The only thing really bad about "The Butterfly Effect" was Ashton Kutcher's "acting". He simply could not pull off any of the emotions the script called for. Worse than Keanu in Constantine. Almost as bad as Keanu in Johnny Mnemonic. ("I want room service!")
The gaping plot hole about the stigmata goes by so fast it doesn't detract much from the movie. At least it had a downbeat ending, unlike 99 percent of Hollywood's crap. I really enjoyed it.
To stay on topic, Return of the Jedi was just as bad as Episode I and II. Bad acting? HAN: "Hey, point that thing someplace else!" Bad writing? YODA, BEN, VADER, EMPEROR, VADER, EMPEROR: "It is your destiny." The Death Star AGAIN? On the skiff, Luke's lightsaber can't cut through shit. He might as well wield a broomstick. Ewoks. EWOKS!
I'll take JarJar over Ewoks anyday. The years have clouded our memories. "Only different in your mind!"
Your story illustrates how fully body mods have shifted in our culture from rebellious to conformist. People now get piercing and tattoos because their peers have them, rather than to stand out from their peers.
Sorry, but it has become hard for me to look at a marked-up 16-year old and not roll my eyes. The very fact they they succumbed to peer pressure makes me view them as the opposite of the rebel they are trying to portray.
It's like wearing an "I AM COOL(TM)" T-shirt. The fact that you think wearing that shirt makes you cool indicates how uncool you really are.
Man, there goes my karma.
Yoda's fears about Anakin turning to the dark side were a self-fulfulling prophecy. In their distrust, the Jedi held Anakin down in every way they could, instead of embracing him as the chosen one. The Jedi were poor masters.
Anakin was born as a slave on Tattooine, conscripted into a Jedi slavery where he could not rescue or even visit his mother, and finally sucked into Sith apprenticeship under Sidious. He was always somebody's slave, never free to follow his dreams and wishes.
Luke may have felt tied down on the farm, but at least he wasn't a slave. He lived with family, had friends, and got to fix and fly spaceships for fun. Yoda never sensed fear in Luke, only recklessness: a fearlessness that comes from living free.
Obi-Wan totally let Anakin down. Qui-Gon would have let Anakin rescue his mother, the Council be damned. Then Obi-Wan lies to and manipulates Anakin's innocent children to try to undo his mistakes. I'm surprised he waited for Luke to grow up, rather than taking him to Dagobah at age 3.
It seems misguided to recast. There's no reason they couldn't put Odo, Rom, Tom Paris, Seven of Nine, Beta, Ro Laren and Reg Barclay all on the same ship, taking orders from Admiral Janeway and Rear Admiral Sulu back in Sector 0. TNG, DS9 and VOY all left off where the characters would naturally be reassigned. All you really need is a dynamic new captain.
These b-listers wouldn't cost much more than unknowns and it would bring fans from all three series in.
Also, the most successful movie plot was the one that built on a TOS episode (Space Seed-->Wrath of Khan). The TNG characters should revisit a TOS planet (like the 20's gangland planet, now up to 1970's technology).
There's a reason people like Star Wars III better than I or II: it has comforting ties to the characters and events we grew up on, not just new characters using familiar weapons.
Gory, realistic deaths illustrate the consequences of violence, upping the stakes and dramatic tension. It certainly seems to have added cred to the works of John Ford, Don Seigel, Quentin Tarantino, etc.
Sci-Fi fans usually praise realism. I don't see why Trek couldn't be gorier.
Even after all that time in bridge officer training, the first time they leave her in command she crashes into a planet. Nice.
"I'm sensing something large coming toward us, Captain, but I can't say what."
Once we have autonomous cars, you can go ahead and make it legal to drink while on the road.
I foresee people getting much drunker on weeknights and then sleeping in on their way to work.
Doesn't eliminating the threat of intoxicated drivers also remove much of the argument against any illegal drug?
I refused to buy my wife a diamond ring, on the grounds that the South African diamond monopoly helped perpetuate apartheid. She got cubic zirconia and no-one has ever noticed the difference. Now if I could have just talked her out of that other STUPID tradition -- the big expensive wedding.
Attack of the Clones did about a third less box office than the Phantom Menace. I think this is in due in part to bootlegs. Most of the repeat business for Episode I was hard core fanboys -- the same type of guys who would soon discover and embrace movie downloading. They only went to see Episode II in theaters once and then went home and watched the Centropy release, and then the screener, etc.
Even with its flaws, I wanted to see Phantom Menace more than once, and back then the only way to do so was by going back to the theater. No so today.
Shows like Lost, Smallville and Buffy represent a shift in fantasy programming towards long story arcs over self-contained episodes. For the type of fanatical viewers that typically follow a show like Trek, it makes sense that you will involve them even more with some long-term character and story development.
The potential pitfall is that the series becomes impenetrable to new viewers. But the potential upside is that you can build a highly devoted fanbase that is motivated to get their friends watching. That certainly seems to have happened with Lost.
A show with an ongoing arc is now positioned as a premium commodity, thanks in large part to the Sopranos and its HBO successors. (And don't forget Twin Peaks.) 24, Lost and Desperate Housewives represent the broadcast networks' latest efforts in this format, and each is an unqualified ratings success.
Unless they go with an anthology format, the next Trek show had best pick up on this trend and deliver season-long story arcs. Battlestar Galactica and the new Star Wars live action series have both beat it to the punch.
Critical to success in this format is an uninterrupted airing schedule. Don't start airing episodes until there are enough in the can to run a whole season without reruns. Better still, produce the whole season, fine-tune edit it to bring out details that reward the devoted viewer, then air it.
If the guy was not trash and had taken time to know someone before bedding them down he might have found out.
Having been married with children, and now single with girlfriends, I must say that it is much more honest and sincere to have a one-night stand than to continually kiss a girl's ass just so you can get into her pants. If you have no intention of ever getting married (and I don't), then you can view sex and relationships as two different things that do not have to always go together.
There is no point in further getting to know a woman if you are only interested in her for sex. You will only lead her into feeling something that you don't really reciprocate. Who is trashier? Honest one-night-stand guy or the guy who puts on a charade so he can keep using a woman for sex?
If your intention is to find a mate, that's different. Then it makes sense to get to know her first. But guys who pursue one-night-stands are probably not looking for a mate. Either they know they are too young to think about marriage, or they have already been married and realize now that their previous desire to have a mate was misguided.
The procreation urge compels us to seek a mate at some point in our lives. Before that urge takes hold and after it has subsided you can see the truth: getting to know a woman is just a means to having sex with her.
I honestly find most people, and women in particular, to be annoying, boring, neurotic and selfish (myself included). For a while in my life, I was willing to put up with that from women in order to get sex. Now I just ignore women unless they are horny and independent enough to approach me.
Result: I get laid, without having to be anyone's therapist -- and a few less girls are walking around with wedding chapel daydreams while their boyfriend is thinking about other women he wants to have sex with.
Well, the Dutch are notorious downloaders
on
Dutch Pass iPod Tax
·
· Score: 1
I'm just sayin', the newsgroups and p2p networks are stuffed with Dutch files. Look at the header count in alt.binaries.misc.
The show will have a new title each week. The first season's titles are:
Star Wars: Season I: Episode I: Yippee! Star Wars: Season I: Episode II: Sandstorms Are Very Very Dangerous Star Wars: Season I: Episode III: It Is Your Destiny, I Repeat, It Is Your Destiny Star Wars: Season I: Episode IV: In Deep Doo-Doo Star Wars: Season I: Episode V: What's a Bongo? Star Wars: Season I: Episode VI: There is No Father Star Wars: Season I: Episode VII: I Do Not Believe That The Sith Could Have Returned Without Us Knowing Star Wars: Season I: Episode VIII: Then I'll See You In Hell Star Wars: Season I: Episode IX: You Came In That Thing? Star Wars: Season I: Episode X: Wesa Going Home Star Wars: Season I: Episode XI: Mrrraugh! [Where's My Freakin' Medal?!] Star Wars: Season I: Episode XII: There Was No Danger At All Star Wars: Season I: Episode XIII: You Haven't Learned Anything Star Wars: Season I: Episode XIV: I Don't Like Sand Star Wars: Season I: Episode XV: Ex-squeeze Me
To see Han shoot first, you can buy the original Laserdisc or VHS tapes on EBay. Good luck finding a copy that doesn't say "A NEW HOPE" in the opening crawl, though. It was added while the movie was still in theaters.
Regarding the "Special Editions", I liked the FIRST attempt at the new Jabba scene where Han steps on Jabba's tail. They changed Jabba's reaction to this on the new DVDs and it's not as funny. They made him too dark in the DVDs, too.
To me the "Special" ESB is actually an improvement, because Lucas doesn't monkey with the action in the scenes, he just visually enhances them.
But, I HATE the new musical number in Return of the Jedi. The old song was way better. Lucas could have just CGI-rendered Sy Snootles, but no he had to change the whole song and add a character covered with unconvincing CGI hair.
And now, one of the new TV shows is going to be a strict CGI remake of the Clone Wars cartoons? They can re-use all the work they put into rendering the Star Wars universe for the movies, so shouldn't there be some budget left over for some scripts?
The live-action show sounds promising. I'll take a weekly dose of lightsaber action, hell yeah. Much preferred to waiting for more overstuffed movies that would take place after the main story's done.
Ah, the actual passage is here. And they are indeed quoting Lucas.
So, Lucas is revising history again. Big news. Anyway, everybody just enjoy this last time you'll ever have that "new Star Wars movie is coming out in just a few weeks" feeling.
I first heard of this legend in 1980 in Time Magazine's cover story on Empire Strikes Back. That Time article is here. I'm not subscribed, so I can't read it all, so I can't remember if they quoted Lucas directly, but they definitely said there would be 9 episodes and that only R2 and C-3PO would be in all 9.
In our Murder-Death-Kill not-too-distant future we'll all be walking around with our left ear and eye constantly tuned into a Brady Bunch-style grid of each kid's classroom, the traffic on our commute route, Grandma's kitchen, the wife's personal feed, your neighborhood cop's patrol car cam, a South Beach webcam, the the "All Sid & Marty Krofft" channel, and the Nuggets game.
I wonder how many feeds the human brain can monitor while still trying to function in the real world.
It seems we arrived at the Base10 system pretty arbitrarily. Isn't it just because we have ten fingers? If calculated Pi is ever going to reveal a pattern I would imagine it would be more likely to happen in a "natural" system like Base2, or Base12.
All your base are belong to us, after all.
If you've had problems with CFLs burning out after less than two years, or with them not starting right away when switched on, or with them being too dim when they are first switched on, then TRY A DIFFERENT CFL.
Unlike incandescent lamps, which are pretty much all the same regardless of manufacturer, CFLs vary widely in their performance. CFLs from the major lighting manufacturers have been proven in independent studies to last at least as long as they claim under standard conditions. (We did those independent tests here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/.)
CFLs from the dollar store work about as well as you'd expect them to. But even different CFLs from the same known company perform differently in terms of start-up delay, warm-up time, color appearance, and whether or not base-up light output differs from base-down.
The best way to buy CFLs for your home is to pick out 3 different ones from companies you've heard of. Try them out side-by-side and observe their performance -- you will see differences, especially in the color. Then go back to the store and buy a bunch more of the one you like best. Put the other two into your porch lights.
Make sure that whichever one you choose, it is at least as small as a regular light bulb, so that it can fit anywhere. If you have any of your light circuits on dimmers, make sure you get CFLs that say they are dimmable. They even make 3-way CFLs.
I have CFLs in every light bulb socket in my home, including the one in the stove hood. Unfortunately, I still have one of those dimmable halogen torchiere floor lamps that uses a 300W halogen bulb, even though there are "fluorescent torchieres" now available that use one-fourth the electricity.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing really bad about "The Butterfly Effect" was Ashton Kutcher's "acting". He simply could not pull off any of the emotions the script called for. Worse than Keanu in Constantine. Almost as bad as Keanu in Johnny Mnemonic. ("I want room service!") The gaping plot hole about the stigmata goes by so fast it doesn't detract much from the movie. At least it had a downbeat ending, unlike 99 percent of Hollywood's crap. I really enjoyed it.
To stay on topic, Return of the Jedi was just as bad as Episode I and II. Bad acting? HAN: "Hey, point that thing someplace else!" Bad writing? YODA, BEN, VADER, EMPEROR, VADER, EMPEROR: "It is your destiny." The Death Star AGAIN? On the skiff, Luke's lightsaber can't cut through shit. He might as well wield a broomstick. Ewoks. EWOKS!
I'll take JarJar over Ewoks anyday. The years have clouded our memories. "Only different in your mind!"
Your story illustrates how fully body mods have shifted in our culture from rebellious to conformist. People now get piercing and tattoos because their peers have them, rather than to stand out from their peers. Sorry, but it has become hard for me to look at a marked-up 16-year old and not roll my eyes. The very fact they they succumbed to peer pressure makes me view them as the opposite of the rebel they are trying to portray. It's like wearing an "I AM COOL(TM)" T-shirt. The fact that you think wearing that shirt makes you cool indicates how uncool you really are. Man, there goes my karma.
Yoda's fears about Anakin turning to the dark side were a self-fulfulling prophecy. In their distrust, the Jedi held Anakin down in every way they could, instead of embracing him as the chosen one. The Jedi were poor masters.
Anakin was born as a slave on Tattooine, conscripted into a Jedi slavery where he could not rescue or even visit his mother, and finally sucked into Sith apprenticeship under Sidious. He was always somebody's slave, never free to follow his dreams and wishes. Luke may have felt tied down on the farm, but at least he wasn't a slave. He lived with family, had friends, and got to fix and fly spaceships for fun. Yoda never sensed fear in Luke, only recklessness: a fearlessness that comes from living free.
Obi-Wan totally let Anakin down. Qui-Gon would have let Anakin rescue his mother, the Council be damned. Then Obi-Wan lies to and manipulates Anakin's innocent children to try to undo his mistakes. I'm surprised he waited for Luke to grow up, rather than taking him to Dagobah at age 3.
It seems misguided to recast. There's no reason they couldn't put Odo, Rom, Tom Paris, Seven of Nine, Beta, Ro Laren and Reg Barclay all on the same ship, taking orders from Admiral Janeway and Rear Admiral Sulu back in Sector 0. TNG, DS9 and VOY all left off where the characters would naturally be reassigned. All you really need is a dynamic new captain. These b-listers wouldn't cost much more than unknowns and it would bring fans from all three series in.
Also, the most successful movie plot was the one that built on a TOS episode (Space Seed-->Wrath of Khan). The TNG characters should revisit a TOS planet (like the 20's gangland planet, now up to 1970's technology). There's a reason people like Star Wars III better than I or II: it has comforting ties to the characters and events we grew up on, not just new characters using familiar weapons.
Gory, realistic deaths illustrate the consequences of violence, upping the stakes and dramatic tension. It certainly seems to have added cred to the works of John Ford, Don Seigel, Quentin Tarantino, etc. Sci-Fi fans usually praise realism. I don't see why Trek couldn't be gorier.
Even after all that time in bridge officer training, the first time they leave her in command she crashes into a planet. Nice. "I'm sensing something large coming toward us, Captain, but I can't say what."
Windows Jesus Edition: Have You Been Saved As...?
Once we have autonomous cars, you can go ahead and make it legal to drink while on the road. I foresee people getting much drunker on weeknights and then sleeping in on their way to work.
Doesn't eliminating the threat of intoxicated drivers also remove much of the argument against any illegal drug?
I refused to buy my wife a diamond ring, on the grounds that the South African diamond monopoly helped perpetuate apartheid. She got cubic zirconia and no-one has ever noticed the difference. Now if I could have just talked her out of that other STUPID tradition -- the big expensive wedding.
Attack of the Clones did about a third less box office than the Phantom Menace. I think this is in due in part to bootlegs. Most of the repeat business for Episode I was hard core fanboys -- the same type of guys who would soon discover and embrace movie downloading. They only went to see Episode II in theaters once and then went home and watched the Centropy release, and then the screener, etc.
Even with its flaws, I wanted to see Phantom Menace more than once, and back then the only way to do so was by going back to the theater. No so today.
Shows like Lost, Smallville and Buffy represent a shift in fantasy programming towards long story arcs over self-contained episodes. For the type of fanatical viewers that typically follow a show like Trek, it makes sense that you will involve them even more with some long-term character and story development.
The potential pitfall is that the series becomes impenetrable to new viewers. But the potential upside is that you can build a highly devoted fanbase that is motivated to get their friends watching. That certainly seems to have happened with Lost.
A show with an ongoing arc is now positioned as a premium commodity, thanks in large part to the Sopranos and its HBO successors. (And don't forget Twin Peaks.) 24, Lost and Desperate Housewives represent the broadcast networks' latest efforts in this format, and each is an unqualified ratings success.
Unless they go with an anthology format, the next Trek show had best pick up on this trend and deliver season-long story arcs. Battlestar Galactica and the new Star Wars live action series have both beat it to the punch.
Critical to success in this format is an uninterrupted airing schedule. Don't start airing episodes until there are enough in the can to run a whole season without reruns. Better still, produce the whole season, fine-tune edit it to bring out details that reward the devoted viewer, then air it.
If the guy was not trash and had taken time to know someone before bedding them down he might have found out.
Having been married with children, and now single with girlfriends, I must say that it is much more honest and sincere to have a one-night stand than to continually kiss a girl's ass just so you can get into her pants. If you have no intention of ever getting married (and I don't), then you can view sex and relationships as two different things that do not have to always go together.
There is no point in further getting to know a woman if you are only interested in her for sex. You will only lead her into feeling something that you don't really reciprocate. Who is trashier? Honest one-night-stand guy or the guy who puts on a charade so he can keep using a woman for sex?
If your intention is to find a mate, that's different. Then it makes sense to get to know her first. But guys who pursue one-night-stands are probably not looking for a mate. Either they know they are too young to think about marriage, or they have already been married and realize now that their previous desire to have a mate was misguided.
The procreation urge compels us to seek a mate at some point in our lives. Before that urge takes hold and after it has subsided you can see the truth: getting to know a woman is just a means to having sex with her.
I honestly find most people, and women in particular, to be annoying, boring, neurotic and selfish (myself included). For a while in my life, I was willing to put up with that from women in order to get sex. Now I just ignore women unless they are horny and independent enough to approach me.
Result: I get laid, without having to be anyone's therapist -- and a few less girls are walking around with wedding chapel daydreams while their boyfriend is thinking about other women he wants to have sex with.
I'm just sayin', the newsgroups and p2p networks are stuffed with Dutch files. Look at the header count in alt.binaries.misc.
The show will have a new title each week. The first season's titles are:
Star Wars: Season I: Episode I: Yippee!
Star Wars: Season I: Episode II: Sandstorms Are Very Very Dangerous
Star Wars: Season I: Episode III: It Is Your Destiny, I Repeat, It Is Your Destiny
Star Wars: Season I: Episode IV: In Deep Doo-Doo
Star Wars: Season I: Episode V: What's a Bongo?
Star Wars: Season I: Episode VI: There is No Father
Star Wars: Season I: Episode VII: I Do Not Believe That The Sith Could Have Returned Without Us Knowing
Star Wars: Season I: Episode VIII: Then I'll See You In Hell
Star Wars: Season I: Episode IX: You Came In That Thing?
Star Wars: Season I: Episode X: Wesa Going Home
Star Wars: Season I: Episode XI: Mrrraugh! [Where's My Freakin' Medal?!]
Star Wars: Season I: Episode XII: There Was No Danger At All
Star Wars: Season I: Episode XIII: You Haven't Learned Anything
Star Wars: Season I: Episode XIV: I Don't Like Sand
Star Wars: Season I: Episode XV: Ex-squeeze Me
Then he has already reinvented himself. In 1980, the little flannelled one said the opposite in Time Magazine.
To see Han shoot first, you can buy the original Laserdisc or VHS tapes on EBay. Good luck finding a copy that doesn't say "A NEW HOPE" in the opening crawl, though. It was added while the movie was still in theaters. Regarding the "Special Editions", I liked the FIRST attempt at the new Jabba scene where Han steps on Jabba's tail. They changed Jabba's reaction to this on the new DVDs and it's not as funny. They made him too dark in the DVDs, too. To me the "Special" ESB is actually an improvement, because Lucas doesn't monkey with the action in the scenes, he just visually enhances them. But, I HATE the new musical number in Return of the Jedi. The old song was way better. Lucas could have just CGI-rendered Sy Snootles, but no he had to change the whole song and add a character covered with unconvincing CGI hair. And now, one of the new TV shows is going to be a strict CGI remake of the Clone Wars cartoons? They can re-use all the work they put into rendering the Star Wars universe for the movies, so shouldn't there be some budget left over for some scripts? The live-action show sounds promising. I'll take a weekly dose of lightsaber action, hell yeah. Much preferred to waiting for more overstuffed movies that would take place after the main story's done.
Ah, the actual passage is here. And they are indeed quoting Lucas. So, Lucas is revising history again. Big news. Anyway, everybody just enjoy this last time you'll ever have that "new Star Wars movie is coming out in just a few weeks" feeling.
I first heard of this legend in 1980 in Time Magazine's cover story on Empire Strikes Back. That Time article is here. I'm not subscribed, so I can't read it all, so I can't remember if they quoted Lucas directly, but they definitely said there would be 9 episodes and that only R2 and C-3PO would be in all 9.
Umm, neither of the 2 proposed new TV series takes place after Return of the Jedi. Both take place between Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars.
In our Murder-Death-Kill not-too-distant future we'll all be walking around with our left ear and eye constantly tuned into a Brady Bunch-style grid of each kid's classroom, the traffic on our commute route, Grandma's kitchen, the wife's personal feed, your neighborhood cop's patrol car cam, a South Beach webcam, the the "All Sid & Marty Krofft" channel, and the Nuggets game. I wonder how many feeds the human brain can monitor while still trying to function in the real world.
It seems we arrived at the Base10 system pretty arbitrarily. Isn't it just because we have ten fingers? If calculated Pi is ever going to reveal a pattern I would imagine it would be more likely to happen in a "natural" system like Base2, or Base12. All your base are belong to us, after all.
If you've had problems with CFLs burning out after less than two years, or with them not starting right away when switched on, or with them being too dim when they are first switched on, then TRY A DIFFERENT CFL.
Unlike incandescent lamps, which are pretty much all the same regardless of manufacturer, CFLs vary widely in their performance. CFLs from the major lighting manufacturers have been proven in independent studies to last at least as long as they claim under standard conditions. (We did those independent tests here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/.)
CFLs from the dollar store work about as well as you'd expect them to. But even different CFLs from the same known company perform differently in terms of start-up delay, warm-up time, color appearance, and whether or not base-up light output differs from base-down.
The best way to buy CFLs for your home is to pick out 3 different ones from companies you've heard of. Try them out side-by-side and observe their performance -- you will see differences, especially in the color. Then go back to the store and buy a bunch more of the one you like best. Put the other two into your porch lights.
Make sure that whichever one you choose, it is at least as small as a regular light bulb, so that it can fit anywhere. If you have any of your light circuits on dimmers, make sure you get CFLs that say they are dimmable. They even make 3-way CFLs.
I have CFLs in every light bulb socket in my home, including the one in the stove hood. Unfortunately, I still have one of those dimmable halogen torchiere floor lamps that uses a 300W halogen bulb, even though there are "fluorescent torchieres" now available that use one-fourth the electricity.