Because we've never had three people inhabiting a space station for long periods before...
The Russians found out how to live in space long ago. They also found out that it's a good idea to be really careful when docking cargo ships, but that's another story...
That's because Patrick Stewart is a decent actor and can actually play characters other than Captian Picard.
Christopher Ecclestone is also a decent actor. I doubt he'll ever be completely typecast in the way that, say, Nimoy was as Spock, or Tom Baker was as the Doctor.
Sure, if he does another couple of runs of Doctor Who then for a generation of kids he'll always be the Doctor... but as Patrick Stewart has shown us, that needn't be such a bad thing. You can have a career beyond SF superstardom.
I think really it's about attitude and personality. Patrick Stewart is pretty relaxed about people remembering him as Picard, and seems comfortable knowing that although it was undeniably silly he did a good job on it. Alec Guinness, on the other hand, came to hate the very name of Kenobi... Yet both have had successful careers beyond the characters we geeks know them for.
I wish that some one would produce a hit space series where it occurred all in our solar system. We don't need to see aliens to see strange things, and we don't need to get out of the neighborhood to have conflicts.
Hmm, good idea. Since there'd be no aliens, it would be human vs human conflict - maybe a space Western. You'd have to fudge things a little to have habitable environments; terraform Mars, heat up the Jovian moons by means not gone into, that sort of thing. Wreck the Earth in order to give people a massive motivation to get out into space. Let there be a more or less anarchic Wild West feel to the place; there's a government and a police force but their reach isn't as long as they'd like.
Then you'd need characters, characters, let's see... well, OK, let's have a hotshot pilot, but not the Tom Cruise type... we're looking for a cool and stylish rogue. The guy probably knows kung fu as well. We also want an older guy, experienced veteran of many adventures, ex-cop maybe, and perhaps missing a limb. We want gratuitous female eye candy, and possibly a weird hacker kid. Oh, and a dog, everyone loves cute pets.
Then you just have to get a really massively awesome theme tune at the start. Dah dah, dah dah, dah dah dah daah, daaaaaah....
Unfortunately for those who would use torture to get information, it's also a great way to get people who really don't know the answers to what you're asking to invent false information just to get you to stop.
Torture wouldn't work when the questions are of the form 'So, are you a member of the Evil Terrorist Conspiracy?' I would be quite prepared to answer 'yes, yes, I am, and so's my friend Keith, and we were planning to fill the Channel Tunnel with rabies-infected squirrels!' in order to get them to stop hurting me. Completely useless information, but of course it does mean that they can disappear another terrorist suspect (Keith) to Cuba and have a pretext to increase the alert level because of the recently foiled squirrel plot, and all this makes the government look good in the tabloids, which is what really matters...
However, suppose they're torturing me to get a password out of me to decrypt the files on the seized computer.
You know, it's amazing that Kevin Flynn had such trouble getting the info he needed to hang Ed Dillinger out to dry, considering that the password for the Master Control Program was "master".
That's bad, I'll grant you - but the guys running the Jet Alone project set the main password granting full control over their nuclear-powered giant mech to a four-letter dictionary word. No wonder Ritsuko 0wn3d them so easily...
(Two-letter, if they weren't using the Roman alphabet. No, I'm not saying what the password was; this ain't Usenet, and I don't think he greps himself so often these days, but I still don't want to summon him up...)
Ah, what was that? You would have won the war, but were stabbed in the back by internal opposition?...
I seem to remember some weaselly Austrian Charlie Chaplin lookalike making a similar argument about how Germany managed to lose WW1. It was bullshit then, too. But of course it was effective at whipping up hatred against the people he blamed for said stab in the back, which was what he intended all along.
Conservative in their manner of business... not political viewpoints. The BBC is more fair and balanced than any major news organization we have in the states.
Bear in mind, however, that in the context of a comparison to American news sources, the phrase 'fair and balanced' actually means 'flagrantly right-wing to such an extent that it would even embarrass the editor of the Daily Mail'...
Well, I gave that a go. Threw 'telegraph bbc saddam dictator' into Google, and I found a whole bunch of news articles, many from the BBC, in which Saddam Hussein is referred to as a dictator... and then a blog carrying this story.
A blog with a link to the Telegraph's website, which doesn't work... However, I found it here. It's a gossip column, quoting from an anonymous source. Beyond this, I can't find anything but the usual right-wing blog noise.
Science Fiction is only for entertainment (that occasionally spurs creative application of concepts). The former are all documents which different types mass hysteria are based upon.
Unless you're Orson Welles, in which case a suitable presentation of an SF classic certainly can produce mass hysteria...
Karl Marx thought so, too. He identified the problem all right - read the parts of the Communist Manifesto that deal with how capitalist imperialism was set to evolve and tell me it hasn't happened. Globalisation, corporatism, empire by proxy, it's all there. Unfortunately, his proposed solution didn't work out.
Any better ideas? I thought European-style social democracy was working pretty well, but the EU seems intent on acting paradoxically against its own interests here...
No, it wouldn't be dumb. I think an SF series featuring space angels would be really awesome, especially if it also involved robots and perhaps a penguin, although it would probably have a rather confusing ending.
Someone really ought to make such a series; if they put in two or three highly marketable female characters, they could probably keep selling memorabilia to obsessive fanboys for years to come.
Step 1: instead of 'ass' say 'buns', as in 'kiss my buns' or 'you're a buns-hole'
Step 2: instead of 'shit' say 'poo', as in 'bullpoo', 'poo-head', 'this poo is cold'
Step 3: with 'bitch' drop the 't', 'cos 'bich' is Latin for 'generosity'
Step 4: don't say 'fuck' any more, 'cos 'fuck' is the worst word that you can say, so just use the word 'mmm-kay'!
It is the thieves that feel it is thier right to steal from people just because they can that have brought this onerrous situation upon us.
You mean the ones with complete contempt for the notion of the public domain, who have repeatedly bought extensions to the duration of copyright in order to deny us the free use of our own culture?
Yeah, they're thieves all right, and they're the ones who've brought this situation upon us. It really sucks.
Another strange thing: Marvin in fact did know the Ultimate Question. He was brilliant enough to retrieve it from Arthur's brain but was completely ignored when he mentioned that fact.
In fact, Marvin is more than capable of doing the jobs of both Deep Thought and the Earth by himself in far less than millions of years. While sitting bored in the Krikkit command ship (coordinating the planetary war effort being a trivial task) he solves all the political, social, economic and personal problems of the entire Universe - except for his own - several times over purely as an intellectual exercise. He then proceeds to compose some rather dolorous little lullabies.
If only he was prepared to talk... but of course if anyone had actually asked Marvin what the Question in Arthur's brain was, he wouldn't have given a straight answer, he'd have droned on about his diodes instead. In any case the version of the Question in Arthur's brain was corrupt, incorrect; it's Fenchurch's short-lived but dazzling insight into Life, the Universe and Everything that we really need to find.
If you sit down and watch a single episode, you won't understand it.
"Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer..."
That was on every single episode in the last season, I swear! - with a quick recap of the entire last year and a half, every week! It was traumatic enough the first time... seeing Tara get... I mean...
And Marvin looks like just a guy in a robot suit, Teletubbie-style. I thought the whole "brain the size of a planet" thing was more like a metaphor for his immense intellect, not just a huge head...
Eight words:
Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With!
Sirius Cybernetics would have built Marvin to look friendly, lovable, cute and Fisher-Pricey. Unfortunately, since their programming isn't as good as their marketing, Marvin, the doors, Eddie, the elevators, and in fact just about every Sirius Cybernetics product ever built had a thoroughly screwed-up personality.
Personally, I think the movie's visual concept of Marvin is quite perfect.
what is the cumulative vector velocity of a human being at rest at the equator?
Depends on what you consider to be stationary: all the stars and galaxies are also moving, remember. Relative to a frame of reference in which the cosmic background radiation is broadly isotropic, we're moving at about 600 km/s.
Hmm... If you stripped down an A380 to the bare essentials, and converted the entire cavernous interior into a monumental bouncy castle... how utterly cool would it be?
could someone tell me what the "check and balance" is in the EU system against abuse of power by the actual EU vs the populace?
Anything that seriously pisses off any three of Britain, France, Spain, Germany and Italy generally doesn't happen. Or only two, if they're France and Germany.
The near-total lack of any firm boundaries on Brussels' power is a major annoyance for the British right wing. There's a draft constitution being put to the member states at the moment that will correct this, setting out the powers of Brussels relative to the member states; this is also a major annoyance for the British right wing.
I sometimes think that maybe we really should secede from the EU. Vote for the UK to withdraw from the EU, emigrate to Ireland and then point and laugh as the Daily Mail Party proceeds to take Britain straight to hell...
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Because we've never had three people inhabiting a space station for long periods before...
The Russians found out how to live in space long ago. They also found out that it's a good idea to be really careful when docking cargo ships, but that's another story...
Christopher Ecclestone is also a decent actor. I doubt he'll ever be completely typecast in the way that, say, Nimoy was as Spock, or Tom Baker was as the Doctor.
Sure, if he does another couple of runs of Doctor Who then for a generation of kids he'll always be the Doctor... but as Patrick Stewart has shown us, that needn't be such a bad thing. You can have a career beyond SF superstardom.
I think really it's about attitude and personality. Patrick Stewart is pretty relaxed about people remembering him as Picard, and seems comfortable knowing that although it was undeniably silly he did a good job on it. Alec Guinness, on the other hand, came to hate the very name of Kenobi... Yet both have had successful careers beyond the characters we geeks know them for.
Hmm, good idea. Since there'd be no aliens, it would be human vs human conflict - maybe a space Western. You'd have to fudge things a little to have habitable environments; terraform Mars, heat up the Jovian moons by means not gone into, that sort of thing. Wreck the Earth in order to give people a massive motivation to get out into space. Let there be a more or less anarchic Wild West feel to the place; there's a government and a police force but their reach isn't as long as they'd like.
Then you'd need characters, characters, let's see... well, OK, let's have a hotshot pilot, but not the Tom Cruise type... we're looking for a cool and stylish rogue. The guy probably knows kung fu as well. We also want an older guy, experienced veteran of many adventures, ex-cop maybe, and perhaps missing a limb. We want gratuitous female eye candy, and possibly a weird hacker kid. Oh, and a dog, everyone loves cute pets.
Then you just have to get a really massively awesome theme tune at the start. Dah dah, dah dah, dah dah dah daah, daaaaaah....
Yeah, that would be a totally awesome show!
Torture wouldn't work when the questions are of the form 'So, are you a member of the Evil Terrorist Conspiracy?' I would be quite prepared to answer 'yes, yes, I am, and so's my friend Keith, and we were planning to fill the Channel Tunnel with rabies-infected squirrels!' in order to get them to stop hurting me. Completely useless information, but of course it does mean that they can disappear another terrorist suspect (Keith) to Cuba and have a pretext to increase the alert level because of the recently foiled squirrel plot, and all this makes the government look good in the tabloids, which is what really matters...
However, suppose they're torturing me to get a password out of me to decrypt the files on the seized computer.
'Aaaagh! Aaaaggghhh! OK, OK, it's 'melon'!'
tacatacatacatacACCESS DENIED
'Aaaaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhh!'
That's bad, I'll grant you - but the guys running the Jet Alone project set the main password granting full control over their nuclear-powered giant mech to a four-letter dictionary word. No wonder Ritsuko 0wn3d them so easily...
(Two-letter, if they weren't using the Roman alphabet. No, I'm not saying what the password was; this ain't Usenet, and I don't think he greps himself so often these days, but I still don't want to summon him up...)
I seem to remember some weaselly Austrian Charlie Chaplin lookalike making a similar argument about how Germany managed to lose WW1. It was bullshit then, too. But of course it was effective at whipping up hatred against the people he blamed for said stab in the back, which was what he intended all along.
Bear in mind, however, that in the context of a comparison to American news sources, the phrase 'fair and balanced' actually means 'flagrantly right-wing to such an extent that it would even embarrass the editor of the Daily Mail'...
A blog with a link to the Telegraph's website, which doesn't work... However, I found it here. It's a gossip column, quoting from an anonymous source. Beyond this, I can't find anything but the usual right-wing blog noise.
Actually, it's Germany: Good (First legal system to properly bitchslap SCO.)
Does that matter? Is Golden Palace such a bad name for a cruise ship? Sounds appropriate to me; if it raises a big pile of cash for charity, why not?
Unless you're Orson Welles, in which case a suitable presentation of an SF classic certainly can produce mass hysteria...
Karl Marx thought so, too. He identified the problem all right - read the parts of the Communist Manifesto that deal with how capitalist imperialism was set to evolve and tell me it hasn't happened. Globalisation, corporatism, empire by proxy, it's all there. Unfortunately, his proposed solution didn't work out.
Any better ideas? I thought European-style social democracy was working pretty well, but the EU seems intent on acting paradoxically against its own interests here...
No, it wouldn't be dumb. I think an SF series featuring space angels would be really awesome, especially if it also involved robots and perhaps a penguin, although it would probably have a rather confusing ending.
Someone really ought to make such a series; if they put in two or three highly marketable female characters, they could probably keep selling memorabilia to obsessive fanboys for years to come.
Step 1: instead of 'ass' say 'buns', as in 'kiss my buns' or 'you're a buns-hole'
Step 2: instead of 'shit' say 'poo', as in 'bullpoo', 'poo-head', 'this poo is cold'
Step 3: with 'bitch' drop the 't', 'cos 'bich' is Latin for 'generosity'
Step 4: don't say 'fuck' any more, 'cos 'fuck' is the worst word that you can say, so just use the word 'mmm-kay'!
Just out of interest - how did anyone find out?
You mean the ones with complete contempt for the notion of the public domain, who have repeatedly bought extensions to the duration of copyright in order to deny us the free use of our own culture?
Yeah, they're thieves all right, and they're the ones who've brought this situation upon us. It really sucks.
In fact, Marvin is more than capable of doing the jobs of both Deep Thought and the Earth by himself in far less than millions of years. While sitting bored in the Krikkit command ship (coordinating the planetary war effort being a trivial task) he solves all the political, social, economic and personal problems of the entire Universe - except for his own - several times over purely as an intellectual exercise. He then proceeds to compose some rather dolorous little lullabies.
If only he was prepared to talk... but of course if anyone had actually asked Marvin what the Question in Arthur's brain was, he wouldn't have given a straight answer, he'd have droned on about his diodes instead. In any case the version of the Question in Arthur's brain was corrupt, incorrect; it's Fenchurch's short-lived but dazzling insight into Life, the Universe and Everything that we really need to find.
"Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer..."
That was on every single episode in the last season, I swear! - with a quick recap of the entire last year and a half, every week! It was traumatic enough the first time... seeing Tara get... I mean...
* blubs *
Eight words:
Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With!
Sirius Cybernetics would have built Marvin to look friendly, lovable, cute and Fisher-Pricey. Unfortunately, since their programming isn't as good as their marketing, Marvin, the doors, Eddie, the elevators, and in fact just about every Sirius Cybernetics product ever built had a thoroughly screwed-up personality.
Personally, I think the movie's visual concept of Marvin is quite perfect.
Huh? Q wasn't in First Contact.
what is the cumulative vector velocity of a human being at rest at the equator? Depends on what you consider to be stationary: all the stars and galaxies are also moving, remember. Relative to a frame of reference in which the cosmic background radiation is broadly isotropic, we're moving at about 600 km/s.
Hmm... If you stripped down an A380 to the bare essentials, and converted the entire cavernous interior into a monumental bouncy castle... how utterly cool would it be?
That's just beautiful. It also works wonderfully well with the old Slashdot favourite, 'miserable failures'.
Anything that seriously pisses off any three of Britain, France, Spain, Germany and Italy generally doesn't happen. Or only two, if they're France and Germany.
The near-total lack of any firm boundaries on Brussels' power is a major annoyance for the British right wing. There's a draft constitution being put to the member states at the moment that will correct this, setting out the powers of Brussels relative to the member states; this is also a major annoyance for the British right wing.
I sometimes think that maybe we really should secede from the EU. Vote for the UK to withdraw from the EU, emigrate to Ireland and then point and laugh as the Daily Mail Party proceeds to take Britain straight to hell...
Music, movies, microcode, high-speed pizza delivery. Now, come on, this is pretty basic stuff from your introductory-level geek courses...