refused to do it, and his deputy Ruckelshaus also refused. How anyone could "widely respect him for his integrity" after that is a mystery to me.
This is how someone I've forgotten (perhaps someone here on Slashdot) summed up Vinge's notion of the Singularity. It's an accurate description.
I think it's all nonsense, anyway. Various technological revolutions have come and gone, and we humans are pretty much the same as we always were, as any student of history, ancient literature, or anthropology could tell you.
Since a _single_ plant is being discussed, the word is not "algae", which is plural, but "alga".
hyacinthus.
"First, from what book did you get Dec 25 for Christ's Birthday?? Quote me the scripture/verse if you got this from the Bible."
Of course it's not in there. It's well known that the date of Christmas was made roughly to coincide with the dates of pagan religious holidays which occurred in winter, like the Saturnalia. Modern neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice, 21 or 22 December (I can never remember when exactly), and this possibly has some basis in ancient practice. Indeed, if the Four Gospels are taken as evidence, they do not support a winter date for the birth of Christ (q. v. Luke 2:8, which says that the shepherds were in the field tending their flocks, which isn't likely to have happened in winter.)
But that's really missing the point. Of course the date of Christmas is arbitrary, just as the dates of a number of our holidays are arbitrary (Thanksgiving and Memorial Day come to mind.) But Jesus was born at some time roundabout A.D. 1, and there happen to be people who think that the anniversary of his birth is an event worth celebrating. 25 December happens to be the date which tradition has set for that celebration, and that's what Christmas _used_ to be about.
"Secondarily, if Christ wanted us to celebrate his birthday, *why* isn't it mentioned at ALL in the New Testament?"
True, it isn't really. Someone else in this thread quotes some verses from chapter 2 of Luke, but I don't think they call for any sort of annual celebration of Christ's birth. Again, though, this is missing the point. Christian tradition comes from many other sources than the Bible. The lack of Biblical precedent hardly invalidates the tradition, I should think.
"If you can't even do proper exegesis, don't even bother posting."
Ooh, ten-cent word that, "exegesis". I think you're showing off.
Cheers,
hyacinthus.
...as a bunch of horny, nerdy, male adolescents. Who else would wank over a "Terminatrix" (undoubtedly to be played by some pretty actress with large bosoms and little talent; q. v. _Tomb Raider_), but the same crowd for whom Seven of Nine was written into "Voyager".
Cheers,
hyacinthus.
Science fiction gets it wrong far, far more often than it gets it right. The pages of SF are full of statements which have either become ridiculously outmoded (futuristic computers with vacuum tubes, futuristic engineers using slide rules, &c.) or claims for the future which just never came true (that we'd have colonized the solar system by now, that we'd have flying cars, &c.)
The plain fact of the matter is that the predictive value of SF just isn't there. SF writers don't make intelligent predictions; they take wild stabs in the dark, and their guesses are right probably about as often as a professional psychic's.
One might claim that Clarke's and Kubrick's 2001, say, or Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, somehow "predict" the advent of artificial intelligences which can pass the Turing Test, in the characters of Hal and Mycroft. Nonsense. Hal and Mycroft are simply human characters with the serial numbers filed off; it took no insight into technology to write those characters, only wishful thinking that some day computers will act like people.
A lot of science fiction tech stems from that sort of wishful thinking, the wistful hope that some day, a way can be found to contravene various inconvenient physical laws or technological barriers; hence SF has given us faster-than-light travel or communications, hand-held laser-like weapons capable of killing a man, shields, not to mention human colonies on just about every celestial body which might conceivably harbor us. Maybe, some day, there will be discovered ways to effect some of these things. But if they happen, they will happen at their own pace, in despite of the dreams of SF and not because of them. Science fiction writers since the early days of the genre have indulged the wistful hope that we'd be living on the Moon or Mars by now--look how influential _that_ dream has been!
The best SF keeps the wild dreams of futuristic tech in the background and concentrates rather on character. That's why C. J. Cherryh's CYTEEN is my favorite SF novel; the one claim for the future which makes the plot possible--that we'll eventually be able to clone humans and imprint desired behavior upon them--is eminently plausible; for the rest, Cherryh dwells upon the struggles of the characters, not on wowing readers with visions of futuristic toys.
hyacinthus.
...the gift of the English language. Take time out from your day and teach a poor, semiliterate computer nerd how to spell. Make space in your day to instruct him on the difference between "loose" and "lose". Get him a Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
The editorial staff of Slashdot certainly could use this gift, from what I've seen.
hyacinthus.
I was interested to see the "Barking Dog" reaction, because my high school chemistry teacher performed a chemical demonstration which produced a dog-bark sound. The reaction was different, though, and I'm wondering if anyone here has seen anything like this.
What my teacher did was to dissolve white phosphorus in carbon bisulfide, soak a circle of filter paper in the solution, and lay the paper over the mouth of a large (maybe 1 liter) graduated cylinder. The carbon disulfide quickly evaporates, leaving a residue of phosphorus on the filter paper, which spontaneously ignites, sucking the air out of the graduated cylinder...and making a sound like the barking of a dog.
hyacinthus.
"('Are you an Angel?' is bad dialogue made unbearable by bad performance)"
In "Perceval" by Chretien de Troyes, when young Perceval first sees a group mounted knights riding in the forest, he takes them for angels, because he's never seen a knight before.
"Are you an angel?" isn't bad dialogue; it's dialogue with special resonance, and I think it very likely that the resonance with "Perceval" is deliberate. (Another point of similarity: when Perceval leaves his mother and rides off to try to become a knight, he looks back to see his mother falling as if dead. Anakin's mother's advice to her son is, "Don't look back. Don't look back.")
hyacinthus.
I can only quote here the succinct and contemptuous reply of a poster to rec.arts.sf.written who answered, "It's the Rapture for atheists." I agree with the succinctness, and with the contempt. hyacinthus.
_Flaunts_ the law? _Flaunts_ it? Do you even know what the word "flaunt" means?
hyacinthus.
I've said this before in another Slashdot post (a long time ago, &c.), but I'll say it again, more emphatically. Jar Jar Binks is one of the only reasons THE PHANTOM MENACE is worth watching.
He is, at least, a unique creation. Can you say that about any other character from the movie? Anakin Skywalker has little to do aside from playing the precocious brat. Qui-Gon delivers the occasional gnomic utterance and then dies. Young Obi-Wan twirls his lightsaber now and again. Amidala is barely a character. Darth Maul reprises the Jack Palance role from SHANE. Ian McDiarmid _does_ suggest unspoken depths to Senator Palpatine, as does Pernilla August to Shmi Skywalker, but Lucas doesn't develop either character; as it is, McDiarmid and August comes across as professionals stranded among amateurs.
But Jar Jar...he's _interesting_. Yes, he's also annoying as hell, but even this trait, in a film populated with bland nonentities, is in his favor. Consider that Jar Jar is the only major character who isn't boringly supercompetent. Think about that. There's never any question, for example, about Queen Amidala's leadership. Here's a young, very inexperienced monarch, surrounded by older (and presumably more politically experienced) advisers, making rash decisions in the face of a grave threat from a foreign power; Lucas _could_ have explored these depths, but no. Amidala is never shown as anything but a strong and righteous leader with utterly devoted advisers; she's even good with a gun, while her enemies, the Trade Federation, are weak and cowardly. Even the fight scenes are boring, because the good guys are too good. Anakin is never in any credible danger, while the lightsaber fight between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Maul is more like a routine display of technical skill (and expensive special effects) than a tense battle between unevenly matched foes, as was the battle between Luke and Vader in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
But Jar Jar isn't supercompetent; quite the opposite. Because he doesn't always do the right thing, he actually generates a little suspense in an otherwise bland movie--is Jar Jar going to do something which wrecks everything? He comes pretty close, a couple of times.
He's even got a bit of depth going for him, which other characters don't have. We find out he's an outcast among his own people, and yet later he says to Amidala, "We're not going down without a fight. Gungans have a _grand_ army." There's something touching about this outcast still retaining a sense of pride for the people who have rejected him.
And it's quite clear that the computer animators who created Jar Jar went ridiculously overboard; Jar Jar never stops moving, and even asleep, he's prey to involuntary gestures and nervous tics. But I found even this endearing. At least Jar Jar is never boring to watch.
I think the real reason so many geeks loathe Jar Jar (as loudly and as excessively as possible) is because he _is_ a character for the children. Geeks hate children--having been, in many instances I suppose, children so recently themselves. I'm reminded of J. Michael Straczynski and "Babylon 5"; fanboys of that show delightfully took to heart JMS's avowed "no children" policy. But what was the point of that? It didn't make B5 any better a program.
Anyway, up with Jar Jar Binks, I say. I hope that, despite the tremendous amount of vitriol flung in his direction after the release of THE PHANTOM MENACE, Lucas brings him back for the sequels. It would be almost a wise a decision as would be Lucas's committing Episode II to the hands of a different writer.
hyacinthus.
I was about to post the exact same quote here, but you beat me to it. Hats off to a fellow CITIZEN KANE fan!
hyacinthus.
"Now I'm not disbuting [sic!] that Douglas Adams is a great author..."
I'll dispute it. I loved the "Hitchhiker's Guide" radioplays when I was younger, and the first two "Hitchhiker's" books, the ones which hew closest to the story told in the radioplays, are worth reading. From there, the "Hitchhiker's Books" grow progressively more pointless. I think that Adams came to possess a real contempt for his audience (q.v. the line in SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH, where he finishes a paragraph with the words something like, "If you don't care to read this, skip ahead to the last chapter, which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.") And it shows, in his increasing disregard for continuity and narrative coherence.
I should say that I've never read the Dirk Gently books, which have been highly recommended to me. Judging from what Adams I _have_ read, however, he strikes me as a sort of second-string Terry Pratchett--possessing Pratchett's ability to create insane characters and situations, but lacking Pratchett's commitment to telling a good story.
hyacinthus.
Dorothy Heydt's A POINT OF HONOR, in which shady dealings in an virtual role-playing gaming world escalate into real-life crimes and eventually attempted murder.
hyacinthus.
A simple analogy leaves you scratching your head? You're not very bright, "Doctor".
hyacinthus.
"I know a lot of you love the books, but put that aside and look at the movie. It looks hokey. Elijah Wood? Come on. I really cannot understand why the "geek/nerd" community is jonesing for this movie so hard? Matrix 2, Spider-Man I can understand. But why this?"
Because it's based on what I, and many other slavering Tolkien fans, believe to be one of the best and richest works of fantasy. When I was a thirteen-year-old nerd laboring through a colorless life at home and at school, THE LORD OF THE RINGS was like a ray of sunshine; it was nourishment for my imagination, and it gave me something to be enthusiastic about. And there's more to the LOTR besides imaginative descriptions of fantastic lands, and action set-pieces. There are depths in the LOTR amply to repay repeat readings: he conflicts tearing at Gollum, for example; or the contrast between the headstrong Boromir and his younger, more thoughtful Faramir; even a little romance (although a teacher of mine once said tartly that Tolkien wrote about women as though he'd heard of them, but never met one.)
THE MATRIX appeals to baser instincts; it appeals to the foolish person in me who likes to see things blowed up real good. What else is there to THE MATRIX, really, other than intricately choreographed violence, Carrie-Ann Moss in leather, and Keanu Reeves in a trenchcoat?
And as for Spider-Man--don't get me started. Rule Number One of comic-book movies: they're none of them any good. _None_ of them. Not SUPERMAN, not BATMAN or any of its bastard children, certainly not SPAWN (which has the added disadvantaged of being based on a pretty bad comic book.) Well, I'll make some allowance for X-MEN.
To my mind, THE LORD OF THE RINGS' big competition is the Harry Potter movie, coming out a month earlier. The Harry Potter books are relatively light-weight, but they're entertaining and (especially in the later volumes) start digging into darker territory, with more emotional and moral depth. But I can't imagine that Harry Potter, being after all "children's literature", appeals too much to the geek crowd. One thing that the adolescent geek tries hardest to prove is that he is not a child. (Often, he fails.)
hyacinthus.
"I'm as geek as they come but I've always found superhero comics childish and reeking of latent homosexual undertones."
Well, sure, I've got to have _some_ excuse for reading them! (Ah, let me bask in the glow given off by a geek trying pathetically to prove his masculinity, by those two time-honored methods, profanity and homophobia.)
At least one other would agree with you, and he would be Alan Moore, who loads WATCHMEN with allusions to the perception of superheroes as all being a bunch of queers.
hyacinthus.
The Moon's crust is lacking in heavy metals in comparison to the Earth. Tectonic action, on the Earth, brought valuable minerals near the surface; not so on the Moon. The crust of the Moon consists mostly of silicates of lighter metals, and silicate minerals are difficult to use as ores (most good ore minerals are either sulfides and arsenides, like chalcopyrite or skutterudite, or oxides, like bauxite or hematite.) In short, there's nothing there to mine that we haven't got plenty of.
hyacinthus.
"I am a firm follower of evolution and Darwinism. (Go listen to a few George Carlin albums.) People do stupid things. It's a function of evolution that people who do stupid things DIE so their stupid genes don't spread around the pool and irritate the rest of us."
The idea of anyone declaring himself a "follower of evolution and Darwinism" strikes me as exactly as ludicrous as the idea of someone declaring himself a "follower" of the law of gravitation.
I have a feeling that the process of evolution will get along just fine without your faithful service, my friend. Not that I think that you're serving anything, but merely employing social Darwinism as a weak excuse to justify your being an asshole where "people who do stupid things" are concerned.
hyacinthus.
"If we are to believe the Conservative view of what America should be, then it should not have changed since the 1950s, when the nuclear family ruled, Daddy worked, Mommy kept the house in order, 'everyone' had a house and two cars with some money in the bank, 'nobody' was gay (or at least nobody talked about it)..."
Not true! In Howard Hawks's BRINGING UP BABY, Cary Grant exclaims at one point (when he's caught wearing a peignoir by the aunt of the Katharine Hepburn character) that "I just went GAY all of a sudden!" And that was 1938! Somewhere I've read that this is the first known use of the word "gay" in something like its modern meaning.
hyacinthus.
I've been a Mac user since 1992, but I have to admit, this was funny. Mod this up, somebody!
(And yes, there is a certain irony in Apple's having so long marketed a "computer for the rest of us" at a premium price.)
Some months ago, I read a story in...U. S. News and World Report, I think it was. It dealt with the fairly recent decision in Vermont to establish a separate-but-equal legal status for same-sex couples. Aside: I am queer, and in a same-sex partnership, but I've never really felt moved to agitate for any kind of legal or social recognition of that partnership. I'd probably feel differently, if there were (say) some difficulty over inheritance of money or property, or child custody; but at the moment, all I really ask is to be let alone.
But, anyway, this magazine article told the story of a mother who took her children out of the Vermont public schools because, she said, she did not want them learning that "that sort of behavior" was acceptable. I was angry, when I read that, and said as much to the friend I was with. My friend, in reply, told me sharply that I did not understand this woman, that I had no compassion for her--_that_ brought me up short. And then my friend proceeded, quite memorably, to explain herself.
You have to understand, my friend said, that this Vermont mother felt that, as a mother, she had been given...a sacred trust, you might say. She truly believed that, at the latter day, she would stand before her God, and He would ask her, "Where are your children? What have you done with the children I gave you?" And thus she strives to protect her children, to guide them into becoming right-minded and God-fearing adults--because otherwise she will have failed her sacred trust.
There is no logic in this, you will say; it is irrational. (Anyone who thinks, in such arguments as these, that he is motivated entirely by "logic or actual evidence", ought to examine his secret thoughts very closely.) But it is what this Vermont mother believes. Those of us who disagree, disagree because we think it's all right for children to find out about homosexuality (or pornography, or violent videogames, or whatnot.) Who's to say we're right?
hyacinthus.