There once was a craft from the Maldives that could seat three men and their wives have some advice for free don't be one of the three, or you'll regret it the rest of your lives
I think all things being equal, Jackie Chan could take Jet Li at least 4 times out of every 7, in an anything goes fight. And at least 1 of the 3 that he wouldn't win, would be a draw. But, Jet Li does have a few more years of youth, I believe.
As far as swapping him in as a costumed stunt double, that would be so unfair. If he deserves to play Spidey, he also deserves Peter Parker.
Ok guys, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. But first, I need you to set aside your preconceptions.
Work with me here, because I'm suggesting that maybe Peter Parker doesn't have to caucasian. I myself am, and the comic book (and all the movies) have portrayed him as such. But the truth is, there is only one man capable of doing what Spiderman is capable of.
Jackie Chan.
Yes, that's right, Jackie Chan. So his accent is a little strong. Certainly they could afford some decent voice coaching. But other than that, what is wrong with him? That's right, nothing.
What's right with him? A man who can run up walls, without CG effects. His reaction speed is simply incredible. Gymnastics. And he's not even a bad actor, he has that whole comedic side to him. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked, if during the credits they'd show him swinging from 100 story buildings and having bloopers.
You could practically do away with the whole special effects budget.
So tell me, what, other than prejudice and Hollywood's predisposition to heap stinky garbage on us, kept this from happening?
It seems the poetry war knocked you +1 just when we were starting to have fun they modded you offtopic which seems somewhat myopic please forgive me, if I conclude that I've won
There once was a germ from the red planet that had scientists from NASA cursing "Dammit!" "If we send astronauts there," "We'd better take care," "And from orbit, this bug, we should ban it."
There once was a fuel researcher from Wales Who might have had one too many ales... He said "You might think I'm nuts" "We can get hydrogen from our butts" "And fill our gas tanks with our tails!"
There once was a heckler from Thread #30 Whose comments were usually wordy You're karma whorin' he cried With japanese poems he lied To fight haiku with haiku is just playing dirty
My comment is on topic, do you have a problem with how I express myself? Does it always have to be prose? I sometimes do limericks, are these more acceptable? My god man, I could be doing iambi pentameter... so it's not like I'm being cruel.
Or, in other words...
Whiny nerd complains There are too many haiku just a prose bigot
Yeh, but my limited understanding of this is that it's only useful within a solar system. You could describe radio that way also, but radio still leaves alot of leftovers that we could detect. With lasers, if none happen to be pointed almost straight at us, we'll never see them. It's still a plausible explanation, I suppose, but one that is largely untestable.
Besides, if they want to communicate, radio is still the best way, and I'd hope that common sense is objective enough that both them and us would realize that. If they are out there, I want to talk to them, you know? Hopefully applying for citizenship is a simple affair in their government....
Agreed that #1 is weak. Not totally groundless, but weak.
#2 is strong though. The exotic phsyics phenomena you speak of, if we can harness it, might be good for FTL communication (not something to be scoffed at itself). But travel for anything larger than a few particles? I don't buy it. #2 is much stronger than #1. Not that I think FTL travel is completely ruled out, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. What if it takes a few million years of development to even discover it? Or a few billion? Aliens, if there are any out there, are gonna call on the phone, before they drop by for a visit.
#1, along with the others are offered as evidence, not proof.
On that note, #1 is still valid... each day SETI makes it less likely that there are any intelligent aliens in this neighborhood of space. If life (and intelligence) are anything but ultra-rare, we should have heard something by now.
Though, who knows if radio technology is common. Maybe most species skip past it rather quickly. Maybe #1 is as weak as #8.;-)
Improbable? Well, let's analyze this. The requirements as I see them (feel free to add to these, if you can come up with any) are...
#1 Intelligent aliens, when SETI has analyzed a large portion of the sky, and not came up with anything.
#2 Intelligent aliens that somehow have managed to invent a form of travel several orders of magnitude faster than light. Sure, 80% light speed might be fast enough to go to another star... but it's a given that there are no such aliens within a few light years (see #1 for explanation).
#3 Aliens that have managed to become as technologically sophisticated as all this implies, and yet so ethically/morally challenged as to come here to commit what I would think of as a universally criminal act.
#4 Aliens that find some reason, any reason to shove bizarre probes up our asses.
#5 Aliens that have no moral trouble committing kidnapping, sexual assult, torture... but fail to kill the experimental "animal" once the experiment is finished, as many scientists do with lab animals.
#6 Aliens, that having shoved probes up our asses for as long as 3 decades, that still don't have enough data about anal sphincters and need to conduct more such probings.
#7 That considering all this, we still don't have the necessary technology to at least notice that something weird really is going on. Sure, I can easily believe that we can't look at the computer, and have the sensor logs report "Klingons have entered a tight polar orbit around earth".... but damn. No exotic radition or matter samples? No alien DNA/skin scrapings underneath abductee fingernails? No photographs? (Conclusive photographs, bozos... photography was sufficiently advanced by the 1930's to show us stuff that strangely, only starts showing up after computer graphics is sophisticated enough to fake it).
#8 Aliens so cold hearted, that they can't be bothered to donate anti-"BSD IS DYING" troll technology to slashdot. OK, so this one is a little far-fetched...
Hmm, if this is a troll, it is a good one. If you are serious, then I humbly offer this serious explanation.
Science in its purest form, has no hatred of god, though little love for him might also be true. Science has never said that god doesn't exist, or that if he does that you shouldn't listen to what god has to say. As a matter of fact, science is completely compatible with a careful belief in god.
You see, those "religious" statements that some "holy" men have made, those are scientifically problematic. Science has a bad habit of knocking on their ass, those who claim to speak for god. Why? Because more often than not, those men are immoral charlatans, and not clever enough to avoid the watchful eyes of science.
Is this a bad thing? Would a person who truly believes in god want to be decieved by such people? The christian bible speaks of false prophets. If there are such in the world today, are you going to be pissed off if science helps to point them out?
But it has been that way for along time, and much of what religion still is today, hates science for that. You should be wary of religions that are at odds with science.
For instance... detroit auto-makers use a sort of evolution to design new cars. Is it so hard to believe that if there is a god, he might use a similar approach (hell, maybe that's a reason why we find the process so useful)? But many religious fanatics are so STUPID that they can't see past the poetry of their own holy writings. Maybe their god is a little bit saddened, that they have no appreciation for the poetry.;)
There are many examples of such, this was just one. But in truth, if someone managed to believe in thermodynamics in 204 A.D., they weren't scientific crackpots (it hadn't been proven scientifically yet) they were geniuses, IMO. Again, believing in something unproven doesn't make you dumb, or unworthy, or even incompatible with science. As long as you admit that it is unproven, both to yourself and others. And hell, if you are somehow proven wrong, being willing to admit it would be nice. I'm not going to make fun of you if that happens, I've got too many unproven beliefs myself.
But you must be willing to admit that there is always the possibility of that happening.
All of this, is the difference between the two. With science, you can be reasonably sure that something is so. Religion (as opposed to the charlatany that often substitutes) deals with the unknowable.
Why do I feel like I'm not finished? There is more here to say. You see, science also only tells us what to be able to expect when we do certain things. Jump off that plane with a bad parachute, and you will die. Science does a very poor job of telling us how to live our lives, what will make us happy and fulfilled, or even why it is immoral to kill someone.
Could science tell us those things? Yes, I think that science could, if it truly wanted to. If we have 10 million earth-like planets, populated with billions of human-like beings, and we made thousands of them jump out of planes w/o parachutes each second, and we kept statistics on that, then yes, it is very easy to deduce that after a few trillion have died, that killing them is a bad thing. Of course, the damage would already be done.
In that instance, religion is superior to science. Science often requires "bad" results (please forgive the subjective term "bad") to prove something. This is fine when those bad results are something mundane, like 3,459 of your 10,000 seashells along this stretch of beach are too big to account for your theory.
And this does cause problems. For instance, some religions have said that divorce is a "bad" thing. But some people obviously don't believe that today. So now, there are plenty of statistics for scientists to use, to maybe determine if divorce is bad or not. Not enough, bt someday there will be. If science confirms what religion has said all along, what happens then? This sounds like a dumb example, but eventually there may be enough evidence to conclusively say whether divorce is a bad action to take, or merely the sympton of another problem. Things could get icky... and this isn't even a very controversial issue.
Abortion could be much worse, in that respect.
Human beings need someone who can tell them what is right and what is wrong. And we're torn... between those priests who are monsters, and those scientists who seem apathetic. Science would have a very difficult time telling us, if it can at all, and religion seems all too willing to abuse us when we ask.
There is a difference between snubbing all your best traditions and not remaining formulaic.
For one thing, they changed the animation style for "celebrities". Changing style is bad.
It was entirely unfunny, worthless. I was actually embarrassed to watch it (my girlfriend doesn't like it at all) and I'm forcing her to watch this? But it was like a car wreck, I kept thinking to myself, this couldn't get worse, it's a really obnoxious joke at my expense, maybe some Andy Kaufman thing...only it never happened.
Only once before, have I ever accused someone of taking credit for a work not their own (a popular novel that I don't wish to name here). In that case, I was certain the author had written the sequels, god awful garbage that they were, but somehow managed to steal the first from a student and murder them or something.
This time though, it's reversed. The regular writers were all fired, and Comedy Central still slapped the "south park" title on it.
I was sick. My favorite show, possibly of all time, was stolen from me, by these lousy bastards. Nothing can heal the suffering it has caused me.
:( I might be tempted to watch Futurama now, if only on the rebound. But even that isn't possible. Someone put me out of my misery, please.
That south park episode was lame. I'd been waiting LITERALLY months to see a south park/bin laden episode. I was so psyched up, expecting maybe even a guest appearance of Saddam, both of them with the canadian style heads, yapping away, mistreating Satan even...
AND WHAT DO I GET?
I get some "not all muslims are our enemies" (not that they all are, but I watch this show to be entertained, not listen to a public service announcement) bullshit. I get a script that is so far from the first 2 season's quality, that I want to cry. I get a horribly unwatchable spoof of Bugs Bunny, which is unforgiveable. I get YET ANOTHER episode where Chef fails to sing.
I get a really really really lame new character, invented for the sake of a bad pun. Every other joke was either as bad as that, or worse. Nothing like the humor I'd expect from South Park. I get a rehash of the Sally Struthers/Jaba the Hut gag, only done really poorly. And the pain goes on and on. I get cold chills, remembering how bad that episode is.
But that wasn't bad enough, the entire season has been as bad, with only the occassional joke anything like they had been. I get a Kenny that stays dead.
If this is what South Park has turned into, then Simpsons (which I haven't watched in year) or Futurama (I've only seen it once or twice) definitely kicks its ass.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not a boat
Summer waves never touch skin
it is not a plane
There once was a craft from the Maldives
that could seat three men and their wives
have some advice for free
don't be one of the three,
or you'll regret it the rest of your lives
Ben Wa balls.
So you touch up the goddam crow's feet. Or skip the early years of Spiderman. And he's not quite that old, I don't think. Mid 40s maybe.
Age prejudice, instead of race prejudice, if you ask me.
I think all things being equal, Jackie Chan could take Jet Li at least 4 times out of every 7, in an anything goes fight. And at least 1 of the 3 that he wouldn't win, would be a draw. But, Jet Li does have a few more years of youth, I believe.
As far as swapping him in as a costumed stunt double, that would be so unfair. If he deserves to play Spidey, he also deserves Peter Parker.
Hewlett Compackard Dell.
Ok guys, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. But first, I need you to set aside your preconceptions.
Work with me here, because I'm suggesting that maybe Peter Parker doesn't have to caucasian. I myself am, and the comic book (and all the movies) have portrayed him as such. But the truth is, there is only one man capable of doing what Spiderman is capable of.
Jackie Chan.
Yes, that's right, Jackie Chan. So his accent is a little strong. Certainly they could afford some decent voice coaching. But other than that, what is wrong with him? That's right, nothing.
What's right with him? A man who can run up walls, without CG effects. His reaction speed is simply incredible. Gymnastics. And he's not even a bad actor, he has that whole comedic side to him. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked, if during the credits they'd show him swinging from 100 story buildings and having bloopers.
You could practically do away with the whole special effects budget.
So tell me, what, other than prejudice and Hollywood's predisposition to heap stinky garbage on us, kept this from happening?
It seems the poetry war knocked you +1
just when we were starting to have fun
they modded you offtopic
which seems somewhat myopic
please forgive me, if I conclude that I've won
There once was a germ from the red planet
that had scientists from NASA cursing "Dammit!"
"If we send astronauts there,"
"We'd better take care,"
"And from orbit, this bug, we should ban it."
Martian germs scare
the scientists at NASA
give spacemen Lysol
Redundant, you say
comments that repeat others
correct for first post?
Oh my god, what kind of monster have I created?
I've opened the haiku box, and now, there's no way to stuff the verse back inside...
Oh, the humanity!!!
There once was a fuel researcher from Wales
Who might have had one too many ales...
He said "You might think I'm nuts"
"We can get hydrogen from our butts"
"And fill our gas tanks with our tails!"
Oil vanishes
World has energy crisis
Turn poop into fuel
There once was a heckler from Thread #30
Whose comments were usually wordy
You're karma whorin' he cried
With japanese poems he lied
To fight haiku with haiku is just playing dirty
My comment is on topic, do you have a problem with how I express myself? Does it always have to be prose? I sometimes do limericks, are these more acceptable? My god man, I could be doing iambi pentameter... so it's not like I'm being cruel.
Or, in other words...
Whiny nerd complains
There are too many haiku
just a prose bigot
This story demands a haiku.
Apple bans codec
Used by the movie previews
No linux Star Wars
Greedy lawyers sue
judge considers fair use death
rights flush down toilet
Yeh, but my limited understanding of this is that it's only useful within a solar system. You could describe radio that way also, but radio still leaves alot of leftovers that we could detect. With lasers, if none happen to be pointed almost straight at us, we'll never see them. It's still a plausible explanation, I suppose, but one that is largely untestable.
Besides, if they want to communicate, radio is still the best way, and I'd hope that common sense is objective enough that both them and us would realize that. If they are out there, I want to talk to them, you know? Hopefully applying for citizenship is a simple affair in their government....
Agreed that #1 is weak. Not totally groundless, but weak.
#2 is strong though. The exotic phsyics phenomena you speak of, if we can harness it, might be good for FTL communication (not something to be scoffed at itself). But travel for anything larger than a few particles? I don't buy it. #2 is much stronger than #1. Not that I think FTL travel is completely ruled out, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. What if it takes a few million years of development to even discover it? Or a few billion? Aliens, if there are any out there, are gonna call on the phone, before they drop by for a visit.
#1, along with the others are offered as evidence, not proof.
;-)
On that note, #1 is still valid... each day SETI makes it less likely that there are any intelligent aliens in this neighborhood of space. If life (and intelligence) are anything but ultra-rare, we should have heard something by now.
Though, who knows if radio technology is common. Maybe most species skip past it rather quickly. Maybe #1 is as weak as #8.
Impossible, no.
Improbable? Well, let's analyze this. The requirements as I see them (feel free to add to these, if you can come up with any) are...
#1 Intelligent aliens, when SETI has analyzed a large portion of the sky, and not came up with anything.
#2 Intelligent aliens that somehow have managed to invent a form of travel several orders of magnitude faster than light. Sure, 80% light speed might be fast enough to go to another star... but it's a given that there are no such aliens within a few light years (see #1 for explanation).
#3 Aliens that have managed to become as technologically sophisticated as all this implies, and yet so ethically/morally challenged as to come here to commit what I would think of as a universally criminal act.
#4 Aliens that find some reason, any reason to shove bizarre probes up our asses.
#5 Aliens that have no moral trouble committing kidnapping, sexual assult, torture... but fail to kill the experimental "animal" once the experiment is finished, as many scientists do with lab animals.
#6 Aliens, that having shoved probes up our asses for as long as 3 decades, that still don't have enough data about anal sphincters and need to conduct more such probings.
#7 That considering all this, we still don't have the necessary technology to at least notice that something weird really is going on. Sure, I can easily believe that we can't look at the computer, and have the sensor logs report "Klingons have entered a tight polar orbit around earth".... but damn. No exotic radition or matter samples? No alien DNA/skin scrapings underneath abductee fingernails? No photographs? (Conclusive photographs, bozos... photography was sufficiently advanced by the 1930's to show us stuff that strangely, only starts showing up after computer graphics is sophisticated enough to fake it).
#8 Aliens so cold hearted, that they can't be bothered to donate anti-"BSD IS DYING" troll technology to slashdot. OK, so this one is a little far-fetched...
Let the conspiracy nuts have fun with this list.
Hmm, if this is a troll, it is a good one. If you are serious, then I humbly offer this serious explanation.
;)
Science in its purest form, has no hatred of god, though little love for him might also be true. Science has never said that god doesn't exist, or that if he does that you shouldn't listen to what god has to say. As a matter of fact, science is completely compatible with a careful belief in god.
You see, those "religious" statements that some "holy" men have made, those are scientifically problematic. Science has a bad habit of knocking on their ass, those who claim to speak for god. Why? Because more often than not, those men are immoral charlatans, and not clever enough to avoid the watchful eyes of science.
Is this a bad thing? Would a person who truly believes in god want to be decieved by such people? The christian bible speaks of false prophets. If there are such in the world today, are you going to be pissed off if science helps to point them out?
But it has been that way for along time, and much of what religion still is today, hates science for that. You should be wary of religions that are at odds with science.
For instance... detroit auto-makers use a sort of evolution to design new cars. Is it so hard to believe that if there is a god, he might use a similar approach (hell, maybe that's a reason why we find the process so useful)? But many religious fanatics are so STUPID that they can't see past the poetry of their own holy writings. Maybe their god is a little bit saddened, that they have no appreciation for the poetry.
There are many examples of such, this was just one. But in truth, if someone managed to believe in thermodynamics in 204 A.D., they weren't scientific crackpots (it hadn't been proven scientifically yet) they were geniuses, IMO. Again, believing in something unproven doesn't make you dumb, or unworthy, or even incompatible with science. As long as you admit that it is unproven, both to yourself and others. And hell, if you are somehow proven wrong, being willing to admit it would be nice. I'm not going to make fun of you if that happens, I've got too many unproven beliefs myself.
But you must be willing to admit that there is always the possibility of that happening.
All of this, is the difference between the two. With science, you can be reasonably sure that something is so. Religion (as opposed to the charlatany that often substitutes) deals with the unknowable.
Why do I feel like I'm not finished? There is more here to say. You see, science also only tells us what to be able to expect when we do certain things. Jump off that plane with a bad parachute, and you will die. Science does a very poor job of telling us how to live our lives, what will make us happy and fulfilled, or even why it is immoral to kill someone.
Could science tell us those things? Yes, I think that science could, if it truly wanted to. If we have 10 million earth-like planets, populated with billions of human-like beings, and we made thousands of them jump out of planes w/o parachutes each second, and we kept statistics on that, then yes, it is very easy to deduce that after a few trillion have died, that killing them is a bad thing. Of course, the damage would already be done.
In that instance, religion is superior to science. Science often requires "bad" results (please forgive the subjective term "bad") to prove something. This is fine when those bad results are something mundane, like 3,459 of your 10,000 seashells along this stretch of beach are too big to account for your theory.
And this does cause problems. For instance, some religions have said that divorce is a "bad" thing. But some people obviously don't believe that today. So now, there are plenty of statistics for scientists to use, to maybe determine if divorce is bad or not. Not enough, bt someday there will be. If science confirms what religion has said all along, what happens then? This sounds like a dumb example, but eventually there may be enough evidence to conclusively say whether divorce is a bad action to take, or merely the sympton of another problem. Things could get icky... and this isn't even a very controversial issue.
Abortion could be much worse, in that respect.
Human beings need someone who can tell them what is right and what is wrong. And we're torn... between those priests who are monsters, and those scientists who seem apathetic. Science would have a very difficult time telling us, if it can at all, and religion seems all too willing to abuse us when we ask.
There is a difference between snubbing all your best traditions and not remaining formulaic.
For one thing, they changed the animation style for "celebrities". Changing style is bad.
It was entirely unfunny, worthless. I was actually embarrassed to watch it (my girlfriend doesn't like it at all) and I'm forcing her to watch this? But it was like a car wreck, I kept thinking to myself, this couldn't get worse, it's a really obnoxious joke at my expense, maybe some Andy Kaufman thing...only it never happened.
Only once before, have I ever accused someone of taking credit for a work not their own (a popular novel that I don't wish to name here). In that case, I was certain the author had written the sequels, god awful garbage that they were, but somehow managed to steal the first from a student and murder them or something.
This time though, it's reversed. The regular writers were all fired, and Comedy Central still slapped the "south park" title on it.
I was sick. My favorite show, possibly of all time, was stolen from me, by these lousy bastards. Nothing can heal the suffering it has caused me.
:( I might be tempted to watch Futurama now, if only on the rebound. But even that isn't possible. Someone put me out of my misery, please.
That south park episode was lame. I'd been waiting LITERALLY months to see a south park/bin laden episode. I was so psyched up, expecting maybe even a guest appearance of Saddam, both of them with the canadian style heads, yapping away, mistreating Satan even...
AND WHAT DO I GET?
I get some "not all muslims are our enemies" (not that they all are, but I watch this show to be entertained, not listen to a public service announcement) bullshit. I get a script that is so far from the first 2 season's quality, that I want to cry. I get a horribly unwatchable spoof of Bugs Bunny, which is unforgiveable. I get YET ANOTHER episode where Chef fails to sing.
I get a really really really lame new character, invented for the sake of a bad pun. Every other joke was either as bad as that, or worse. Nothing like the humor I'd expect from South Park. I get a rehash of the Sally Struthers/Jaba the Hut gag, only done really poorly. And the pain goes on and on. I get cold chills, remembering how bad that episode is.
But that wasn't bad enough, the entire season has been as bad, with only the occassional joke anything like they had been. I get a Kenny that stays dead.
If this is what South Park has turned into, then Simpsons (which I haven't watched in year) or Futurama (I've only seen it once or twice) definitely kicks its ass.