Well one of the things that *really* pissed me off with BSG was the guy with his 'imaginary' cylon, uh, 'girlfriend' who was obviously psychotic and should definately have been locked away where he couldn't cause trouble.
That was what killed it for me, and so far as I can tell this whole 'imaginary girlfriend' thing is integral to the whole plotline...
"I wouldn't say that they reinvented the genre, but it is frankly some of the best space opera I've seen. period. I don't say that a lot, and I used to be a major TNG fanboy."
Ok so if I actually see *no* space opera in TNG and find it hollow and lame then perhaps I would find BSG lacking in the same sort of way?
Cos I saw the premier (the one with the Cylons appearing every 30-something minutes) and havn't even bothered since...
"The game is interesting when people play it because people have a huge amount of trouble actually being random."
I once had the misfortune to draw on a sequence of seven (yes 7) rock-paper-scissors. We were honestly trying to beat one another; It was against a little twerp that I didn't like at all. Live-action roleplaying is better than beating the crap out of people
It was as if our PRNG's had somehow got set to the same seed.
cruise missiles which can loiter for weeks or months waiting for a target of opportunity?
Admittedly the balloons wouldn't exactly be able to do much station-keeping.
In ww2 the Japanese prepared bomb-carrying baloons and let them drift on the winds. IIRC some actually reached the Western coast of the USA. Naturally, nothing much came of them... even California is (or was then) just empty land.
This one involves using baloons carrying something like a stinger missile for use against strategic bombers. It would have a very small radar crossection and just drift until it sensed a bomber and then strike it from above and behind.
Sort of like mining the jetstreams.
Its about time strategic bombers had a decent (and comparatively cheap) countermeasure. (Personally I can't think of a more despicable means of waging war... except flying airliners into buildings).
It may be in American English but not English English, ok? And it definitely doesn't look phonemically English to me. More like Arabic or some other semitic language.
You might be surprised at how many Americanisms are a total puzzle to the rest of the English speaking world!
"All evidence supports evolution which obviously riles up creationists"
Because reliance on non-scriptural evidence is the very reverse of 'good reasoning' to these people.
To the typical religious type, and I know its a generalisation, things should be 'self evident' (where that usually means reference to scripture).
At the end of J.G.Fraziers classic "The Golden Bough" he makes a very shrewd comparison of magic, religion and science and comes to the conclusion that magic and science have more in common with one another than either have with religion;
Religion is essentially the submission of the human will to that of a higher order, sometimes a capricious order which may be swayed by prayers and offerings. Its rules and motivations are known only to itself.
Magic and science both present the world as operating according to rules, not according to the will of supranatural entities, and that human beings can understand these rules and if they do so, can change the world.
For my own part... I actually prefer mysteries. Its when you don't know the answers and know that you don't... thats when one makes ones greatest advances.
"That makes intelligent design your hypothesis, not a theory"
It would need to be testable and therefore disprovable.
Naturally, no theist wants to admit that the existance of their divinity *can* be disproved, so they will never offer a scientific theory. Its therefore a research dead-end.
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Well one of the things that *really* pissed me off with BSG was the guy with his 'imaginary' cylon, uh, 'girlfriend' who was obviously psychotic and should definately have been locked away where he couldn't cause trouble.
That was what killed it for me, and so far as I can tell this whole 'imaginary girlfriend' thing is integral to the whole plotline...
" to watch The Island of Dr. Moreau again?"
Hell yeah!
I just want one of those cat chicks... 'yeah shes a pussycat'
"I wouldn't say that they reinvented the genre, but it is frankly some of the best space opera I've seen. period. I don't say that a lot, and I used to be a major TNG fanboy."
Ok so if I actually see *no* space opera in TNG and find it hollow and lame then perhaps I would find BSG lacking in the same sort of way?
Cos I saw the premier (the one with the Cylons appearing every 30-something minutes) and havn't even bothered since...
"The game is interesting when people play it because people have a huge amount of trouble actually being random."
I once had the misfortune to draw on a sequence of seven (yes 7) rock-paper-scissors. We were honestly trying to beat one another; It was against a little twerp that I didn't like at all. Live-action roleplaying is better than beating the crap out of people
It was as if our PRNG's had somehow got set to the same seed.
Oh and it felt very disturbing.
'> It is compatible with all systems running Microsoft Windows 95 and above.
And this is called "Standard Keyboard"?'
'And above'.
So it'll work on Linux or OSX but not DOS, right?
Wow, I'd never have taken Verizon for a company ahead of their time...
'Fax Bush a heart!'
I just love the way that he has vowed to fight all other tyrants.
but the people *in* 'Sliders' didn't know any better and *they* went through the same thing week after week...
first we assume the 'spherical cow' position...
"Where could this technology lead in a 100 years I wonder?"
I don't know... lets see now... How about printer vendors selling toner cartridges for arms and legs for an arm and a leg?
"bioengineered elves"
Bloody humorless Dunmer bastards... let them rot in the ashes...
cruise missiles which can loiter for weeks or months waiting for a target of opportunity?
Admittedly the balloons wouldn't exactly be able to do much station-keeping.
In ww2 the Japanese prepared bomb-carrying baloons and let them drift on the winds. IIRC some actually reached the Western coast of the USA. Naturally, nothing much came of them... even California is (or was then) just empty land.
yeah I have whacky ideas from time to time.
This one involves using baloons carrying something like a stinger missile for use against strategic bombers. It would have a very small radar crossection and just drift until it sensed a bomber and then strike it from above and behind.
Sort of like mining the jetstreams.
Its about time strategic bombers had a decent (and comparatively cheap) countermeasure. (Personally I can't think of a more despicable means of waging war... except flying airliners into buildings).
It may be in American English but not English English, ok? And it definitely doesn't look phonemically English to me. More like Arabic or some other semitic language.
You might be surprised at how many Americanisms are a total puzzle to the rest of the English speaking world!
Ok, my guess is Yiddish?
Well... those pictures were taken on Earth and I can barely make out what is in the frame; can we expect any better from Titan?
"If I were world dictator, I'd put a kibosh on binary XML"
a 'kibosh'? Is that like a death sentence? A reward? a what?
What language is he talking?
"No, your are misinterpreting something. Newtons Laws are a definition what 'force' is."
No, you are misinterpreting something.
In fact you make the exact point that I was trying to make; that these 'laws' are not provable in the sense of a scientific theory.
They are axioms not testable theories like evolution, for example.
"All evidence supports evolution which obviously riles up creationists"
Because reliance on non-scriptural evidence is the very reverse of 'good reasoning' to these people.
To the typical religious type, and I know its a generalisation, things should be 'self evident' (where that usually means reference to scripture).
At the end of J.G.Fraziers classic "The Golden Bough" he makes a very shrewd comparison of magic, religion and science and comes to the conclusion that magic and science have more in common with one another than either have with religion;
Religion is essentially the submission of the human will to that of a higher order, sometimes a capricious order which may be swayed by prayers and offerings. Its rules and motivations are known only to itself.
Magic and science both present the world as operating according to rules, not according to the will of supranatural entities, and that human beings can understand these rules and if they do so, can change the world.
For my own part... I actually prefer mysteries. Its when you don't know the answers and know that you don't... thats when one makes ones greatest advances.
Ok so do you think that mullah might be prepared to entertain the notion that it may be possible to disprove the existance of Allah?
There is no beginning in Hinduism, well at least in advaita vedanta; the universe is infinite backward and forward in time.
"The difference between a theory and a law is that a law can be absolutely proven, a theory cannot."
I don't think so; a 'Law' in science is most usually an axiom (because it cannot be proven but seems self evident).
Take Newtons umpteenth law of motion "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction"
Try to construct an experiment which would disprove it.
Its logically impossible because the structure of the statement is of the form;
"For every X there exists some Y such that P(X,Y)"
where X is a predicate on X and Y.
which is not disprovable without exhaustive testing case by case.
It follows the exact same pattern as Freuds "Every dream is a neurotic symptom".
"That makes intelligent design your hypothesis, not a theory"
It would need to be testable and therefore disprovable.
Naturally, no theist wants to admit that the existance of their divinity *can* be disproved, so they will never offer a scientific theory. Its therefore a research dead-end.
"I'd like to see hard facts supporting [Intelligent Design]"
Until someone fronts up with the CVS repository its really hard to tell if theres been any intelligent design.
I mean, take MS Windows for example.
just when you thought debian sarge was going to go stable some time this year...