Yeah, there were. And I thought it was equally lame when the joke was the presence of the celebrity, rather than the guest adding to the story. The question you have to ask is; would the episode have been as good without (Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger/the Beastie Boys heads)? Far too often, yes. I'm not saying there aren't good guest spots, but which of them makes you say "wow" like Hank Azaria or Billy West? Damned few.
I'm guessing Billy is ok with Mark Hamill, who plays regular recurring characters, but is more annoyed with the animated guest stars on, say, the Simpsons. There isn't much acting involved to show up and be yourself for a dozen lines. On that subject, 2 further thoughts: a) my favourite Simpsons guest voice was Dustin Hoffman, who acted under a pseudonym, and had a substantial character.b) How do we know Stephen Hawking did his own voice? Couldn't anyone type lines into his voice machine, or a similar model?
You'd make an excellent mafia boss. Giving out any information about your plans can be used against you by a smart opponent, even if you disguise it with "not". To continue with the example we are playing with, only a foolish general would send his whole army to stand guard all night because of an intercepted message. But a wise general would know something was being planned and double his guards on all the gates for the whole week, send out extra patrols and take whatever precautions he could. The point of good cryptography is to prevent any information from getting to the enemy.
In order to wrap around a tapering pole and still present a coherent message, the spacing of the characters would have to be altered as the pole narrowed. An astute codebreaker could derive useful information from careful analysis of the spacing. As for the decoy messages, they might be a good way to present disinformation, but you still need to face the fact that the real message has been read by the enemy. If he has to carefully watch two gates on 4 nights, you've still lost the advantage of surprise.
Since the Chinese use a pictographic alphabet, you could probably extract information even if you didn't have a selection of poles to try. You're still going to see the characters for "attack", "south", "gate" and "night" on the strip. In any case, it isn't a killer to break one of these wrapping systems; you start with the first character, jump 2 spaces to the next, and see if you're making sense. Then try skipping 3 characters; then 4 and so on.
It's called laziness, and lack of originality. And when you've done your lame-ass adaptation, you can spice it up with dwarf jokes, dopey falling-off-the-cliff scenes, and the deletion of giant swathes of plot so you can fit more battle scenes in. Bah. Humbug.
-aiabx
He has a superficial resemblance to the old "Dilton Doily" nerd stereotype with the bowtie and the big words, and he probably has trouble getting dates, but I don't see any sign of the positive characteristics that make up nerds; the curiousity, the open-mindedness, the indifference to the scorn of mainstream society. He is, in fact,the embodiment of the scorn of maintream society.
The solution is simple; stay up until sunrise! Yeah, I'll be looking for it too. Next lifetime, I'll get a hobby that keeps me indoors when it's cold and too early in the morning.
-aiabx
Apologies for my erroneuous assumptions re: your religion.
I respectfully disagree. I think if you are a member of Religion X, and your head of state embarks on some egregious policy with in order to please the fundamentalist nuts with the justification that he is standing up for Religion X, then it is your responsibility as a thinking member of a democratic society to speak out and make it clear that this policy is not your desire.
It's not your job to travel to nutjob central and straighten out their thinking for them, but you need to fight to ensure that wrong is not being done in your name.
-aiabx
To make things more complicated, both sides have good and bad arguments lumped into them. If you make a good argument on your side, I respond by attacking your bad argument instead. If it were a debate contest, both sides would lose.
For example, Darwinists often argue that Intelligent Design can't be true because we know the earth is over 10,000 years old. That would be a great argument, supported by every relevant branch of science, except that it has nothing to do with Intelligent Design.
If I have misunderstood his claim that IDers have good arguments, I regret it. But frankly, even his claim that there are good ID arguments blows his credibility for me. I have yet to hear one that isn't a variation on "x is too complex for us to understand how it could happen without the intervention of the Designer". If he finds these to be good arguments, he needs to get back to that high school science class.
No, I don't believe that IDers think the Universe is 10000 years old, and I've never heard a serious critic say so either. So they aren't Young-earth creationists, or biblical literalists, at least on the surface. But what are these people after? They aren't scientists. They do no research, publish no results, don't submit their work to peer review. They issue press releases and fight to get high school science curricula changed. That isn't science. That isn't how a scientific paradigm gets overthrown. It's something creepier. It is religion trying to disguise itself as science, and if Scott Adams can't see that because he's too busy sneering at people who care about science, well, fuck him and his New Ruling Class. His 15 minutes are long over anyway.
-aiabx
Scott Adams has an idiotic take on it. He's telling us that supporters of evolution and ID need to listen to the other. But why should we listen to supporters of ID when ID is not science? ID makes no testable claims. Without testable claims, it cannot be science. It is only about criticising evolution. And those criticisms boil down to - "Why can't evolution explain the eye?" (It can). "Why can't evolution explain blood clotting?" (It can). But even if it couldn't, it's like saying because the ancient Greeks didn't understand lightning, it must have been Zeus at work.
Do astronomers need to listen to flat earthers? No. Evoultionary scientists don't need to listen to IDiots either.
Maybe I see things differently, but I thought Monsters Inc and Incredibles had great trailers. And speaking as the parent of a nine-year old, there isn't a Pixar film I haven't seen fifty times, so I know the subject matter. I will see Cars, and own the DVD and the happy meal toys, but it will be because of the Pixar brand name, and not because I think it looks like it will be any good. Which I don't.
Besides, if you'll excuse the circular reasoning, if Cars were any good, why would Pixar sell now?
-aiabx
It's hard to judge a movie by it's trailers, but if Cars turns out to be as awful as it looks, Pixar is going to crash and burn when it's released. Best to sell now while Pixar's reputation is still riding high.
-aiabx
Don't sell yourselves short.. you guys did a fine job of marching out of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with your tails between your legs. I think you did just as well as the French there.
-aiabx
That's 171 occupied days in orbit for Skylab. I'm not sure about the Russian occupation numbers, but I don't think it really matters for your point.
-aiabx
Well, if you put it that way, I judge the American people by what they let their leaders get away with. In Canada, when the UN was intervening in Somalia, 4 of our paratroopers tortured and killed a Somali captive. The public outcry and sense of shame were so great that not only were the individuals and their superior officers punished, but their regiment, one of the most respected in our armed forces, was permanently disbanded for having disgraced our nation. Heads rolled well up the chain of command. In America, however, events which should make decent people blush with shame get ignored as "fratboy pranks" and covered up. Now I know there are decent Americans. I have good friends who are Americans. But the American people on the whole are not ashamed of the disgraceful actions of their government. Before the reelection we could say "The government might be bad, but the American people aren't like that". But apparently they are, or they wouldn't have reelected Bush.
Now not everything Bush has done has been idiotic. The decision to overthrow the Taliban was right, and your allies backed you up on it. There are French and Canadian troops in Afghanistan right now. But Iraq? If you had waited for the UN inspection to complete, you probably would still have had your allies with you. Saddam is an evil man. But you rushed to war for stupid reasons (WMD? Al Qeada? All bogus.) and what's more, it's looking like you've done the whole thing to benefit the ayatollahs. The whole Iraq war has been bungled from soup to nuts. And you (collectively) won't demand an accounting for it. To question the President is to give comfort to terrorists. Until the people act to repudiate the foolish actions of their government, you will continue to lose the respect and goodwill of the international community.
This is, of course, my own opinion. If I spoke for the world, I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing on Slashdot. And when I speak of the actions of Americans, I speak of the actions of the elected government of the United States. All clear?
-aiabx
Slashdot Mirror
Dispute it. You have 80,000 years before they can serve the papers on you.
No wonder it was hard. You were confusing everyone with the wrong number of dimensions.
Yeah, there were. And I thought it was equally lame when the joke was the presence of the celebrity, rather than the guest adding to the story. The question you have to ask is; would the episode have been as good without (Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger/the Beastie Boys heads)? Far too often, yes.
I'm not saying there aren't good guest spots, but which of them makes you say "wow" like Hank Azaria or Billy West? Damned few.
I'm guessing Billy is ok with Mark Hamill, who plays regular recurring characters, but is more annoyed with the animated guest stars on, say, the Simpsons. There isn't much acting involved to show up and be yourself for a dozen lines.
On that subject, 2 further thoughts: a) my favourite Simpsons guest voice was Dustin Hoffman, who acted under a pseudonym, and had a substantial character.b) How do we know Stephen Hawking did his own voice? Couldn't anyone type lines into his voice machine, or a similar model?
Solution: like a fridge light, it's always on, whenever it senses it is being observed by anyone, including its own uptime counter.
All cool, but Egon is the most scientific by far.
*He* collects molds, spores and fungus.
That's cool.
You'd make an excellent mafia boss.
Giving out any information about your plans can be used against you by a smart opponent, even if you disguise it with "not". To continue with the example we are playing with, only a foolish general would send his whole army to stand guard all night because of an intercepted message. But a wise general would know something was being planned and double his guards on all the gates for the whole week, send out extra patrols and take whatever precautions he could. The point of good cryptography is to prevent any information from getting to the enemy.
In order to wrap around a tapering pole and still present a coherent message, the spacing of the characters would have to be altered as the pole narrowed. An astute codebreaker could derive useful information from careful analysis of the spacing.
As for the decoy messages, they might be a good way to present disinformation, but you still need to face the fact that the real message has been read by the enemy. If he has to carefully watch two gates on 4 nights, you've still lost the advantage of surprise.
Since the Chinese use a pictographic alphabet, you could probably extract information even if you didn't have a selection of poles to try. You're still going to see the characters for "attack", "south", "gate" and "night" on the strip.
In any case, it isn't a killer to break one of these wrapping systems; you start with the first character, jump 2 spaces to the next, and see if you're making sense. Then try skipping 3 characters; then 4 and so on.
It's called laziness, and lack of originality.
And when you've done your lame-ass adaptation, you can spice it up with dwarf jokes, dopey falling-off-the-cliff scenes, and the deletion of giant swathes of plot so you can fit more battle scenes in.
Bah. Humbug.
-aiabx
He has a superficial resemblance to the old "Dilton Doily" nerd stereotype with the bowtie and the big words, and he probably has trouble getting dates, but I don't see any sign of the positive characteristics that make up nerds; the curiousity, the open-mindedness, the indifference to the scorn of mainstream society.
He is, in fact,the embodiment of the scorn of maintream society.
The solution is simple; stay up until sunrise!
Yeah, I'll be looking for it too. Next lifetime, I'll get a hobby that keeps me indoors when it's cold and too early in the morning.
-aiabx
Apologies for my erroneuous assumptions re: your religion.
I respectfully disagree. I think if you are a member of Religion X, and your head of state embarks on some egregious policy with in order to please the fundamentalist nuts with the justification that he is standing up for Religion X, then it is your responsibility as a thinking member of a democratic society to speak out and make it clear that this policy is not your desire.
It's not your job to travel to nutjob central and straighten out their thinking for them, but you need to fight to ensure that wrong is not being done in your name.
-aiabx
Then do something about it. make it clear to the world and your elected officials that these "Christians" do not speak in your name.
-aiabx
From http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/20 05/11/intelligent_des.html:
To make things more complicated, both sides have good and bad arguments lumped into them. If you make a good argument on your side, I respond by attacking your bad argument instead. If it were a debate contest, both sides would lose.
For example, Darwinists often argue that Intelligent Design can't be true because we know the earth is over 10,000 years old. That would be a great argument, supported by every relevant branch of science, except that it has nothing to do with Intelligent Design.
If I have misunderstood his claim that IDers have good arguments, I regret it. But frankly, even his claim that there are good ID arguments blows his credibility for me. I have yet to hear one that isn't a variation on "x is too complex for us to understand how it could happen without the intervention of the Designer". If he finds these to be good arguments, he needs to get back to that high school science class.
No, I don't believe that IDers think the Universe is 10000 years old, and I've never heard a serious critic say so either. So they aren't Young-earth creationists, or biblical literalists, at least on the surface. But what are these people after? They aren't scientists. They do no research, publish no results, don't submit their work to peer review. They issue press releases and fight to get high school science curricula changed. That isn't science. That isn't how a scientific paradigm gets overthrown. It's something creepier. It is religion trying to disguise itself as science, and if Scott Adams can't see that because he's too busy sneering at people who care about science, well, fuck him and his New Ruling Class. His 15 minutes are long over anyway.
-aiabx
Scott Adams has an idiotic take on it. He's telling us that supporters of evolution and ID need to listen to the other. But why should we listen to supporters of ID when ID is not science?
ID makes no testable claims. Without testable claims, it cannot be science. It is only about criticising evolution. And those criticisms boil down to - "Why can't evolution explain the eye?" (It can). "Why can't evolution explain blood clotting?" (It can).
But even if it couldn't, it's like saying because the ancient Greeks didn't understand lightning, it must have been Zeus at work.
Do astronomers need to listen to flat earthers? No. Evoultionary scientists don't need to listen to IDiots either.
And Dilbert hasn't been funny in years.
-aiabx
Maybe I see things differently, but I thought Monsters Inc and Incredibles had great trailers. And speaking as the parent of a nine-year old, there isn't a Pixar film I haven't seen fifty times, so I know the subject matter. I will see Cars, and own the DVD and the happy meal toys, but it will be because of the Pixar brand name, and not because I think it looks like it will be any good. Which I don't.
Besides, if you'll excuse the circular reasoning, if Cars were any good, why would Pixar sell now?
-aiabx
It's hard to judge a movie by it's trailers, but if Cars turns out to be as awful as it looks, Pixar is going to crash and burn when it's released. Best to sell now while Pixar's reputation is still riding high.
-aiabx
You can alwys try outsourcing to Canada, where we speak English, French and take the afternoons off for same-sex weddings.l /
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/050630/b0630102.htm
-aiabx
Auto-trepannation is a good way to get the implanted foil cap out from under your skull.
-aiabx
I guess he did evolve.
-aiabx
Don't sell yourselves short.. you guys did a fine job of marching out of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with your tails between your legs. I think you did just as well as the French there.
-aiabx
That's 171 occupied days in orbit for Skylab. I'm not sure about the Russian occupation numbers, but I don't think it really matters for your point.
-aiabx
If they have them there, we might have them here. In which case we may be doomed in a mere 10 million years.
-aiabx
Well, if you put it that way, I judge the American people by what they let their leaders get away with. In Canada, when the UN was intervening in Somalia, 4 of our paratroopers tortured and killed a Somali captive. The public outcry and sense of shame were so great that not only were the individuals and their superior officers punished, but their regiment, one of the most respected in our armed forces, was permanently disbanded for having disgraced our nation. Heads rolled well up the chain of command.
In America, however, events which should make decent people blush with shame get ignored as "fratboy pranks" and covered up.
Now I know there are decent Americans. I have good friends who are Americans. But the American people on the whole are not ashamed of the disgraceful actions of their government. Before the reelection we could say "The government might be bad, but the American people aren't like that". But apparently they are, or they wouldn't have reelected Bush.
Now not everything Bush has done has been idiotic. The decision to overthrow the Taliban was right, and your allies backed you up on it. There are French and Canadian troops in Afghanistan right now. But Iraq? If you had waited for the UN inspection to complete, you probably would still have had your allies with you. Saddam is an evil man. But you rushed to war for stupid reasons (WMD? Al Qeada? All bogus.) and what's more, it's looking like you've done the whole thing to benefit the ayatollahs. The whole Iraq war has been bungled from soup to nuts. And you (collectively) won't demand an accounting for it. To question the President is to give comfort to terrorists. Until the people act to repudiate the foolish actions of their government, you will continue to lose the respect and goodwill of the international community.
This is, of course, my own opinion. If I spoke for the world, I wouldn't be wasting my time arguing on Slashdot. And when I speak of the actions of Americans, I speak of the actions of the elected government of the United States. All clear?
-aiabx