I wasn't trying to establish that the problem is in any way insurmountable. Acknowledging the (what apparently only I see as) difficulty before hand is probably a good idea
You haven't done a very good job of establishing that there is a problem at all. Try explaining what exactly you see as the problem. Maybe that will help. A bunch of non-violent offenders being let out of prison isn't inherently a problem, it happens every day. What is the problem?
"oh, they created a separate time line that's different " waa waaa waa.
Yeah I have to wonder would these "Trekkers" have preferred for Abrams to literally ignore all previous canon, not even acknowledge the previous movies/shows existence as it went off and did its own thing, just like the "true" reboot Batman Begins? We knew from the beginning it was going to be a reboot, and if we were honest we knew that was the only way a new and potentially non-horrible Trek movie would be made.
I went into the theater ready for that. Ready to accept that it was simply a different, baggage-free imagining of the Trek universe. I thought that the time-travel-creates-alternate-timeline device was a nice way for them to free themselves from the baggage, while still respectfully acknowledging what went before and assuring us (via Old Spock) that those stories we knew and love did still happen. Which is why it drives me nuts seeing people complain "Oh noes, now [Episode X] can never happen!!!" when the whole point of the time-travel plot was to assure the fans that Episode X really did happen. That was basically the only reason for the time travel plot to exist, and yet they somehow missed it.
I mean, if Kirk getting promoted through a series of odd happening bother you, then every time the captain goes to a planet, you should be digusted..
LOL, very good point. Then again the real Navy can't send a team consisting of the Captain, the First Mate, the chief medical officer, and Ensign Expendable and know for sure who is and isn't coming back. If they could, Captains might make more trips to shore.;)
true. Unneeded bit of silliness.
Scotty mis-beaming himself inside of an object was funny. It's where he was able to hold his breath for however many minutes with no warning in advance, and then fell from the pipe at least ten feet onto his face without injury that turned it from funny to silly.
Except that that is the only scene in space that is silent in the entire movie. All of the other space battle scenes and that scene save those five seconds have explosions/phasers/missiles going non-stop.
Tell me about it. It's like they either forgot after the first scene, or they never intended to portray space as silent, that was literally just for dramatic effect, and the Abrams would be confused if I complimented him on his (briefly) accurate portrayal of space.
Nevertheless, when I watched it, I got goosebumps. It was pretty awesome imo.:)
Because many industries, including agricultural today, have a natural tendency towards consolidation? Because I fear that there will be licensing required to grow or sell and this will only help encourage the creation of a few mega-corps around it? Because the big tobacco companies would be the ones best poised to take advantage of legalization from the outset? Because that's what's happened with tobacco in the first place?
Try buying a cigarette that isn't loaded with additives that just make the damn things even less healthy. Your choices are American Spirits and... yeah, hope they have American Spirits at the convenience store. It's hard just getting a cigarette that's pure tobacco, so I just don't see many of the big players not cutting joints with at least some tobacco, and using whatever financial muscle is necessary to push the ones who won't play lets-keep-our-customers-addicted ball.
Now I don't think this will happen, it's just my biggest worry over legalization. I worry that the way in which it will be legalized, combined with economic forces, will result in problems. As long as both possession and cultivation are made completely legal, then it probably won't be a big deal.
(I do think that there are some people who might feel like maybe the time they spent in prison was a bit unjust when they get out because the law was changed because it was decided that putting people in prison for the things they did was unjust; they might not be entirely satisfied with just getting out)
And? No really, and?
You realize almost no one is in prison for life without parole due to drugs... they're going to get out eventually, and regardless of whether the law has changed, they are probably going to see their incarceration as unjust.
So what are you implying will happen? They'll riot through the streets until they get... whatever it is people who were unjustly imprisoned are supposed to get? Because surely ending right back in prison for justified reasons is what they'll be after. But hey let's say that whatever it is you're trying to say will happen is true. And this is why you don't want drug offenders released. So does this mean we can't ever release them?
Oh and they'll need jobs, like everyone else who gets out of prison. So, we better keep them incarcerated?
You really have to do a better job of explaining what these "considerable difficulties" you see are, because you're not making much sense.
Actually, most people won't grow it them selves, they will probably buy in from a legal distribute, like cigarettes.
Yeah, and to me the biggest downside of legalization would be that the cigarette companies would start selling mj cigarettes that are significantly cut with tobacco. To them, THC's lack of chemically addictive properties would be a downside, and they'd want to continue to enjoy the benefits of an addicted customer base.
It's so easy to grow (in the right climate) I can see many hippies doing it home-brew style just to avoid this problem.
Transformers was a fine piece of entertainment. Muscles cars that turn into giant robots and blow shit up. It filled the slot perfectly.
Yeah except for it seemed to be a little short on the robots blowing shit up, and way too heavy on the irrelevant and obnoxious characters. Wasn't Shia Leboof and that marine guy enough of a human factor? Did the movie really need two wise-cracking black guys with sassy (grand)mothers?
Still great popcorn muncher. The sequel seems like it may -- may -- solve the robot-related deficiencies of the first.
Well, maybe not the "next" shot, but at least "later" shots. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure I remember a "roar" whenever it showed ships going through a black hole.
Oh, yeah. They had sounds in space in most of the rest of the movie. Which was kinda disappointing. I mean you can easily have all the noise you want -inside- the ship if you think silent explosions aren't dramatic enough, why not continue with the them of having the outside shots be silent? Oh well.
I'd like to point out that, like Earth, Vulcan rotates, and therefore the Romulan vessel would need to maintain geosynchronous orbit to stay over a single spot for drilling. So the ship is actually orbiting the planet in the movie.
However, at that altitude, the drilling rig would have to extend for hundreds of miles, and the ships would probably be farther from the planet than shown in the movie.
Well yes but it's not a "traditional" orbit maintained solely by momentum and gravity and maybe a tiny bit of thrust for corrections. It was a "powered" orbit using its engines that allowed it to remain geosynchronous without being as far away as a traditional geosynchronous orbit.
There's no point in criticizing the orbital mechanics while forgetting that this is a futuristic space ship. It doesn't have to act like the space shuttle.
Exactly. In a movie that was overall had pretty tight editing, that scene stood out as completely unnecessary. I mean, there are a hundred reasons why Kirk could have run into Spock... Hell, maybe Spock had already decided to head to the Starfleet outpost himself and Kirk runs into him at the door.
The one place where the special effects made me think 'aw, yeah!' was the scene where the Enterprise warps into the upper atmosphere of Titan and then slowly emerges out of the clouds.
That was pretty cool, true.
The biggest "aw yeah!" moment for me was in the opening battle scene when the ship takes a hit, and they show inside a corridor where the hull is breached and an officer(I think she was a blue shirt) runs from the big fireball -- which then retracts as the air (and the officer) are sucked out. Cut to outside, where we see the poor woman flying off into space, against a background of phaser banks firing like mad, all in complete silence.
Very potent imagery. Loved the dramatic use of the silence of space, which I think is a first for Trek? At the very least uncommon in pop sci-fi films in general. Sadly I didn't think they topped that moment in any of the other space battle scenes.
Originally, he beat the test by programming the Klingons to think Kirk was a famous war hero, so they simply backed down without even a fight out of fear of his reputation.
So, not exactly subtle either. Is there a subtle way to win an intentionally unwinnable scenario? No matter what he did to change the simulation it would be obvious that he cheated, simply because he won when the simulation was originally programmed to not allow that. Besides, it's not like he was trying to get away with it anyway. He was making a statement, that he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios, and cheating to beat a simulation that is itself a 'cheat' is his way of dealing with it.
That's why it worked for me. Of course he cheated, there was no point in hiding it, so why not sit there with a smug smile on his face eating an apple?
Speaking of subtle, the apple was a nice reference to Wrath of Khan there. I bet there were others in there that I missed. JJ might not be a trekkie, but I think his writers were.
I wonder whether Neanderthal strength was too much of a good thing. Modern humans don't need it. Neanderthal skeletons indicate a rough life -- lots of broken bones. Some have suggested they jumped on moderate sized prey and wrestled it to the ground for the kill. It's pretty bad-ass, to be sure, but unnecessary for a creature with a brain that size. Modern humans, being weaker, have greater incentive to improve their tactics and weapons, and in the long term that beats out any conceivable degree of physical strength.
I think it was in a previous Neanderthal article on Slashdot where it was theorized that because of their great strength, Neanderthals were naturally less aggressive than humans. With that much strength, a minor fist fight could mean being crippled or killed, and most animals tend to avoid serious injury when competing. Thus, when humans arrived on the scene, the Neanderthals weren't prepared for such an aggressive and violent species with more experience in organized primate-on-primate violence.
I'm not sure I buy it. On the one hand, mountain gorillas usually don't go beyond loud displays, but on the other chimpanzees are several times stronger than a human and are known to sometimes go on raids into another group's territory where they will kill members of the other group caught alone. Maybe gorillas too, I'm not sure about that. So it's a decent explanation, but I don't think it's true just based on Neanderthals being strong.
Your idea makes at least as much sense as a reason why strength was a disadvantage. For the Hulk, "Hulk smash!" was a generally effective strategy, so why go past that even though there was a brain in there? A bunch of humans come in, already experienced in organized primate-on-primate violence, and gang up on the significantly-less-spear-proof stone age Hulks. Sure they'd hunted mammoths in groups but that's a whole different animal so to speak.
Turning this back in a Neanderthals-are-bad-ass direction, are we sure they necessarily hunted in groups because they could bag mammoth? Maybe a lone Neanderthal with a few spears would throw a couple to wound the beast then rush its hind legs to try to climb up its ass hair without getting sat on, to deliver a killing blow to the back of the head. What?
To be fair, Quayle's job was not to educate our children. Never has a national crisis been solved or solvable by the correct spelling of "potato".
Are you forgetting about the time Spelling Beelzebub held a group of tourists hostage at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in D.C. until the President, VP, and his cabinet correctly answered his spelling questions? "Potato" was in the first round, and imagine the scandal for Kennedy's Presidency if LBJ had botched it and gotten all those people killed.
Now this was before Quayle's time, and these days most villains consider SB's nefarious plan to make world leaders spell things too embarrassing to repeat. So I'll grant that this was not a significant issue for national security.
And despite what various extremist think-of-the-children types will say.. I`m not some seething bottle of rage who has flashbacks of getting yelled at and attacks people at random as a result.
Yeah. I got spanked as a kid -- there's a difference between "spanking" and "beating" -- and honestly all my worst memories and issues regarding my parents are from when they hurt me emotionally, not physically. Some of those spanking straightened me out faster than anything else could have when I really needed to be straightened out, yet I got over the physical pain almost immediately. On the other hand things my parents might say, not even in the context of discipline, stuck in my craw for years.
Now of course there are parents that go to far and beat their kids too hard or too often and it loses all meaning and simply becomes abuse.
Outside of that extreme, I'm much more horrified by the parents who use guilt and passive-aggression to "discipline" their kids than the ones who spank their ass and then say what's done is done.
In that case I say just chain them to the chamberpot. The kid might still run around with the weight around their ankle, but they aren't going to dare do anything that might tip the chamberpot!
So? I've never met a person who didn't have a personality disorder of some sort.
Hm, interesting. So if personality disorders are, as a class, normal, and a "disorder" is by definition something functioning abnormally, then would this not mean that psychologists should recognize Lack of Personality Disorder Disorder?
Treatment for this disorder would be quite straightforward, though the ethics of giving someone Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to cure their Lack of Personality Disorder Disorder are questionable.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't trying to establish that the problem is in any way insurmountable. Acknowledging the (what apparently only I see as) difficulty before hand is probably a good idea
You haven't done a very good job of establishing that there is a problem at all. Try explaining what exactly you see as the problem. Maybe that will help. A bunch of non-violent offenders being let out of prison isn't inherently a problem, it happens every day. What is the problem?
"oh, they created a separate time line that's different " waa waaa waa.
Yeah I have to wonder would these "Trekkers" have preferred for Abrams to literally ignore all previous canon, not even acknowledge the previous movies/shows existence as it went off and did its own thing, just like the "true" reboot Batman Begins? We knew from the beginning it was going to be a reboot, and if we were honest we knew that was the only way a new and potentially non-horrible Trek movie would be made.
I went into the theater ready for that. Ready to accept that it was simply a different, baggage-free imagining of the Trek universe. I thought that the time-travel-creates-alternate-timeline device was a nice way for them to free themselves from the baggage, while still respectfully acknowledging what went before and assuring us (via Old Spock) that those stories we knew and love did still happen. Which is why it drives me nuts seeing people complain "Oh noes, now [Episode X] can never happen!!!" when the whole point of the time-travel plot was to assure the fans that Episode X really did happen. That was basically the only reason for the time travel plot to exist, and yet they somehow missed it.
I mean, if Kirk getting promoted through a series of odd happening bother you, then every time the captain goes to a planet, you should be digusted..
LOL, very good point. Then again the real Navy can't send a team consisting of the Captain, the First Mate, the chief medical officer, and Ensign Expendable and know for sure who is and isn't coming back. If they could, Captains might make more trips to shore. ;)
true. Unneeded bit of silliness.
Scotty mis-beaming himself inside of an object was funny. It's where he was able to hold his breath for however many minutes with no warning in advance, and then fell from the pipe at least ten feet onto his face without injury that turned it from funny to silly.
Except that that is the only scene in space that is silent in the entire movie. All of the other space battle scenes and that scene save those five seconds have explosions/phasers/missiles going non-stop.
Tell me about it. It's like they either forgot after the first scene, or they never intended to portray space as silent, that was literally just for dramatic effect, and the Abrams would be confused if I complimented him on his (briefly) accurate portrayal of space.
Nevertheless, when I watched it, I got goosebumps. It was pretty awesome imo. :)
Because many industries, including agricultural today, have a natural tendency towards consolidation? Because I fear that there will be licensing required to grow or sell and this will only help encourage the creation of a few mega-corps around it? Because the big tobacco companies would be the ones best poised to take advantage of legalization from the outset? Because that's what's happened with tobacco in the first place?
Try buying a cigarette that isn't loaded with additives that just make the damn things even less healthy. Your choices are American Spirits and... yeah, hope they have American Spirits at the convenience store. It's hard just getting a cigarette that's pure tobacco, so I just don't see many of the big players not cutting joints with at least some tobacco, and using whatever financial muscle is necessary to push the ones who won't play lets-keep-our-customers-addicted ball.
Now I don't think this will happen, it's just my biggest worry over legalization. I worry that the way in which it will be legalized, combined with economic forces, will result in problems. As long as both possession and cultivation are made completely legal, then it probably won't be a big deal.
(I do think that there are some people who might feel like maybe the time they spent in prison was a bit unjust when they get out because the law was changed because it was decided that putting people in prison for the things they did was unjust; they might not be entirely satisfied with just getting out)
And? No really, and?
You realize almost no one is in prison for life without parole due to drugs... they're going to get out eventually, and regardless of whether the law has changed, they are probably going to see their incarceration as unjust.
So what are you implying will happen? They'll riot through the streets until they get... whatever it is people who were unjustly imprisoned are supposed to get? Because surely ending right back in prison for justified reasons is what they'll be after. But hey let's say that whatever it is you're trying to say will happen is true. And this is why you don't want drug offenders released. So does this mean we can't ever release them?
Oh and they'll need jobs, like everyone else who gets out of prison. So, we better keep them incarcerated?
You really have to do a better job of explaining what these "considerable difficulties" you see are, because you're not making much sense.
Actually, most people won't grow it them selves, they will probably buy in from a legal distribute, like cigarettes.
Yeah, and to me the biggest downside of legalization would be that the cigarette companies would start selling mj cigarettes that are significantly cut with tobacco. To them, THC's lack of chemically addictive properties would be a downside, and they'd want to continue to enjoy the benefits of an addicted customer base.
It's so easy to grow (in the right climate) I can see many hippies doing it home-brew style just to avoid this problem.
Nah, land's cheap in wyoming.
100 mi wide leather recliners, still not so much.
Whoa I'm not letting a doctor come anywhere near me with something called a "Monster Needle" no matter how much better he says the fidelity is.
Monkeys, hurl feces at your congressman!
Transformers was a fine piece of entertainment.
Muscles cars that turn into giant robots and blow shit up.
It filled the slot perfectly.
Yeah except for it seemed to be a little short on the robots blowing shit up, and way too heavy on the irrelevant and obnoxious characters. Wasn't Shia Leboof and that marine guy enough of a human factor? Did the movie really need two wise-cracking black guys with sassy (grand)mothers?
Still great popcorn muncher. The sequel seems like it may -- may -- solve the robot-related deficiencies of the first.
Well, maybe not the "next" shot, but at least "later" shots. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure I remember a "roar" whenever it showed ships going through a black hole.
Oh, yeah. They had sounds in space in most of the rest of the movie. Which was kinda disappointing. I mean you can easily have all the noise you want -inside- the ship if you think silent explosions aren't dramatic enough, why not continue with the them of having the outside shots be silent? Oh well.
Which perhaps goes to show that you should make sure your launch isn't an abomination
Unless of course your game is Abomination Online.
I'd like to point out that, like Earth, Vulcan rotates, and therefore the Romulan vessel would need to maintain geosynchronous orbit to stay over a single spot for drilling. So the ship is actually orbiting the planet in the movie.
However, at that altitude, the drilling rig would have to extend for hundreds of miles, and the ships would probably be farther from the planet than shown in the movie.
Well yes but it's not a "traditional" orbit maintained solely by momentum and gravity and maybe a tiny bit of thrust for corrections. It was a "powered" orbit using its engines that allowed it to remain geosynchronous without being as far away as a traditional geosynchronous orbit.
There's no point in criticizing the orbital mechanics while forgetting that this is a futuristic space ship. It doesn't have to act like the space shuttle.
Now that was cool -- at least, until the next exterior shot, which did have (unrealistic) sound.
I distinctly remember the complete absence of sound effects as I watched the officer drift away.
If you cut it out, you'd have a better movie.
Exactly. In a movie that was overall had pretty tight editing, that scene stood out as completely unnecessary. I mean, there are a hundred reasons why Kirk could have run into Spock... Hell, maybe Spock had already decided to head to the Starfleet outpost himself and Kirk runs into him at the door.
The one place where the special effects made me think 'aw, yeah!' was the scene where the Enterprise warps into the upper atmosphere of Titan and then slowly emerges out of the clouds.
That was pretty cool, true.
The biggest "aw yeah!" moment for me was in the opening battle scene when the ship takes a hit, and they show inside a corridor where the hull is breached and an officer(I think she was a blue shirt) runs from the big fireball -- which then retracts as the air (and the officer) are sucked out. Cut to outside, where we see the poor woman flying off into space, against a background of phaser banks firing like mad, all in complete silence.
Very potent imagery. Loved the dramatic use of the silence of space, which I think is a first for Trek? At the very least uncommon in pop sci-fi films in general. Sadly I didn't think they topped that moment in any of the other space battle scenes.
Or my favorite: Why drill to the middle of the planet if you're about to create a black hole? Just make the black hole and let it do the rest.
Because Red Matter doesn't work that way.
How does it actually work then? Um... Look, Harold has a sword!
Originally, he beat the test by programming the Klingons to think Kirk was a famous war hero, so they simply backed down without even a fight out of fear of his reputation.
So, not exactly subtle either. Is there a subtle way to win an intentionally unwinnable scenario? No matter what he did to change the simulation it would be obvious that he cheated, simply because he won when the simulation was originally programmed to not allow that. Besides, it's not like he was trying to get away with it anyway. He was making a statement, that he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios, and cheating to beat a simulation that is itself a 'cheat' is his way of dealing with it.
That's why it worked for me. Of course he cheated, there was no point in hiding it, so why not sit there with a smug smile on his face eating an apple?
Speaking of subtle, the apple was a nice reference to Wrath of Khan there. I bet there were others in there that I missed. JJ might not be a trekkie, but I think his writers were.
I wonder whether Neanderthal strength was too much of a good thing. Modern humans don't need it. Neanderthal skeletons indicate a rough life -- lots of broken bones. Some have suggested they jumped on moderate sized prey and wrestled it to the ground for the kill. It's pretty bad-ass, to be sure, but unnecessary for a creature with a brain that size. Modern humans, being weaker, have greater incentive to improve their tactics and weapons, and in the long term that beats out any conceivable degree of physical strength.
I think it was in a previous Neanderthal article on Slashdot where it was theorized that because of their great strength, Neanderthals were naturally less aggressive than humans. With that much strength, a minor fist fight could mean being crippled or killed, and most animals tend to avoid serious injury when competing. Thus, when humans arrived on the scene, the Neanderthals weren't prepared for such an aggressive and violent species with more experience in organized primate-on-primate violence.
I'm not sure I buy it. On the one hand, mountain gorillas usually don't go beyond loud displays, but on the other chimpanzees are several times stronger than a human and are known to sometimes go on raids into another group's territory where they will kill members of the other group caught alone. Maybe gorillas too, I'm not sure about that. So it's a decent explanation, but I don't think it's true just based on Neanderthals being strong.
Your idea makes at least as much sense as a reason why strength was a disadvantage. For the Hulk, "Hulk smash!" was a generally effective strategy, so why go past that even though there was a brain in there? A bunch of humans come in, already experienced in organized primate-on-primate violence, and gang up on the significantly-less-spear-proof stone age Hulks. Sure they'd hunted mammoths in groups but that's a whole different animal so to speak.
Turning this back in a Neanderthals-are-bad-ass direction, are we sure they necessarily hunted in groups because they could bag mammoth? Maybe a lone Neanderthal with a few spears would throw a couple to wound the beast then rush its hind legs to try to climb up its ass hair without getting sat on, to deliver a killing blow to the back of the head. What?
To be fair, Quayle's job was not to educate our children. Never has a national crisis been solved or solvable by the correct spelling of "potato".
Are you forgetting about the time Spelling Beelzebub held a group of tourists hostage at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in D.C. until the President, VP, and his cabinet correctly answered his spelling questions? "Potato" was in the first round, and imagine the scandal for Kennedy's Presidency if LBJ had botched it and gotten all those people killed.
Now this was before Quayle's time, and these days most villains consider SB's nefarious plan to make world leaders spell things too embarrassing to repeat. So I'll grant that this was not a significant issue for national security.
Astronaut floating in shuttle "Ahhh they are pretty light up here."
"... but they are massive."
Which is actually pretty close to a real quote from an astronaut from ages back.
Those batteries are not going to be easy to move around, just because they are in freefall.
Shoot, I'll pick up a couple just for weekend fun in my dungeon.
And this "fun" involves enforced study time??
Worst. Dungeon. Ever.
And despite what various extremist think-of-the-children types will say.. I`m not some seething bottle of rage who has flashbacks of getting yelled at and attacks people at random as a result.
Yeah. I got spanked as a kid -- there's a difference between "spanking" and "beating" -- and honestly all my worst memories and issues regarding my parents are from when they hurt me emotionally, not physically. Some of those spanking straightened me out faster than anything else could have when I really needed to be straightened out, yet I got over the physical pain almost immediately. On the other hand things my parents might say, not even in the context of discipline, stuck in my craw for years.
Now of course there are parents that go to far and beat their kids too hard or too often and it loses all meaning and simply becomes abuse.
Outside of that extreme, I'm much more horrified by the parents who use guilt and passive-aggression to "discipline" their kids than the ones who spank their ass and then say what's done is done.
In that case I say just chain them to the chamberpot. The kid might still run around with the weight around their ankle, but they aren't going to dare do anything that might tip the chamberpot!
So? I've never met a person who didn't have a personality disorder of some sort.
Hm, interesting. So if personality disorders are, as a class, normal, and a "disorder" is by definition something functioning abnormally, then would this not mean that psychologists should recognize Lack of Personality Disorder Disorder?
Treatment for this disorder would be quite straightforward, though the ethics of giving someone Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to cure their Lack of Personality Disorder Disorder are questionable.
So, in orbit your weight depends on the density of matter around you, and would be zero in a perfect vacuum?
That doesn't sound right.
Also, defining a force perpendicular to gravity as resisting gravity makes little sense.