Futurama has exhibited the same inconsistancy as the simpsons, more so even... even in one single episode, they might seem to be on a constant hilarious track then drag it down with sappy melodrama. Some episodes (like the Leela-Parents one) are almost totally awful melodrama. Sometimes one episode is quality gag after quality gag... sometimes entire ones are flat except for one or two lines... Just like the Simpsons of nowadays.
My question is: many of you seem to consider it to be a SMARTER show; why?
If you want to make an argument based on the depth of the repsective refrences (or, debatably, namedrops), consider the following: (admittedly rushed and brief)
I will agree that Futurama OCCASIONALLY (much less now then at the beginning) had a lot of fantastic GEEK REFERENCES, which I quite enjoyed... I won't mention the overly obvious; one I liked, mostly used in the first few eps, was the overabundance of owls in NNYC... a blatant nod (I believe) to Philip K. Dick / 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'.
BUT geek references != SMART, at least in my book... Simpsons, as well as the constant pop culture refrences, has many literary and political gags which are probably nearly as obscure, considering... witness the episode where John Updike was ghostwriting for Krusty.
Judging by google score (which I will admit are biased towards scifi geekdom as opposed to literati):
"John Updike" 59,800 "Philip K. Dick" 132,000 (as of 0328.11.08.2003 MDT)
NightWulf if you're still following this thread, please reply. If you don't believe games affect real-world violence, than why do you believe in any age restriction at all? (same for sexual content)..
I ask not to be a smartass I am genuinely interested as I have no definte opinion on the issue and want more POVs.
email:andreworld@NOSPAMhotmail.com
BTW I am 19, and as far as I can tell, quite a ways from having kids, so something along the line of 'think of if it was your own children' doesn't really sync up for me.
"http://www.canadafirst.org" Just FYI. I'm co-leading my school's team this year (western canada high, Calgary, Alberta)
This year there's 27 teams competing, so it's on a decidedly smaller scale. This seems to have benefits, however. We are by no means corporatized. No, really. In fact we need more sponsors. We need another $10K before February or else we have to fly the team down out of our own pockets. And forget about fancy metal work, this baby's gonna be made from wood; anything conducts if you try hard enough.
Anyhoo, this year's 'robotic sport' for Canada First is the robotic biathlon; not quite, but almost, as dumb as it sounds. The events are going to be held in TO on march 1-3, and if we're luckily the Discovery Channel we'll cover us again.
Look, you're all missing the issue here! These people know what they're talking about...many have literally MONTHS of training! If they say 25% of people are crazy, who are we to doubt?
These people must be locked away and isolated from society before their insanity spreads to the perfectly normal population.
Also, lower all speed limits to 5 miles an hour! It will UNQUESTIONABLY save thousands of lives a year! How can you value your own convience over peoples lives?
In fact, everyone should be place in glass tubules and fed intravenously. For your tubule, please send 18 dollars to the email-address listed above. At least 30% of the cost will be donated to the Coalition to ban DiHydrogen Monoxide, the largest component of acid rain.
To get to The Onion, I had to bypass Bess, the censoring program by N2H2 we use at my school. Soes I goes over to altavista to run it through the translator, hoping the the 'proxy magic' will override Bess. Woopy. It works. So, I wanted to read it in english, so I set the translation to 'German to English'. However, some of the article was hard to understand:
"The pits the fact Anabaena that has failed to turn a profitable more quarter since its founding into the early Proterozoic Era, barrier Street experts said the algae's good name and substantial liquid getting thing should more than compensate."
What is this Liquid Getting Thing? Is it some kind of PR boost to improve stock performance, or is it some kind of thinly veiled threat? I, for one, would hate to wake up one moring to find that all my liquid was gone.
Look - I'm not denying the importance of starting to get out into space...but what are we accomplishing, relly, with this station? I mean, it's good enginerring 'practice', but there's not that much science to be gained... I mean not compared to a project like the 11-billion$ SSC (Superconducting Super Collider), which congress cancelled a few years back...Everybody seems so keen on this space stuff that they tend to ignore what scientific value you can get from it...
Slashdot Mirror
it's at five already, but mod up... oh god mod up..
Futurama has exhibited the same inconsistancy as the simpsons, more so even... even in one single episode, they might seem to be on a constant hilarious track then drag it down with sappy melodrama. Some episodes (like the Leela-Parents one) are almost totally awful melodrama. Sometimes one episode is quality gag after quality gag... sometimes entire ones are flat except for one or two lines... Just like the Simpsons of nowadays.
My question is: many of you seem to consider it to be a SMARTER show; why?
If you want to make an argument based on the depth of the repsective refrences (or, debatably, namedrops), consider the following: (admittedly rushed and brief)
I will agree that Futurama OCCASIONALLY (much less now then at the beginning) had a lot of fantastic GEEK REFERENCES, which I quite enjoyed... I won't mention the overly obvious; one I liked, mostly used in the first few eps, was the overabundance of owls in NNYC... a blatant nod (I believe) to Philip K. Dick / 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'.
BUT geek references != SMART, at least in my book... Simpsons, as well as the constant pop culture refrences, has many literary and political gags which are probably nearly as obscure, considering... witness the episode where John Updike was ghostwriting for Krusty.
Judging by google score (which I will admit are biased towards scifi geekdom as opposed to literati):
"John Updike" 59,800
"Philip K. Dick" 132,000
(as of 0328.11.08.2003 MDT)
NightWulf if you're still following this thread, please reply. If you don't believe games affect real-world violence, than why do you believe in any age restriction at all? (same for sexual content)..
I ask not to be a smartass I am genuinely interested as I have no definte opinion on the issue and want more POVs.
email:andreworld@NOSPAMhotmail.com
BTW I am 19, and as far as I can tell, quite a ways from having kids, so something along the line of 'think of if it was your own children' doesn't really sync up for me.
"http://www.canadafirst.org" Just FYI. I'm co-leading my school's team this year (western canada high, Calgary, Alberta)
This year there's 27 teams competing, so it's on a decidedly smaller scale. This seems to have benefits, however. We are by no means corporatized. No, really. In fact we need more sponsors. We need another $10K before February or else we have to fly the team down out of our own pockets. And forget about fancy metal work, this baby's gonna be made from wood; anything conducts if you try hard enough.
Anyhoo, this year's 'robotic sport' for Canada First is the robotic biathlon; not quite, but almost, as dumb as it sounds. The events are going to be held in TO on march 1-3, and if we're luckily the Discovery Channel we'll cover us again.
hmm? what about pressure? thought of that? course i'm as dumb as a box of hair..
Ha! Are you saying that american moms and granparents want to see pics of Sheryl Crow nakd? Eww.
Look, you're all missing the issue here! These people know what they're talking about...many have literally MONTHS of training! If they say 25% of people are crazy, who are we to doubt?
These people must be locked away and isolated from society before their insanity spreads to the perfectly normal population.
Also, lower all speed limits to 5 miles an hour! It will UNQUESTIONABLY save thousands of lives a year! How can you value your own convience over peoples lives?
In fact, everyone should be place in glass tubules and fed intravenously. For your tubule, please send 18 dollars to the email-address listed above. At least 30% of the cost will be donated to the Coalition to ban DiHydrogen Monoxide, the largest component of acid rain.
To get to The Onion, I had to bypass Bess, the censoring program by N2H2 we use at my school. Soes I goes over to altavista to run it through the translator, hoping the the 'proxy magic' will override Bess. Woopy. It works. So, I wanted to read it in english, so I set the translation to 'German to English'. However, some of the article was hard to understand:
"The pits the fact Anabaena that has failed to turn a profitable more quarter since its founding into the early Proterozoic Era, barrier Street experts said the algae's good name and substantial liquid getting thing should more than compensate."
What is this Liquid Getting Thing? Is it some kind of PR boost to improve stock performance, or is it some kind of thinly veiled threat? I, for one, would hate to wake up one moring to find that all my liquid was gone.
Look - I'm not denying the importance of starting to get out into space...but what are we accomplishing, relly, with this station? I mean, it's good enginerring 'practice', but there's not that much science to be gained... I mean not compared to a project like the 11-billion$ SSC (Superconducting Super Collider), which congress cancelled a few years back...Everybody seems so keen on this space stuff that they tend to ignore what scientific value you can get from it...