The MD still has many other advantages over the Archos. I would find it hard to believe that it can play for 50 hours on a single AA battery like the MD recorder can (and I've seen some MD players with 100+hours on a single AA).
The battery statistics on MDs are NOT to be trusted. My Sharp 877 gets nowhere near the 12 hours the advertising claims...
Well whatever. I'm speaking as somebody who wants a portable music device for recording concerts, and for easily carrying all (or at least a large portion of) my music collection around when I go on trips. To my mind, MD's are pretty good for the first task (wish I could automatically upload to computer and burn to CD, of course) but insufficient for the 2nd.
I disagree. I think MP3 players have already already surpassed MD in terms of price. An Archos Jukebox is 20 gigs for $200. 200 MD's is a pain to carry around and costs about $200. That doesn't include $100-$250 for the price of the MD recorder. Sure MD sounds better than 192Kbps, comparing high-quality lossey compressions is silly.
Right now I think each has their advantages but overall they're about the same quality. However, getting into MD now forces you to put your music on a medium that can't be digitally transferred - and it's a given that MP3 players are getting better and better.
Yeah, Minidisc is cheaper than solid state by the megabyte - but people don't buy a CF card for every album they own. Unlike a Minidisc, it's easy to interface solid state memory with a computer, so you can easily choose which music is on your cf card at any time.
Minidiscs aren't HUGE, but let's face it, a Neuros can hold hundreds of Minidisc's worth of music, and you don't have to lug all that plastic around. Minidiscs are a good techonology for live recording, and that's about it - someday an iPod will come out with a phantom-powered microphone jack, and there will officially be no reason for MD to exist, except you still need a player to listen to your old MD's.
No No No. First of all, many of the most popular bands weren't underground punk-rockers that became popular. Early on, they get picked up by a musical promotion company. Avril Lavignone (or whatever) hardly had to work her way up the ranks.
Secondly, it's a matter of how you like to enjoy music. Yesterday I got to talk to the amazing, self-made Cody ChesnuTT for a little while, then see him play his soul/pop/rock/etc. from a distance of 10 feet. He asked people what they wanted to hear, and really made a connection with the audience. Amazing. But I'd have little interest in seeing him play in a basketball stadium with an array of security/lighting technicians/so forth, all around him. I wouldn't hold it against him, it's just not as interesting.
U2 is a bad example, unless you're from Ireland and saw them in the clubs before they became an international band.
The sequence where Gollum was talking to himself (or Gollum was talking to Smegol, I suppose) was one of the host impressive sequences I've seen in a film for a long time. It's a shame that it will probably get classified as "special effects", when in reality the magic was in the acting.
The theater I saw it in, people were laughing at that scene. I have to go along with them. It was about as subtle as a kick in the ass. Besides, the scene wasn't defined by Gollum's acting - the way it would be if, say, a sudden change in how he was holding himself revealed changed intentions. Rather, the scene was defined by the film editor quick-cutting an over-the-top monologue.
This doesn't seem like a very useful product. As far as I can tell, the advantage to this is:
1) Able to use CAT5 cable instead of normal cable. That's cool but no big deal.
2) Effects can be controlled from an on-guitar dash-board, instead of foot pedals. Foot pedals are convenient and can be manipulated while playing the guitar, which is important. Also, so far, all-in-one digital effects aren't so great. So it might be useful for beginners, but it doesn't sound like the technology is being aimed at beginners. (Worth noting that Gibson experimented with controlling effects from the guitar in the 70's, but the guitars didn't sell well.)
Regardless, any guitarist would have to be prepared to play in a situation that uses normal equipment. So why bother having the second technology?
It's not a blanket opposition to digitalizing guitars... the Variax seems like a pretty cool guitar, if overpriced, and the basic technology has obvious cool applications that haven't been exploited yet. But Gibson's new technology doesn't seem to have a good reason to exist.
Oddly enough, I notice some region-free European (as in, they have English commercials in front) DVD's I own are NTSC encoded. Maybe it's just assumed that the players over there are world compatible? Who knows.
Why is this post ranked informative? I own a number of region free DVDs, I live in the US, and I don't have any "technical speaking" problems...
Not only do many players handle PAL, but most of the world uses NTSC - everywhere except Europe, I believe.
Indian movies are almost all region-free, because there's a big demand in foreign countries, and their region is grouped in with Eastern Europe or something bizzare. Chinese movies are almost all region-free, because they're pirated:)
As effects become more commonspread and cheaper, I hope the money goes to the (good) story writers.
I don't think so. To have effective CGI, there's always going to be a minimum level of effort that's going to be quite large. Even if Doom 4 will be able to do Two-Towers level animation for $50 and the price of a Voodoo 8 card, using the powers effectively will require artists and programmers, and will never be as cheap as hiring a struggling actor.
Only a strong studio system can afford to make a CGI-based movie, and studio systems, so far, aren't willing to take risks. I expect CGI movies will be a long stream of the "generic-but-good" or "generic-but-bad" movies that are out now.
The "blah blah blah" is roughly, "You have not specified a subject. Would you like to enter one now?" Perhaps you're right, it should be changed. Instead, it should say, "You're about to send an email message without a subject. That's an amazingly rude thing to do and likely to irritate the recipient as it makes it harder for them to pioritize their incoming mail and harder to distinguish from spam. Because this is such a terrible idea, you should enter a subject line below. If you fail to enter a subject, the default entry of 'I'm a idiot, please delete this message without reading it' will be used."
Wow, I hope my friends aren't that hostile. For professional mails a subject is needed. But when sending a letter to friends, who cares?
As for being passionate about biology, I'm not that either. But I am passionate when I hear creationist groups trying to pressure schools to accept their unscientific twaddle. I am passionate when some fundamentalist group tries to force its world view on my children. If someone wants their own kids to believe in God, then fine take them to church each sunday. But religion should stay out of school and biology class until such time as there is a scientific evidence to justify it. Evolution has such evidence in spades.
There's obviously more to it than that. Schoolbooks are full of lies - the idea that Mexican & Hawaiian Natives thought Europeans were Gods, Newtonian Physics, Marconi inventing the Radio. Or, while I'm at it, the black moth/white moth observations, or Mendels & Darwin's genetic experiments, where historians agree that the data was manipulated (although future experiments verified the ideas).
Nobody's making a big stink one way or the other about those lies. So obviously evolution v. creationism has much deeper roots than a simple matter of wanting NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH in American schoolyards FOR OUR CHILDREN, DAMMIT.
I agree that creationism as science is bunk. However that doesn't necessarily negate it (is pure science the ultimate path?) and I'm interested to hear reactions that aren't knee-jerk. Yes, I realize it's silly to expect such as think in slashdot.
Unfortunately, Creationists are so profoundly stupid and ignorant.
And I don't understand the chip on the shoulder of anti-Creationists. Maybe they just want somebody to call "profoundly stupid and ignorant." Religious faith isn't a scientific matter, it's a metaphysical matter.
It would be stupid for a serious biological scientist to be a strict Creationist, and use Creationist methods to analyze the history of, say, frogs. However, for 99.98% of the population, Creationism v. Evolutionism is irrelevant to their daily lives, purely a philosophical conceit used to refute ancient ideals. Don't know if I'd agree, but I think a claim could be made that the last century and a half demonstrates that a society based on these new philosophical ideals is flawed.
Or, why the rabid proselytising? Are people that passionate about the subject of biology?
I take BART into work every day. Every day, I end up standing for half an hour on the way in and another half hour on the way out. Now, remind me, why is mass transit unpopular?
I dunnow, I think BART is very convenient, although some situations are different than others (the East and South Bay are so sprawled out, maybe a perfect public transportation is imposssible.) The biggest problem is the lots where you need to get there early to get a parking place, and that it closes around 12:30.
But the reason I post is to point out that there's no reason to stand for half an hour. Assuming you're going to SF around the rush hour, I get on much later than you do, and I never have to stand...it's all about getting on the first or the last train.
It would improve the social enviornment in the USA, and give kids a place to go.
I live in the USA and they have a couple near my place. I haven't done any studies but it seems like a bunch of humbug teenagers smoking and drinking, and in practical terms is the same environment as an arcade - which I wouldn't really view as good or bad.
I think the reason a place like that exists is I live in a Chinatown. Non-asians maybe don't like going to public computer places, or arcades, because it's more economical just to use their computer at home.
Will young men start raping girls if they see somebody naked? C'mon.
Interesting article in last week's NY Times magazine: France has seen a large increase in gang rapes, many attribute this to the increasingly widespead avaialabilty of pornography.
Or as an extreme example, in many Europeans countries, pedophilic books or even pictures/videos are easily available. I've read that people who could otherwise sumblimate such tendencies (as the majority of them do) get involved in sexual addictions to the material, eventually sexually abusing a child.
Could somebody with longer time in the US please explain. I really don't get it.
Actually, we do it just to give Europeans something to talk self-righteously about. Americans just love to hear it! What a country!
Which is just a sarcastic way of saying: don't be simplistic. Different countries have different cultures, sensibilities, and problems, and have to deal with them differently. The US has a huge problem with guns, despite other countries having similar gun laws and rates of ownership, or even more openly violent cultures. If there weren't such differences, there would be only one universal government/moral code/religion/whatever.
People are still having masturbating in America. Pornography isn't really that hard to find! People still have sex a lot more in movies and TV, than in real life! And I don't think our culture is losing too much, if in order to get a game where topless women ride BMX bikes, you have to order it off Amazon.
There really isn't much to say. Just tell me you're fucking kidding me - the data won't be accessible in two months? Why would anybody possibly use such a Beta?
This begs the question, if American dependence on Gulf oil is a myth, why are the Americans ready to wage war? Well, most of America's allies rely on Gulf oil so control of Iraq means control of Europe and Asia. Does it all make sense now???
America doesn't buy oil from the Gulf, purely for show. It's a world-wide market - if suddenly all the oil in the Gulf ran dry, Europeans and Asians would be buying from South America, the same as us, and prices would go up.
I saw the Japanese DVD last week, and I have to admit, I thought this was one of the lower-grade Miyazaki movies. Which means it's still worth watching, especially on a big screen with subtitles, but don't expect too much - I've read reviews that call it the best movie released this year, but everybody (who reads them) knows the SF Weekly writers smoke crack.
The movie most closesly resembles Ghibli's "Ponpoko," in that it's random misadventures, where the generic lead and generic supporting cast go through a series of misadventures that can't really be called a plot. As opposed to the really cool worlds of other Ghibli movies, the setting is mostly the claustrophobic servant's quarters of a luxury hotel. Once you accept the weirdness of the setting, there really isn't much interesting about it.
Similarly to Ponpoko, the reason to watch it is for the whimsical animated asides. Monsters look crazy and whatnot. It's not as continually imaginative as the novel _Alice in Wonderland_, or the best anime, but it's still a site to see, and is continually well-drawn. A lot of the monsters incorporate traditional Japanese demons, so it's probably more exotic and overwhelming for an American audience, than it would be for Japanese. I don't know if that's good or bad, though.
A final note: man, these ten year old girls who have to fend for themselves, but end up making good because of their kindness and plucky spirit, is as big a cliche as anything in American movies. "Princess Mononoke" wasn't my favorite, but I was hoping Miyazaki would continue dealing with more difficult themes, and having more interesting leads. I think this movie was a step back to standard Ghibli - only, without anything special enough make it stand out from what's come before.
They tried it and it didn't work out. The real problem with records isn't scratching them (which I've never done once, and I'm not all that careful), but how they collect dust. A needle is able to push the dust aside - even when playing a very dusty record, it will collect on the needle, and can be blown off. However a laser has to try to play the dust - and a small amount of dust is inevitable. I guess people tried vacuum-sealing, but at that point it wasn't worth the bother...
I don't really see the point, needles sound great, they don't scratch the record if you take care, and I've never heard of records getting deformed through contact with the needle. Even if they do, it seems to me lasers would be worse.
I'm a Civ addict. It's my kryptonite, my crack, I can't get enough of that stuff...actually I don't allow it in my place and was upset to see a free version available on the web.
But FreeCiv - ugh. Civ seems like a known commodity, it's hard to believe it could be done so poorly. Graphics that don't really look like anything (and no right-clicking to tell what it is). To restore a saved game you have to quit your game, start a new game, and then restore from a saved game. 50% chance of village exploration resulting in instantaneous death (for the exploring party). A clunky interface that makes every turn SLOW. World Wonders that you can start before gaining the appropriate technology...
I could go on, but my idea's obvious - maybe it would be cool if done well. But right now it sucks at about every level. Any real XBox game would be funner.
I thought the article was interesting, but it attempted too much - it was one step away from endorsing the Atkins diet, when a more reasonable conclusion would be that the Atkins diet deserved more study.
But it's difficult to say, because the author clearly has some weird chip on his shoulder. He's just as willing to ignore and bend evidence as the food scientists he warns about.
For instance, he dedicated paragraphs to anecdotes about something a 19th century French gastronome heard a "stout parties" say, then glosses over a study that in normal carbohydrate diets, carbohydrates doesn't get converted into fat. Doesn't that essentially go against half the article? How can he possibly not address it? Furthermore, without being an expert, weren't most diets of the past carbohydrate based? After all, meat-based diets are difficult to maintain without widespread refrigeration.
I've lived in Japan, with lower meat consumption (and rice in every meal), a similarly sedentary lifestyle, and a *much* healther population. Similarly, Texas is the most overweight state in the union, but I'm guessing they're about the closest to living the Atkins diet. I have to wonder why he didn't bring up such an argument. With such an easy way to discount his claims, he *has* to address it.
I live next to Berkeley and I don't particularly like it, but I don't really understand why he includes as an angry aside that the AMA wants everybody to eat like they do in Berkeley - it seems like a bit of rightceous anger rising to the surface, and come from left field. An objective article wouldn't have something like that.
So the article raised my interest in the Atkins diet, and led me to believe that there's a lot more about how the diet works than what people understand (no surprise). But the article itself was an embarassment to the usually-excellent NY Times Magazine. That Heroin article last week was real interesting - more better, check the archives for that.
This action sequence was a big gamble, everyone seemed to agree on that.
No, it wasn't. It would only be a gamble if people held a bad job against the franchise.
Lucas did a bad job. It's hard to defend the product: an 80 year old character actor who moves stiffly and was introduced twenty minutes earlier is the opponent; Yoda spins around wildly and without style for fifteen seconds, then gets distracted. Everybody loves seeing the old blind masters kick ass in Kung-Fu movies, Lucas had his chance to do his interpretations, and he botched it. It was the worst fight scene I've ever seen, and I've watched those Mortal Kombat movies...
Still, talking about quality is almost irrelevant with Star Wars, it's more of a mass delusion than anything else...
The government of Star Wars seems to have masses being controlled by an elite, who are so heroic that they naturally lead. Maybe it's a democracy, but George Lucas doesn't seem to bring up the point that the leaders need to build a popular concensus. Instead, the government seems to exist purely as a tool to be manipulated by the charismatic. And the idea of a teenage girl being an elected official in power over a world, as was mentioned offhand in Phantom Menace, is obviously just paying lip service to democracy...what type of crazy world would do that?
I don't think this will be brought up in the movies, just because it doesn't seem within the scope of George Lucas's ambitions. And I don't mean to come off like a crazy, saying "Lucas is a fascist swine." But it should be remembered that George Lucas consciously took many of his themes from Wagnerian opera, which is clearly fascist, and copped many of his images (for both the Rebels and the Empire) from the Nuremburg Nazi rally documentary, "Triumph of the Will." For instance the Emperor and Vader walking past their regimented troops, or the awards ceremony at the end of Star Wars...
Not knowing Lucas, I can't say if he's fascist in politics or not. More likely, it's easier to tell the story of powerful men, than of electorates and polls and political tendencies.
Slashdot Mirror
The battery statistics on MDs are NOT to be trusted. My Sharp 877 gets nowhere near the 12 hours the advertising claims...
Well whatever. I'm speaking as somebody who wants a portable music device for recording concerts, and for easily carrying all (or at least a large portion of) my music collection around when I go on trips. To my mind, MD's are pretty good for the first task (wish I could automatically upload to computer and burn to CD, of course) but insufficient for the 2nd.
I disagree. I think MP3 players have already already surpassed MD in terms of price. An Archos Jukebox is 20 gigs for $200. 200 MD's is a pain to carry around and costs about $200. That doesn't include $100-$250 for the price of the MD recorder. Sure MD sounds better than 192Kbps, comparing high-quality lossey compressions is silly. Right now I think each has their advantages but overall they're about the same quality. However, getting into MD now forces you to put your music on a medium that can't be digitally transferred - and it's a given that MP3 players are getting better and better.
Minidiscs aren't HUGE, but let's face it, a Neuros can hold hundreds of Minidisc's worth of music, and you don't have to lug all that plastic around. Minidiscs are a good techonology for live recording, and that's about it - someday an iPod will come out with a phantom-powered microphone jack, and there will officially be no reason for MD to exist, except you still need a player to listen to your old MD's.
Secondly, it's a matter of how you like to enjoy music. Yesterday I got to talk to the amazing, self-made Cody ChesnuTT for a little while, then see him play his soul/pop/rock/etc. from a distance of 10 feet. He asked people what they wanted to hear, and really made a connection with the audience. Amazing. But I'd have little interest in seeing him play in a basketball stadium with an array of security/lighting technicians/so forth, all around him. I wouldn't hold it against him, it's just not as interesting.
U2 is a bad example, unless you're from Ireland and saw them in the clubs before they became an international band.
The theater I saw it in, people were laughing at that scene. I have to go along with them. It was about as subtle as a kick in the ass. Besides, the scene wasn't defined by Gollum's acting - the way it would be if, say, a sudden change in how he was holding himself revealed changed intentions. Rather, the scene was defined by the film editor quick-cutting an over-the-top monologue.
1) Able to use CAT5 cable instead of normal cable. That's cool but no big deal.
2) Effects can be controlled from an on-guitar dash-board, instead of foot pedals. Foot pedals are convenient and can be manipulated while playing the guitar, which is important. Also, so far, all-in-one digital effects aren't so great. So it might be useful for beginners, but it doesn't sound like the technology is being aimed at beginners. (Worth noting that Gibson experimented with controlling effects from the guitar in the 70's, but the guitars didn't sell well.)
Regardless, any guitarist would have to be prepared to play in a situation that uses normal equipment. So why bother having the second technology?
It's not a blanket opposition to digitalizing guitars... the Variax seems like a pretty cool guitar, if overpriced, and the basic technology has obvious cool applications that haven't been exploited yet. But Gibson's new technology doesn't seem to have a good reason to exist.
Oddly enough, I notice some region-free European (as in, they have English commercials in front) DVD's I own are NTSC encoded. Maybe it's just assumed that the players over there are world compatible? Who knows.
And no, my DVD player is an old Sony.
Not only do many players handle PAL, but most of the world uses NTSC - everywhere except Europe, I believe.
Indian movies are almost all region-free, because there's a big demand in foreign countries, and their region is grouped in with Eastern Europe or something bizzare. Chinese movies are almost all region-free, because they're pirated
Are you crazy?
I don't think so. To have effective CGI, there's always going to be a minimum level of effort that's going to be quite large. Even if Doom 4 will be able to do Two-Towers level animation for $50 and the price of a Voodoo 8 card, using the powers effectively will require artists and programmers, and will never be as cheap as hiring a struggling actor.
Only a strong studio system can afford to make a CGI-based movie, and studio systems, so far, aren't willing to take risks. I expect CGI movies will be a long stream of the "generic-but-good" or "generic-but-bad" movies that are out now.
Not as much as I associate Star Wars with childishness.
Wow, I hope my friends aren't that hostile. For professional mails a subject is needed. But when sending a letter to friends, who cares?
There's obviously more to it than that. Schoolbooks are full of lies - the idea that Mexican & Hawaiian Natives thought Europeans were Gods, Newtonian Physics, Marconi inventing the Radio. Or, while I'm at it, the black moth/white moth observations, or Mendels & Darwin's genetic experiments, where historians agree that the data was manipulated (although future experiments verified the ideas).
Nobody's making a big stink one way or the other about those lies. So obviously evolution v. creationism has much deeper roots than a simple matter of wanting NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH in American schoolyards FOR OUR CHILDREN, DAMMIT.
I agree that creationism as science is bunk. However that doesn't necessarily negate it (is pure science the ultimate path?) and I'm interested to hear reactions that aren't knee-jerk. Yes, I realize it's silly to expect such as think in slashdot.
And I don't understand the chip on the shoulder of anti-Creationists. Maybe they just want somebody to call "profoundly stupid and ignorant." Religious faith isn't a scientific matter, it's a metaphysical matter.
It would be stupid for a serious biological scientist to be a strict Creationist, and use Creationist methods to analyze the history of, say, frogs. However, for 99.98% of the population, Creationism v. Evolutionism is irrelevant to their daily lives, purely a philosophical conceit used to refute ancient ideals. Don't know if I'd agree, but I think a claim could be made that the last century and a half demonstrates that a society based on these new philosophical ideals is flawed.
Or, why the rabid proselytising? Are people that passionate about the subject of biology?
I dunnow, I think BART is very convenient, although some situations are different than others (the East and South Bay are so sprawled out, maybe a perfect public transportation is imposssible.) The biggest problem is the lots where you need to get there early to get a parking place, and that it closes around 12:30.
But the reason I post is to point out that there's no reason to stand for half an hour. Assuming you're going to SF around the rush hour, I get on much later than you do, and I never have to stand...it's all about getting on the first or the last train.
I live in the USA and they have a couple near my place. I haven't done any studies but it seems like a bunch of humbug teenagers smoking and drinking, and in practical terms is the same environment as an arcade - which I wouldn't really view as good or bad.
I think the reason a place like that exists is I live in a Chinatown. Non-asians maybe don't like going to public computer places, or arcades, because it's more economical just to use their computer at home.
Interesting article in last week's NY Times magazine: France has seen a large increase in gang rapes, many attribute this to the increasingly widespead avaialabilty of pornography.
Or as an extreme example, in many Europeans countries, pedophilic books or even pictures/videos are easily available. I've read that people who could otherwise sumblimate such tendencies (as the majority of them do) get involved in sexual addictions to the material, eventually sexually abusing a child.
Could somebody with longer time in the US please explain. I really don't get it.
Actually, we do it just to give Europeans something to talk self-righteously about. Americans just love to hear it! What a country!
Which is just a sarcastic way of saying: don't be simplistic. Different countries have different cultures, sensibilities, and problems, and have to deal with them differently. The US has a huge problem with guns, despite other countries having similar gun laws and rates of ownership, or even more openly violent cultures. If there weren't such differences, there would be only one universal government/moral code/religion/whatever.
People are still having masturbating in America. Pornography isn't really that hard to find! People still have sex a lot more in movies and TV, than in real life! And I don't think our culture is losing too much, if in order to get a game where topless women ride BMX bikes, you have to order it off Amazon.
There really isn't much to say. Just tell me you're fucking kidding me - the data won't be accessible in two months? Why would anybody possibly use such a Beta?
America doesn't buy oil from the Gulf, purely for show. It's a world-wide market - if suddenly all the oil in the Gulf ran dry, Europeans and Asians would be buying from South America, the same as us, and prices would go up.
The movie most closesly resembles Ghibli's "Ponpoko," in that it's random misadventures, where the generic lead and generic supporting cast go through a series of misadventures that can't really be called a plot. As opposed to the really cool worlds of other Ghibli movies, the setting is mostly the claustrophobic servant's quarters of a luxury hotel. Once you accept the weirdness of the setting, there really isn't much interesting about it.
Similarly to Ponpoko, the reason to watch it is for the whimsical animated asides. Monsters look crazy and whatnot. It's not as continually imaginative as the novel _Alice in Wonderland_, or the best anime, but it's still a site to see, and is continually well-drawn. A lot of the monsters incorporate traditional Japanese demons, so it's probably more exotic and overwhelming for an American audience, than it would be for Japanese. I don't know if that's good or bad, though.
A final note: man, these ten year old girls who have to fend for themselves, but end up making good because of their kindness and plucky spirit, is as big a cliche as anything in American movies. "Princess Mononoke" wasn't my favorite, but I was hoping Miyazaki would continue dealing with more difficult themes, and having more interesting leads. I think this movie was a step back to standard Ghibli - only, without anything special enough make it stand out from what's come before.
I don't really see the point, needles sound great, they don't scratch the record if you take care, and I've never heard of records getting deformed through contact with the needle. Even if they do, it seems to me lasers would be worse.
But FreeCiv - ugh. Civ seems like a known commodity, it's hard to believe it could be done so poorly. Graphics that don't really look like anything (and no right-clicking to tell what it is). To restore a saved game you have to quit your game, start a new game, and then restore from a saved game. 50% chance of village exploration resulting in instantaneous death (for the exploring party). A clunky interface that makes every turn SLOW. World Wonders that you can start before gaining the appropriate technology...
I could go on, but my idea's obvious - maybe it would be cool if done well. But right now it sucks at about every level. Any real XBox game would be funner.
But it's difficult to say, because the author clearly has some weird chip on his shoulder. He's just as willing to ignore and bend evidence as the food scientists he warns about.
For instance, he dedicated paragraphs to anecdotes about something a 19th century French gastronome heard a "stout parties" say, then glosses over a study that in normal carbohydrate diets, carbohydrates doesn't get converted into fat. Doesn't that essentially go against half the article? How can he possibly not address it? Furthermore, without being an expert, weren't most diets of the past carbohydrate based? After all, meat-based diets are difficult to maintain without widespread refrigeration.
I've lived in Japan, with lower meat consumption (and rice in every meal), a similarly sedentary lifestyle, and a *much* healther population. Similarly, Texas is the most overweight state in the union, but I'm guessing they're about the closest to living the Atkins diet. I have to wonder why he didn't bring up such an argument. With such an easy way to discount his claims, he *has* to address it.
I live next to Berkeley and I don't particularly like it, but I don't really understand why he includes as an angry aside that the AMA wants everybody to eat like they do in Berkeley - it seems like a bit of rightceous anger rising to the surface, and come from left field. An objective article wouldn't have something like that.
So the article raised my interest in the Atkins diet, and led me to believe that there's a lot more about how the diet works than what people understand (no surprise). But the article itself was an embarassment to the usually-excellent NY Times Magazine. That Heroin article last week was real interesting - more better, check the archives for that.
No, it wasn't. It would only be a gamble if people held a bad job against the franchise.
Lucas did a bad job. It's hard to defend the product: an 80 year old character actor who moves stiffly and was introduced twenty minutes earlier is the opponent; Yoda spins around wildly and without style for fifteen seconds, then gets distracted. Everybody loves seeing the old blind masters kick ass in Kung-Fu movies, Lucas had his chance to do his interpretations, and he botched it. It was the worst fight scene I've ever seen, and I've watched those Mortal Kombat movies...
Still, talking about quality is almost irrelevant with Star Wars, it's more of a mass delusion than anything else...
I don't think this will be brought up in the movies, just because it doesn't seem within the scope of George Lucas's ambitions. And I don't mean to come off like a crazy, saying "Lucas is a fascist swine." But it should be remembered that George Lucas consciously took many of his themes from Wagnerian opera, which is clearly fascist, and copped many of his images (for both the Rebels and the Empire) from the Nuremburg Nazi rally documentary, "Triumph of the Will." For instance the Emperor and Vader walking past their regimented troops, or the awards ceremony at the end of Star Wars...
Not knowing Lucas, I can't say if he's fascist in politics or not. More likely, it's easier to tell the story of powerful men, than of electorates and polls and political tendencies.