I've noticed that too, and for the most part I hoped, and still hope that those sorts of unknowns are limited to things that really don't affect the plot much (Like the specific situ of the colony worlds or whether the cylons have a planet to themselves). A lot of those unknows are typical of how those shows develop and come about and it's interesting that Ronald D Moore makes that stuff public knowledge, sort of revealing the lack any whiz bang secrets for the most part. And when that formula crumbles, well just look at 'Lost.' That show has been a joke for two seasons now.
And yeah, you're exactly right that the Cylons' very silly mindsets as we see them, (worries about pointless philosophy, religion, how to deal with Adama, what they want with the super baby) totally undermine that constant reminder of "They have a plan."
What they should do is have the Dean Stockwell cylon (the preacher guy, the real bloodthirsty neo-con of the bunch) be much more of an active leading force for the cylons as a whole, since he (and the Kevin Spacey look-a-like) are the closest analgues to the behavior and attitude of the cylons we know and love from the first 2 seasons. The various incarnations of Sharon would then stay interesting. I'm disappointed that Boomer isn't explored more when we're among the cylons, as the potential for her character is far more interesting than Lucy Lawless', for whom I'm finding it difficult to care. Really, shouldn't Boomer be the first person to empathise with Baltar's situation? Why aren't they closer, why dont they interact? She was a human before, as far as she was concerned.
Another thing that's no doubt making it hard for the writers to communicate the idea of there being a plan is the fact that, as a TV show, BSG's narrative length has an uncertain future. They probably have a plan of how to resolve things should they not get another season, but I really think shows like these should have a finite lifespan built into them, so that overall arcs can be planned in a satisfactory way. End the story after 2 or three seasons. Still more demand? Do a spinoff story, another season or 2. Then it can stand as a satisfying, complete body of work. Hints left at the start could pay off at the end, like the way a film is planned. But that's just not gonna happen in American television, though it does happen in the UK (The Office only ran two seasons before they stopped it themselves) and Japan (anime series tend to only go for one season and have an overarching plot that resolves itself i na true finale at the last episode.)
(SciFi UK is mostly a horror film channel, with the occasional repeats of V and Logans Run). Don't forget "The Erotic Misadventures of the Invisible Man" Obviously it was H G Wells' original intent.
The show has been slow pretty frequently, but that's why I think it suits the DVD format more than a weekly TV format. I watched the first season just from the DVDs, and they were great, and it makes it tough to watch them on a week-by-week basis. Though the first 3 (or 4, depending on how you number them) episodes of season 3 were really rich and well paced.
I personally think that the current Adama / Starbuck / Anders storyline is the weakest one they've done. It's predictable, and it's just not satisfying. Plus, in an episode where large forces are clashing and nuclear armageddon is at play again, it just seems petty and unimportant to go back to "Hey! Stay away from my already-promiscuous wife!" (Though Anders is another Colonel Tigh in the making from all this...)
Yeah, those are good points. If the writers were really daring, and they've been daring in the past, spend a few episodes where that reversal is far more explicit, and the humans really are the bad guys for a while. Make the humans commit acts of genocide against the cylons while the cylons become terrified. They came close to that with the bio-weapon story arc, and seemed to come to their senses/humanity when they decided not to, but it didn't really feel like the reversal of roles was being fleshed out.
(Just a side not, does it irk anyone else that the Galactica has either gotten twice as powerful, or its crew twice as competant since the start of the show? At the start, the most Galactica seemed to be able to hope for against even a single base star was to just buy time and hold them off. The first base star they blew up was by sneakily planting a nuke on board, and the first they defeated in open combat was halfway through season 2, when they had the Pegasus with them. Now they seem to be able to take on base stars much more effectively... seems like it shifts the balance of the show a little.)
The one thing I miss tough is the deliciously crazy Baltar being tormented by Number Six while he is going around on Galactica and having people look at him funny. And the shocker was realizing the Number Six on her own also had her own suggestive-manipulative-Baltar in her head. That was a great revelation. Too bad they didn't get to play more with this since Baltar is now on the base ship. One thing I don't really get is that even when Baltar is reunited with Caprica Six, he still sees his imaginary number six in the red dress in his head. They seem to have been established as two seperate entities, and I'm not sure where the writers seem to be going with that. One would think we'd see some more of imaginary Baltar in Caprica Six's head, now that she's once more an active character. I'd like to see more time dedicated to Baltar trying to figure out why he's still seeing his imaginary cylon lover...
...and started being a bit more imposing and even began leading the cylons? Yeah I really like that idea. Rather than the puppet leader he was on New Caprica, they could have him as a dominating cult-of-personality type leader, giant posters of his face, etc. aybe even have him discover that he isn't one of the 'Final Five' but have him and his regime claim he is anyway, a Cylon Messiah. Then he can graduate to being a full fledged villain, but his rational side would still fnd conflict with his situation. Plus the Cylons always seemed prone to hysterical zealotry, they now seem far too rational in comparison to the genocide they wreaked at the begining of the series.
I find with season 3 that the episodes which spend more time on the Cylon base ship are more interesting. It seems that without Baltar, the human survivors are just much less interesting than the Cylons... I dunno, I feel the opposite way on this. The cylons were most imposing and effective as antagonists around the begining of the series, when they were mostly faceless (Just the imposing base stars and fighters seen) and were making small, insidious encroachments on organic humanity, like Sharon. "33" was especially effective because even their tactics seemed like brute force mechanical thinking with infinite patience.
Now they seem too human, too emotionally vulnerable and the base star's interior just seems like a space that's too large and relaxing. And seeing base stars filled with Xena's and Tricia Helfer's is somewhat detracting. Though the cylons I really really like are the Dean Stockwell ones and the Grace Park ones. Whereas Lucy Lawless' and Tricia Helfer's cylon characters have grown somewhat flat to me, the other two mentioned represent a lot more of the sadistic cylon determination (Stockwell) and the schitzophrenic identity crisis that organic cylons are bound to have (All those Sharons)
I listen to the podcast commentaries a lot and Ronald D Moore, the producer, openly acknowledges a lot of these issues, that whatever cylon sets they built wouldnt never live up to peoples' imaginations and that revealing more and more about the cylons was always simply too tempting for them as authors. I can appreciate that, but I still think they were perhaps incorrect choices.
What I think they should do with this current arc they are doing is to give Baltar back to the Galactica. The only problem with that is considering how enthusiastically they've ejected people out of airlocks for less, keeping him alive on Galactica would be difficult to do believably. Maybe strand him on the algea planet with someone like the Chief... Also, while another election episode would be rather dull, Laura has stayed in powr through so many unlikely twists that to remove her from power within the fleet would put her character in an interesting position.
For the record, I still think it's the best drama on television, and easily soars above the 99% of TV that's just utter cultural garbage.
Well, if the content in question is lame or uninspiring enough that no one bothers to copy it... well then it stays exclusive. Hooray for big TV network dinosaurs!
Your post reminded me of some musings I've indulged in myself sometimes. Though I'm not at the stage in my life where I'm even considering having kids, I'd given some casual musings to how I would intriduce them to certain things, like Star Wars. After giving it much thought, I came up with what I would think is the ideal order for introducing someone to Star Wars.
Start with Episode IV, for many reasons. It was the first film released, thus the first taste anyone got of Star Wars. It's also the most self-contained. It has all the elements that make the rest of the films impressive, but its scope is tighter and much more limited, thus it's more impressive without seeing it in the context of the much more broad visions of the other films. (Plus, as after watching the entire saga one can claim Palpatine is the true arch villain of the entire series, it's strange that he is only briefly referenced once in dialogue early in the film and never actually appears, when viewed in context of his dramatic turn in Episode III.) Move on to Episode V, so you get the huge shocker about Vader, and end on the cliffhanger about Han. Remember, audiances had to wait years for the resolution of that cliffhanger in the original release cycle.
So after Episode V, with Han carted off by Boba, Yoda mentioning "another" hope, Luke smarting after getting his ass kicked by his sociopathic dad, and with the viewer begining to see some depth to the Vader character (and without having had a real introduction to the Emperor beyond a brief hologram) we let those elements hang and linger, and go back to the prequel saga. We see Anakin grow and his backstory fills in some of the depth to Vader's character we only started to see in Episode V. Not having seen Episode VI, the viewer doesn't immediately identify Senator/Chancellor Palpatine as the Emperor/Darth Sideus, and when the little robot obsetrician announces that Amidala has twins and one gets named Leia, that's a genuine surprise to the viewer. (On a side note, that one scene where they name the twins explicitly always struck me as very very stupid fro ma story point of view if they were actually intended to be viewed chronologically. The author of the article makes a great point about how, despite Lucas's claims, the films are actually less satisfying dramatically if watched in 'chronological' order.)
Now that the backstory is filled in for the viewer, and we can see the Emperor as the true puppetmaster and Darth Vader as a manipulated, confliced tool of evil, and we can understand and empathize with Luke's desire to reason with, rather than kill, Vader; we move on to Episode VI. So the cliffhanger regarding Han finally gets sorted out (phew! More of a relief of tension watching 3 films to see that, rather than immediately seeing it resolved, even though it's one of the dumbest rescue plans ever...) and Boba Fett, with whom we have added empathy after seeing his dad raise hell in Episode II (though the vengeful undertones present in the shot where he's seen lifting Jango's severed head/helmet are never really realized, unless you count him briefly fighting Luke as some kind of anti-Jedi vengeance) meets his comically undramatic end, we move to the final set-piece. We've seen Yoda introduced as the unassuming little green guy, then saw him in his heyday, now we see him die. We saw Obi Wan as kindly Uncle Ben, then young kickass Jedi / flawed mentor, now we see him offer final advice to Luke. And when Vader meets his end and redemption, it's the culmination of it all.
This I think gives a great balance to the two approaches to the trilogy. On the one hand, all the best plot twists are preserved for the viewer, and the most limited film is seen first. On the other hand, Episode VI is truely the culmination for the viewer, and despite all the prequels' flaws, Anakin showing up as a blue force ghost in Jedi rock and roll heaven is actually more satisfying after having seen them.
One major problem I can see thats led us to this Diebold mess is that we seem to feel a ned to modernize the election process and to computerize it to bring it, somehow, into the digital age. Electronic voting machines are the wrong way forward, for many reasons, but the main way I want to see American elections modernize is one thing: Get rid of the Electoral College.
There have been three Presidents in american history that have been elected without the popular vote through exploiting the electoral college system (With the 2000 election being one of them) and any look at the media blitz during an American presidential election will show you that 90% of attention has become focused on particular "swing states," which by virtue of being unpredictable demographically recieve the bulk of attention from politicians and analysts. The remainder of the US population are virtually written off, as they reside in states where one can predict a result based on pure party lines. Thus the concerns, grievances or issues of non-'swing-states' are more or less unimportant to them.
This was an old system that was necessary in the USA's early days when communication was slow, but in the modern era, it's something that should be discarded, completely done away with in favor of a nationwide popular vote. Why won't this happen? Because it would require a constitutional amendment, which requires most of the politicians' approval. Thing is, every politician in office today remains so thanks to their ability to use/manipulate/exploit/master the democratic systems we have in place, and it would be contrary to their own personal interests to make the country better by making this change. A presidential candidate doesn't want to have to think about 50 states in an election year (though he or she should) so it suits them to only have to deal with 4 or 5 swing states.
Ultimately, it's my view that Diebold is just one facet of a very broken election system (at least a national election system, local and congressional elections have their own issues, just ask Tom Delay) which won't be fixed because those that can fix it are the ones benefiting from it being broken.
This makes me wonder if the ability to enter text in the latest version of the video iPods (So that one could search for tracks by name/etc like one does in iTunes) was just introduced so that people could enter wifi network passwords for a future version of the iPod.
News anchors, don't start looking for a new job just yet.
Unless you want to become real journalists.
Ooohhhh snap!
Seriously, I think that anchor culture in news is a mistake. Why do we need to see an avatar or person delivering news for it to be trustworthy? I find a lot of the plastic talking heads on television news decidedly untrustworthy, as more care seems to have gone into diction than thought, and their veneer of omnipotence vanishes once the teleprompter breaks.
I've lived in both the US and Ireland, and while the US is far worse in this area, both sides of the pond have this issue. Anyone in Europe or American visiting Europe should check out a station called "Euronews" (Dont worry, it covers mainly international news, so it's not too Euro-centric) which lacks an anchor, has a really boring voiceover delivering the news (which to me is more effective at conveying information) and has a remarkable segment every half hour called "No Comment," wherein they show five or so minutes of footage from a portion of the world important to the day's news, like baghdad, but no one talks over it. The sound you hear is the sound from the source footage. There's really absolutely nothing like it in American news, and it's desperately needed I think.
(Dual citizen here, Born and lived most of my life in the states, now I'm living in Ireland. Lot of problems here, but they're different problems than in the US)
Changing weapon prices would only add to the dynamic of can x vs clan y vs clan z. It'll be something equivalent to weather changes in football. "Oh, we played team X and beat them, but when we played team Y in the rain/snow, we lost." With the exception of some indoor sports, very few games can realistically offer identical conditions for every competition.
Plus, what's more boring than players who memorize and exploit unchanging systems like video game levels?
How do you know that it isn't actually September 25th, and that our calendar was overzealously started a few days too early, hmm? If you'd played Brain Age, you'd have thought of that.
...or at least saying it could be, if done right. So, you win.
Heh, reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes, where Calvin stated that he approaches conversations like contests where points can be awarded for dominating the tone or direction of a discussion. Hobbes says "That's absurd, discussion can't always be competative!" To which Calvin replies "Okay that's one point, but I'm still ahead!" (I'm sure I butchered the joke in the telling...)
Anyway, yes, one would have a horribly warped understanding of history and society if one relied upon fiction alone, and context, such as primary historical details, makes almost all fiction or art more satisfying and insightful. So I suppose, yes, if one had to choose between one (raw, verifiable facts, primary audio/visual sources and/or eyewitness accounts) or the other (artistic interpretations of history or primary historical sources), yes you have to choose the former.
As far as ancient epics relating to modern art, the first barrier is I tend to feel that it is juuust about impossible to fully understand the psychology of a culture 2,000 years removed from ourselves, but the ancient epics could probably be, very tangeantially, compared to some of Hollywood's attempts at historical drama. Take "Gladiator" for instance, some efforts are made to inform (well, the opening text-blurb, though Gladiator got loads of historical facts wrong, it has a veneer of accuracy), to entertain, and to push an agenda (Democracy, questioning the role of the spectator). The Illiad served as an information source for the populace (perhaps to no more a degree of accuracy than "Gladiator" handled its history...), it entertained, and it pushed the agenda of Greek unity and loyalty to country, husband, etc. The context of one oral work dominating culture for hundreds of years versus one of hundreds of hollywood films that were produced in a single year of course couldn't be more different, but it's interesting to think that somehow, by sitting around an electronic, light based storyteller we hearken back to the singers of old.
And yeah, archeaology is a vast wealth of information across all cultures, what's interesting about the particular examples we were discussing though is that archaeology has only recently felt it had discovered the ruins of Troy, and if indeed it has, it actually sheds very little light on the actual events of the Trojan War so far. Kind of funny how the epic and the site are tomes of entirely mutually exclusive knowledge about essentially the same thing.
Sorry, just late-night entertainment sophistry:P
So yeah, it's been a very enjoyable discussion, thanks for the equally well expressed counterpoints:P
Okay, I think maybe one of the things that makes my perspective difficult to argue is that the culture in question here is Star Trek, a piece of work that many more people dismiss than take seriously.
And whether or not the researcher-in-question's task was difficult or well accomplished isn't something I can really vouch for, all I can do is take the word of the committee that gave her the award.
So I'm only going to reply to portions of your argument that I actually have rebuttals for, hope you don't mind.
Entertainment is just entertainment. If I want to think seriously about a topic, I read a serious book on it. If I want to relax and turn the serious-thinking parts of my brain off, then I watch Star Trek. If I want to learn about life, then I talk to my father or my neighbor with the Purple Heart from Vietnam. Or I observe my children, or read the autobiography of someone who's had an interesting life.
While not all art of culture is created equal, even in film the distinction between entertainment and something more serious or relevant can be murky. Something like the Power Rangers is very simple to just classify as entertainment, and there's little reason to believe any of the people who contributed to it attempted to make it anything deeper. But what about something like Apocalypse Now? It's an entertaining and egaging film on the one hand, and a rather intense exercise is philosophy on the other hand. Fact of the matter is the only written source you mentioned as a possible source for serious thought was an autobiography. Sometimes autobiographies can be very flawed formats for conveying a life experiance or opinion. What if someone chose to interpret their own life experiences in another manner? Hemmingway led what I think you could deem to be an interesting life, from WWI to the Spanish Civil War. He chose to convey his experiences through novels like For Whom the Bell Tolls. Kurt Vonnegut watched the firebombing of Dresden occur before his eyes, and his method of exploring that experience was through a semi fictional, semi autobiography (Slaughterhouse V) where he described in detail exactly what he saw, then conveyed his stunned incomprehension through exploring what an alien race would think of humanity at that moment, and describes the sensation of reliving memories by describing it as a character literally 'unstuck in time'. It conveys more about the mental delerium that one faces in such situations that a raw autobiography could have. All forms of art are ideally the vehicle through which the author brings forth something from their experience or feeling and shares it with the world. Some choose autobiography, some reject that and choose to use music or film or poetry. Who says you could gain more insight from Picasso if you talked to him face to face than if you looked at his paintings? The spoken word is a great communication medium, but it has its limitations.
I surely agree entertainment reflects life and the society that makes it. But why study the reflection instead of the thing itself?
What happens when all you have to glean from a society is the reflection?
There is no historical record of the Trojan War, all we have is an epic poem by Homer (who may or may not have been one man) which was orally passed down for generations before it was ever written. What we can extrapolate from the Illiad and Odyssey is the cultural context around which these stories unfolded, how these people felt as though gods were at the heart of such cataclysmic events, and what qualities they valued amongst heroes. Even a sense of their attitude towards their enemies' cultures. One cannot simply step back into Greece, 1,000BC, this cultural fragment is all we have. And the generations of people that did just fine without books and movies? Just who do you think these oratory epics were performed for? Your assertion that if all movies and novels vanished you couldn't care less may be true in your case, but it reflects an attitude that I don't think would be shar
I dunno, your analysis seems to dismiss Dr. Baker (who is a fox) and her research just because it is in a modern cultural field. Yes, something like a medical advance is extremely useful to humanity, but when he isn't studying immunological facotrs relating to the herpes virus, what does Dr Christopher Smith watch on TV while he relaxes? Why does he watch it, and what does it say about the greater cultural forces surrounding him? If he responds to the Borg, for instance, as effective villains, why is that? Is it because they are ugly and their mechanical elements makes them intimidating, or is it because they represent the polar opposite of the Thatcher-esque mode of thinking that has come to define modern capitalist nations? (Thatcher once said there is no society, only individuals. The Borg are the exact opposite.)
I could go on a rant about how medicine may allow us to live, but culture makes life worth living, but it would be a stretch to say that Dr Baker is producing culture. What she is doing is helping us understand our own culture. When we foster a society that can engage critically with its own culture and media, we have a culture that is less susceptble to the influence of those who would use media to control the public. We gain understanding, or at least perspective, on the other cultures surrounding is and the cultures that preceded us, and we also open doorways to a brighter future. How many people do you think became engineers or scientists thanks to watching Star Trek as children? Couldn't Jules Verne and Meliés deserve some credit for inspiring certain elements of our journeys to the mood and beneath the oceans?
As someone currently in college, currently studying animation (but finding myself drawn away from the practical side and towards the theoretical side) I often grapple with the feeling that I'm devoting a lot of my time, my youth and my mental energy to something that could quite possibly be considered irrelevant. On some level it's possible to say that research using Star Trek is fairly inconsequential, but ultimately, devoting research to it goes back to one of my favorite adages of philosophy, Socrates. The unexamined life is not worth living. If no one examines Star Trek, is it worth watching?
Thing is, Intel Macs as a gaming platform isn't really feasable just yet. I bought a dual core G5 Powermac 8 months ago, got 2gb of RAM and the highest quality video card the Apple Store would put in it. These kinds of Macs are still being sold, and the buyers are amongst Apple's most serious customers. They also represent what are supposed to be Apple's most powerful machines.
Yet it seems like a Mac like this is less of a gaming platform than an equivalent mac was 5 years ago? Until Civilization 4 was released, the newest mac game available for an entire year was World of Warcraft, a game in which I dabbled, but ultimately dismissed. It certainly isn't the game that you use to show off a computer's capabilities.
Why is it that games that are unanimously celebrated and huge sellers on the PC side, virtually guarenteed to make a profit on any platform, such as Half Life 2 and Oblivion, never make their way to the Mac? Well from my initial looks around, a lot of the problems come from the Havok physics engine, which is a bundled element of the Windows-only 3DS Max modelling and animation program. Havok is the engine that drives the physics reactions in both games mentioned, and has been ported to Windows, the Playstation 2, the Xbox, and every one of the next generation console systems. Yet any game using it that companies have tried to port to the Mac have been scrapped because the developers of Havok won't fix the problems it causes on the Mac.
As a gamer and an animator, I like Havok and I think it adds volumes to creating a realistic and vibrant 3D environment that moves as it should. As an Irish college student, I like it because it was made in Trinity College Dublin. As a Mac user, I resent the fact that they are putting zero effort into making the program work on the platform that most of the creative professionals who generate the game content use...
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed that too, and for the most part I hoped, and still hope that those sorts of unknowns are limited to things that really don't affect the plot much (Like the specific situ of the colony worlds or whether the cylons have a planet to themselves). A lot of those unknows are typical of how those shows develop and come about and it's interesting that Ronald D Moore makes that stuff public knowledge, sort of revealing the lack any whiz bang secrets for the most part. And when that formula crumbles, well just look at 'Lost.' That show has been a joke for two seasons now.
And yeah, you're exactly right that the Cylons' very silly mindsets as we see them, (worries about pointless philosophy, religion, how to deal with Adama, what they want with the super baby) totally undermine that constant reminder of "They have a plan."
What they should do is have the Dean Stockwell cylon (the preacher guy, the real bloodthirsty neo-con of the bunch) be much more of an active leading force for the cylons as a whole, since he (and the Kevin Spacey look-a-like) are the closest analgues to the behavior and attitude of the cylons we know and love from the first 2 seasons. The various incarnations of Sharon would then stay interesting. I'm disappointed that Boomer isn't explored more when we're among the cylons, as the potential for her character is far more interesting than Lucy Lawless', for whom I'm finding it difficult to care. Really, shouldn't Boomer be the first person to empathise with Baltar's situation? Why aren't they closer, why dont they interact? She was a human before, as far as she was concerned.
Another thing that's no doubt making it hard for the writers to communicate the idea of there being a plan is the fact that, as a TV show, BSG's narrative length has an uncertain future. They probably have a plan of how to resolve things should they not get another season, but I really think shows like these should have a finite lifespan built into them, so that overall arcs can be planned in a satisfactory way. End the story after 2 or three seasons. Still more demand? Do a spinoff story, another season or 2. Then it can stand as a satisfying, complete body of work. Hints left at the start could pay off at the end, like the way a film is planned. But that's just not gonna happen in American television, though it does happen in the UK (The Office only ran two seasons before they stopped it themselves) and Japan (anime series tend to only go for one season and have an overarching plot that resolves itself i na true finale at the last episode.)
The show has been slow pretty frequently, but that's why I think it suits the DVD format more than a weekly TV format. I watched the first season just from the DVDs, and they were great, and it makes it tough to watch them on a week-by-week basis. Though the first 3 (or 4, depending on how you number them) episodes of season 3 were really rich and well paced.
I personally think that the current Adama / Starbuck / Anders storyline is the weakest one they've done. It's predictable, and it's just not satisfying. Plus, in an episode where large forces are clashing and nuclear armageddon is at play again, it just seems petty and unimportant to go back to "Hey! Stay away from my already-promiscuous wife!" (Though Anders is another Colonel Tigh in the making from all this...)
(Just a side not, does it irk anyone else that the Galactica has either gotten twice as powerful, or its crew twice as competant since the start of the show? At the start, the most Galactica seemed to be able to hope for against even a single base star was to just buy time and hold them off. The first base star they blew up was by sneakily planting a nuke on board, and the first they defeated in open combat was halfway through season 2, when they had the Pegasus with them. Now they seem to be able to take on base stars much more effectively... seems like it shifts the balance of the show a little.) The one thing I miss tough is the deliciously crazy Baltar being tormented by Number Six while he is going around on Galactica and having people look at him funny. And the shocker was realizing the Number Six on her own also had her own suggestive-manipulative-Baltar in her head. That was a great revelation. Too bad they didn't get to play more with this since Baltar is now on the base ship. One thing I don't really get is that even when Baltar is reunited with Caprica Six, he still sees his imaginary number six in the red dress in his head. They seem to have been established as two seperate entities, and I'm not sure where the writers seem to be going with that. One would think we'd see some more of imaginary Baltar in Caprica Six's head, now that she's once more an active character. I'd like to see more time dedicated to Baltar trying to figure out why he's still seeing his imaginary cylon lover...
...and started being a bit more imposing and even began leading the cylons? Yeah I really like that idea. Rather than the puppet leader he was on New Caprica, they could have him as a dominating cult-of-personality type leader, giant posters of his face, etc. aybe even have him discover that he isn't one of the 'Final Five' but have him and his regime claim he is anyway, a Cylon Messiah. Then he can graduate to being a full fledged villain, but his rational side would still fnd conflict with his situation. Plus the Cylons always seemed prone to hysterical zealotry, they now seem far too rational in comparison to the genocide they wreaked at the begining of the series.Yeah, I like that idea.
Now they seem too human, too emotionally vulnerable and the base star's interior just seems like a space that's too large and relaxing. And seeing base stars filled with Xena's and Tricia Helfer's is somewhat detracting. Though the cylons I really really like are the Dean Stockwell ones and the Grace Park ones. Whereas Lucy Lawless' and Tricia Helfer's cylon characters have grown somewhat flat to me, the other two mentioned represent a lot more of the sadistic cylon determination (Stockwell) and the schitzophrenic identity crisis that organic cylons are bound to have (All those Sharons)
I listen to the podcast commentaries a lot and Ronald D Moore, the producer, openly acknowledges a lot of these issues, that whatever cylon sets they built wouldnt never live up to peoples' imaginations and that revealing more and more about the cylons was always simply too tempting for them as authors. I can appreciate that, but I still think they were perhaps incorrect choices.
What I think they should do with this current arc they are doing is to give Baltar back to the Galactica. The only problem with that is considering how enthusiastically they've ejected people out of airlocks for less, keeping him alive on Galactica would be difficult to do believably. Maybe strand him on the algea planet with someone like the Chief... Also, while another election episode would be rather dull, Laura has stayed in powr through so many unlikely twists that to remove her from power within the fleet would put her character in an interesting position.
For the record, I still think it's the best drama on television, and easily soars above the 99% of TV that's just utter cultural garbage.
Ilchester, sir. It's quite staggeringly popular in the manor.
Well, if the content in question is lame or uninspiring enough that no one bothers to copy it... well then it stays exclusive. Hooray for big TV network dinosaurs!
Too true, but then I always wanted to seem like the cool Star Wars enthusiast who could get laid. Then I make Star Wars posts on Slashdot...
Your post reminded me of some musings I've indulged in myself sometimes. Though I'm not at the stage in my life where I'm even considering having kids, I'd given some casual musings to how I would intriduce them to certain things, like Star Wars. After giving it much thought, I came up with what I would think is the ideal order for introducing someone to Star Wars.
Start with Episode IV, for many reasons. It was the first film released, thus the first taste anyone got of Star Wars. It's also the most self-contained. It has all the elements that make the rest of the films impressive, but its scope is tighter and much more limited, thus it's more impressive without seeing it in the context of the much more broad visions of the other films. (Plus, as after watching the entire saga one can claim Palpatine is the true arch villain of the entire series, it's strange that he is only briefly referenced once in dialogue early in the film and never actually appears, when viewed in context of his dramatic turn in Episode III.) Move on to Episode V, so you get the huge shocker about Vader, and end on the cliffhanger about Han. Remember, audiances had to wait years for the resolution of that cliffhanger in the original release cycle.
So after Episode V, with Han carted off by Boba, Yoda mentioning "another" hope, Luke smarting after getting his ass kicked by his sociopathic dad, and with the viewer begining to see some depth to the Vader character (and without having had a real introduction to the Emperor beyond a brief hologram) we let those elements hang and linger, and go back to the prequel saga. We see Anakin grow and his backstory fills in some of the depth to Vader's character we only started to see in Episode V. Not having seen Episode VI, the viewer doesn't immediately identify Senator/Chancellor Palpatine as the Emperor/Darth Sideus, and when the little robot obsetrician announces that Amidala has twins and one gets named Leia, that's a genuine surprise to the viewer. (On a side note, that one scene where they name the twins explicitly always struck me as very very stupid fro ma story point of view if they were actually intended to be viewed chronologically. The author of the article makes a great point about how, despite Lucas's claims, the films are actually less satisfying dramatically if watched in 'chronological' order.)
Now that the backstory is filled in for the viewer, and we can see the Emperor as the true puppetmaster and Darth Vader as a manipulated, confliced tool of evil, and we can understand and empathize with Luke's desire to reason with, rather than kill, Vader; we move on to Episode VI. So the cliffhanger regarding Han finally gets sorted out (phew! More of a relief of tension watching 3 films to see that, rather than immediately seeing it resolved, even though it's one of the dumbest rescue plans ever...) and Boba Fett, with whom we have added empathy after seeing his dad raise hell in Episode II (though the vengeful undertones present in the shot where he's seen lifting Jango's severed head/helmet are never really realized, unless you count him briefly fighting Luke as some kind of anti-Jedi vengeance) meets his comically undramatic end, we move to the final set-piece. We've seen Yoda introduced as the unassuming little green guy, then saw him in his heyday, now we see him die. We saw Obi Wan as kindly Uncle Ben, then young kickass Jedi / flawed mentor, now we see him offer final advice to Luke. And when Vader meets his end and redemption, it's the culmination of it all.
This I think gives a great balance to the two approaches to the trilogy. On the one hand, all the best plot twists are preserved for the viewer, and the most limited film is seen first. On the other hand, Episode VI is truely the culmination for the viewer, and despite all the prequels' flaws, Anakin showing up as a blue force ghost in Jedi rock and roll heaven is actually more satisfying after having seen them.
One major problem I can see thats led us to this Diebold mess is that we seem to feel a ned to modernize the election process and to computerize it to bring it, somehow, into the digital age. Electronic voting machines are the wrong way forward, for many reasons, but the main way I want to see American elections modernize is one thing: Get rid of the Electoral College.
There have been three Presidents in american history that have been elected without the popular vote through exploiting the electoral college system (With the 2000 election being one of them) and any look at the media blitz during an American presidential election will show you that 90% of attention has become focused on particular "swing states," which by virtue of being unpredictable demographically recieve the bulk of attention from politicians and analysts. The remainder of the US population are virtually written off, as they reside in states where one can predict a result based on pure party lines. Thus the concerns, grievances or issues of non-'swing-states' are more or less unimportant to them.
This was an old system that was necessary in the USA's early days when communication was slow, but in the modern era, it's something that should be discarded, completely done away with in favor of a nationwide popular vote. Why won't this happen? Because it would require a constitutional amendment, which requires most of the politicians' approval. Thing is, every politician in office today remains so thanks to their ability to use/manipulate/exploit/master the democratic systems we have in place, and it would be contrary to their own personal interests to make the country better by making this change. A presidential candidate doesn't want to have to think about 50 states in an election year (though he or she should) so it suits them to only have to deal with 4 or 5 swing states.
Ultimately, it's my view that Diebold is just one facet of a very broken election system (at least a national election system, local and congressional elections have their own issues, just ask Tom Delay) which won't be fixed because those that can fix it are the ones benefiting from it being broken.
Yeah but... Netcraft confirmed it!
(Ahh, the smell of burning karma)
Wow, just reading that third paragraph made me feel immense relief that somehow, human society just might not be as doomed as I thought.
This makes me wonder if the ability to enter text in the latest version of the video iPods (So that one could search for tracks by name/etc like one does in iTunes) was just introduced so that people could enter wifi network passwords for a future version of the iPod.
News anchors, don't start looking for a new job just yet.
Unless you want to become real journalists.
Ooohhhh snap!
Seriously, I think that anchor culture in news is a mistake. Why do we need to see an avatar or person delivering news for it to be trustworthy? I find a lot of the plastic talking heads on television news decidedly untrustworthy, as more care seems to have gone into diction than thought, and their veneer of omnipotence vanishes once the teleprompter breaks.
I've lived in both the US and Ireland, and while the US is far worse in this area, both sides of the pond have this issue. Anyone in Europe or American visiting Europe should check out a station called "Euronews" (Dont worry, it covers mainly international news, so it's not too Euro-centric) which lacks an anchor, has a really boring voiceover delivering the news (which to me is more effective at conveying information) and has a remarkable segment every half hour called "No Comment," wherein they show five or so minutes of footage from a portion of the world important to the day's news, like baghdad, but no one talks over it. The sound you hear is the sound from the source footage. There's really absolutely nothing like it in American news, and it's desperately needed I think.
Hooray for absentee ballots!
(Dual citizen here, Born and lived most of my life in the states, now I'm living in Ireland. Lot of problems here, but they're different problems than in the US)
Changing weapon prices would only add to the dynamic of can x vs clan y vs clan z. It'll be something equivalent to weather changes in football. "Oh, we played team X and beat them, but when we played team Y in the rain/snow, we lost." With the exception of some indoor sports, very few games can realistically offer identical conditions for every competition.
Plus, what's more boring than players who memorize and exploit unchanging systems like video game levels?
How do you know that it isn't actually September 25th, and that our calendar was overzealously started a few days too early, hmm? If you'd played Brain Age, you'd have thought of that.
...or at least saying it could be, if done right. So, you win.
:P
:P
Heh, reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes, where Calvin stated that he approaches conversations like contests where points can be awarded for dominating the tone or direction of a discussion. Hobbes says "That's absurd, discussion can't always be competative!" To which Calvin replies "Okay that's one point, but I'm still ahead!" (I'm sure I butchered the joke in the telling...)
Anyway, yes, one would have a horribly warped understanding of history and society if one relied upon fiction alone, and context, such as primary historical details, makes almost all fiction or art more satisfying and insightful. So I suppose, yes, if one had to choose between one (raw, verifiable facts, primary audio/visual sources and/or eyewitness accounts) or the other (artistic interpretations of history or primary historical sources), yes you have to choose the former.
As far as ancient epics relating to modern art, the first barrier is I tend to feel that it is juuust about impossible to fully understand the psychology of a culture 2,000 years removed from ourselves, but the ancient epics could probably be, very tangeantially, compared to some of Hollywood's attempts at historical drama. Take "Gladiator" for instance, some efforts are made to inform (well, the opening text-blurb, though Gladiator got loads of historical facts wrong, it has a veneer of accuracy), to entertain, and to push an agenda (Democracy, questioning the role of the spectator). The Illiad served as an information source for the populace (perhaps to no more a degree of accuracy than "Gladiator" handled its history...), it entertained, and it pushed the agenda of Greek unity and loyalty to country, husband, etc. The context of one oral work dominating culture for hundreds of years versus one of hundreds of hollywood films that were produced in a single year of course couldn't be more different, but it's interesting to think that somehow, by sitting around an electronic, light based storyteller we hearken back to the singers of old.
And yeah, archeaology is a vast wealth of information across all cultures, what's interesting about the particular examples we were discussing though is that archaeology has only recently felt it had discovered the ruins of Troy, and if indeed it has, it actually sheds very little light on the actual events of the Trojan War so far. Kind of funny how the epic and the site are tomes of entirely mutually exclusive knowledge about essentially the same thing.
Sorry, just late-night entertainment sophistry
So yeah, it's been a very enjoyable discussion, thanks for the equally well expressed counterpoints
Oh, and because I forgot to address this bit:
:)
Like masturbation teaches one about sex? I think not.
This is Slashdot. Thousands of people here pray it does.
Okay, I think maybe one of the things that makes my perspective difficult to argue is that the culture in question here is Star Trek, a piece of work that many more people dismiss than take seriously.
And whether or not the researcher-in-question's task was difficult or well accomplished isn't something I can really vouch for, all I can do is take the word of the committee that gave her the award.
So I'm only going to reply to portions of your argument that I actually have rebuttals for, hope you don't mind.
Entertainment is just entertainment. If I want to think seriously about a topic, I read a serious book on it. If I want to relax and turn the serious-thinking parts of my brain off, then I watch Star Trek. If I want to learn about life, then I talk to my father or my neighbor with the Purple Heart from Vietnam. Or I observe my children, or read the autobiography of someone who's had an interesting life.
While not all art of culture is created equal, even in film the distinction between entertainment and something more serious or relevant can be murky. Something like the Power Rangers is very simple to just classify as entertainment, and there's little reason to believe any of the people who contributed to it attempted to make it anything deeper. But what about something like Apocalypse Now? It's an entertaining and egaging film on the one hand, and a rather intense exercise is philosophy on the other hand. Fact of the matter is the only written source you mentioned as a possible source for serious thought was an autobiography. Sometimes autobiographies can be very flawed formats for conveying a life experiance or opinion. What if someone chose to interpret their own life experiences in another manner? Hemmingway led what I think you could deem to be an interesting life, from WWI to the Spanish Civil War. He chose to convey his experiences through novels like For Whom the Bell Tolls. Kurt Vonnegut watched the firebombing of Dresden occur before his eyes, and his method of exploring that experience was through a semi fictional, semi autobiography (Slaughterhouse V) where he described in detail exactly what he saw, then conveyed his stunned incomprehension through exploring what an alien race would think of humanity at that moment, and describes the sensation of reliving memories by describing it as a character literally 'unstuck in time'. It conveys more about the mental delerium that one faces in such situations that a raw autobiography could have. All forms of art are ideally the vehicle through which the author brings forth something from their experience or feeling and shares it with the world. Some choose autobiography, some reject that and choose to use music or film or poetry. Who says you could gain more insight from Picasso if you talked to him face to face than if you looked at his paintings? The spoken word is a great communication medium, but it has its limitations.
I surely agree entertainment reflects life and the society that makes it. But why study the reflection instead of the thing itself?
What happens when all you have to glean from a society is the reflection?
There is no historical record of the Trojan War, all we have is an epic poem by Homer (who may or may not have been one man) which was orally passed down for generations before it was ever written. What we can extrapolate from the Illiad and Odyssey is the cultural context around which these stories unfolded, how these people felt as though gods were at the heart of such cataclysmic events, and what qualities they valued amongst heroes. Even a sense of their attitude towards their enemies' cultures. One cannot simply step back into Greece, 1,000BC, this cultural fragment is all we have. And the generations of people that did just fine without books and movies? Just who do you think these oratory epics were performed for? Your assertion that if all movies and novels vanished you couldn't care less may be true in your case, but it reflects an attitude that I don't think would be shar
I dunno, your analysis seems to dismiss Dr. Baker (who is a fox) and her research just because it is in a modern cultural field. Yes, something like a medical advance is extremely useful to humanity, but when he isn't studying immunological facotrs relating to the herpes virus, what does Dr Christopher Smith watch on TV while he relaxes? Why does he watch it, and what does it say about the greater cultural forces surrounding him? If he responds to the Borg, for instance, as effective villains, why is that? Is it because they are ugly and their mechanical elements makes them intimidating, or is it because they represent the polar opposite of the Thatcher-esque mode of thinking that has come to define modern capitalist nations? (Thatcher once said there is no society, only individuals. The Borg are the exact opposite.)
I could go on a rant about how medicine may allow us to live, but culture makes life worth living, but it would be a stretch to say that Dr Baker is producing culture. What she is doing is helping us understand our own culture. When we foster a society that can engage critically with its own culture and media, we have a culture that is less susceptble to the influence of those who would use media to control the public. We gain understanding, or at least perspective, on the other cultures surrounding is and the cultures that preceded us, and we also open doorways to a brighter future. How many people do you think became engineers or scientists thanks to watching Star Trek as children? Couldn't Jules Verne and Meliés deserve some credit for inspiring certain elements of our journeys to the mood and beneath the oceans?
As someone currently in college, currently studying animation (but finding myself drawn away from the practical side and towards the theoretical side) I often grapple with the feeling that I'm devoting a lot of my time, my youth and my mental energy to something that could quite possibly be considered irrelevant. On some level it's possible to say that research using Star Trek is fairly inconsequential, but ultimately, devoting research to it goes back to one of my favorite adages of philosophy, Socrates. The unexamined life is not worth living. If no one examines Star Trek, is it worth watching?
Somebody's been reading too much of the high-tech toilet thread elsewhere on the page...
So that's why the moon's always holding a clipboard over its lap when I look skyward...
Thing is, Intel Macs as a gaming platform isn't really feasable just yet. I bought a dual core G5 Powermac 8 months ago, got 2gb of RAM and the highest quality video card the Apple Store would put in it. These kinds of Macs are still being sold, and the buyers are amongst Apple's most serious customers. They also represent what are supposed to be Apple's most powerful machines.
Yet it seems like a Mac like this is less of a gaming platform than an equivalent mac was 5 years ago? Until Civilization 4 was released, the newest mac game available for an entire year was World of Warcraft, a game in which I dabbled, but ultimately dismissed. It certainly isn't the game that you use to show off a computer's capabilities.
Why is it that games that are unanimously celebrated and huge sellers on the PC side, virtually guarenteed to make a profit on any platform, such as Half Life 2 and Oblivion, never make their way to the Mac? Well from my initial looks around, a lot of the problems come from the Havok physics engine, which is a bundled element of the Windows-only 3DS Max modelling and animation program. Havok is the engine that drives the physics reactions in both games mentioned, and has been ported to Windows, the Playstation 2, the Xbox, and every one of the next generation console systems. Yet any game using it that companies have tried to port to the Mac have been scrapped because the developers of Havok won't fix the problems it causes on the Mac.
As a gamer and an animator, I like Havok and I think it adds volumes to creating a realistic and vibrant 3D environment that moves as it should. As an Irish college student, I like it because it was made in Trinity College Dublin. As a Mac user, I resent the fact that they are putting zero effort into making the program work on the platform that most of the creative professionals who generate the game content use...