You would prefer another target?? A military target?
I hate to oversimplify the war by comparing it to a piece of fantasy, but it does seem relevant at this point. The "contractors" were living in a legitimate military target. What we're seeing in Iraq is different. You remember when the ground war was on, several journalists were killed in the course of the fighting. But they were embedded with the US forces. When the Iraqi army fired on our troops, the civilian reporters were taken out as well. The Iraqi's weren't firing on the civilians, they were firing on a legitimate military target. The accepted rules of warfare state that you don't intentionally target civilians. However, if you blow up a factory that's producing tanks that kills its civilian workforce, that is accepted. What we're seeing in iraq is the deliberate and systematic kidnapping and murder of civilians. Having a civilian truck driver killed as he is transporting goods to feed our war effort is one thing. To kidnap the driver and use him for terror leverage is a totally different story. At the point he is seperated from the military goods he is transporting, he is no longer a legitimate target. To make matters even worse, many of those kidnapped have nothing to do with the war effort. The two Italian women alleged to be killed this week were charity workers. At no time should they have been considered a legal target. But that is the crux of the problem. The enemy we are fighting has absolutely no regard for accepted rules of warfare or even the most rudimentary concept of humanity.
Re:Clerks and Contractors
on
Star Wars Minutiae
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you listen to the commentary on AOTC, when the Geonosians are shown giving the DS plans to Dooku, Lucas chimes in "Now Jay & Silent bob know who it was that built the Death Star".
And finally, in post-war Germany and Japan, there weren't terrorist groups sneaking in to cause trouble, try to tear the country apart, and attempt to install a new fascist regime.
Actually, there was a significant resistance in Germany from the Werewolfs, resistance still loyal to the Nazi party. They engaged in similar acts as the Iraqi resistance: intimidation and assasination of leaders who supported the Allied occupation, bombings, etc. Several factors led to the breaking of this resistance. Your point #2 is a good example. Another thing that must be remembered is that we weren't the only ones in Germany during its reconstruction. The American approach to the resistance was a faaar cry from how the Soviets dealt with it. The Russians were absolutely ruthless when it came to wiping out Nazi sympathizers (or those suspected of being Nazi sympathizers). I'm sure this had quite an effect as well.
I do honor America's intentions in Iraq. For all the sobbing people make about the "thousands of poor iraqis" killed in the conflict, there is a certain truth that is eluding them: It's a fucking war. And in war, innocent people will die. In the end of WWII, it was not uncommon for 100,000 innocent Japanese civilians to die in a single bombing campaign. I believe the US is acting nobly in trying to minimize the civilian casualties during this conflict through the use of precision munitions. But when your enemy is purposly embedding their positions within major population centers, what are ya gonna do?? The terrorists fire a mortar into a busy marketplace, intentionally killing civilians. The US responds by firing back on the attackers, who conveniently happen to be surrounded by civilians themselves. It's all a propaganda ploy. It's the insurgents who are the true monsters, intentionally using the Iraqi people as shields and political collateral.
I've heard some rather hawkish folks say that we should employ the same tactics as the terrorists - kidnap their families and loved ones and decapitate them on national TV, following in a similar vein to how Russia dealt with suspected Nazi insurgants - mass and indescriminate executions. Part of me feels that this might be effective: find the one thing the bastards care about and destroy it in the most violent and humiliating way possible, break their spirit and their will to fight. Make their followers think twice before they kidnap some innocent charity worker. But then I have to remember that we are obligated to take the "moral high ground" in this war, as difficult as that will be. As Americans, we have our honor in how we fight our battles, and we simply do not do business like that.
Still, not as bad as the latest ripoff of Star Wars...
Jeezus, you finally get the trilogy on DVD and still you bitch. If you have such a hardon for seeing the "classic", "unfuckedwith", "beforeGeorgeLucasRapedMyChildhood" "twoAudioChannel", "matteLinesEverywhere" trilogy, jump on a torrent or dust off your VHS and get fucking over it already.
There was also a scene (late in the film when the characters are already established), when Xur reveals that the leader of the Star League is his father. This point was never elaborated upon, so I'm assuming they were setting up for a sequel that never happened. Also, you have the story of a hick farmboy (in this case, white trailer trash) who after being told he can't go to the academy (gets a rejection letter from the college he applied to) meets an eccentric old man (Centauri) that he takes as his mentor. The two leave his going-nowhere life behind to dive face first into an intergalactic conflict.
Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada!
Amnesty International also estimated about 500,000 iraq children dead from international sanctions
Don't blame the sanctions for the deaths that Saddam caused. The oil-for-food/medicine program was in place to alleviate the Iraqi peoples' suffering. I suppose it was America's fault that all the money generated from this program (billions of dollars) was stolen by Saddam's regime and never made it to the people it was intended for.
Good point about Lucas' motivation. But your comment about him being "burned out" is unfounded. If you watch the upcoming Empire of Dreams, you'll see just how much pressure he was under to get the first film out. The studio was fighting him all the way, effects shots weren't working, and by the time it was over, he was expecting a bomb that would end his career. Now, he calls the shots. It's his schedule, his money (Fox doesn't pay for production, they only distribute) and his vision. Honestly, the man's probably never been happier. And when you refer to "we" when discussing SW fans, remember, that there are millions of fans worldwide that *love* the entire story, prequels, and SE's included. We're not all in the "boo-hoo, George lucas raped my childhood" camp.
First lemme say that I respect a liberal who can recognize that 9/11 is garbage.
Ack!!! Libertarian who wants bush out of office, yes. Liberal? Hell no:)
Most economic arguments regarding presidents are silly and irrelevant. All-in-all, no president really has THAT much control over the freight train that is the economy.
Agreed, the cause wasn't his fault, but I do blame him for his total lack of action in getting it back to where it should be. The administration has the power to regulate offshoring while still operating in a free global market - notice I didn't say *stop* offshoring. Our government tightly regulates trade in goods through tarrifs and incentives to "most favored" nations. Offering nice fat tax incentives to companies that keep a certain percentage of their tech workforce stateside would be a good start.
Yeah, I'm pissed about the disparity between the worker slaving to pay his mortgage and put his kids through school without even a raise to match cost-of-living expenses, and the CxOs of his company voting their own salaries through the roof. Threat of layoff = higher productivity for less pay in the short term. Higher productivity leads to greater output leads to higher shareholder value. As long as the shareholders are happy, they won't bitch when CEO Joseph J. Whitey gives himself a $350,000 a year raise. This kind of economics works for Bush. His campaign contributors are made rich. And he can use the rising stock cost as "evidence" of an "improving economy", while ignoring more relevant figures like consumer confidence (in the toilet), and employment (First President since the Depression to come out of his term with *fewer* jobs than he went in with!!) Can he regulate how corporations mete out their payroll? Probably not. But how can a *moral man*, as he claims to be, tolerate and even encourage this type of, perhaps not illegal, but certainly unethical behavior??
and wars cost lots and lots of money.
Ok, you're saying big war = big defecit. I guess you got me there:) Putting on my flame-retardant suit, I'll say that I did support the invasion. But I certainly hope that Dubbya delivers on his promise to have the cost of reconstruction and security covered by Iraqi oil exports. Pardon me for not crunching the numbers, but IIRC, the projected cost of the War is but a fraction of the estimated budget defecit for '05. Feel free to slap me down if I'm wrong.
Now that said, I don't like W that much. Sadly, I don't like Kerry either, so I have no clue who to vote for.
I seldom vote "the lesser of two evils". That's why I wrote in Dave Mustaine in '96.
There were several audio tracks recorded for ESB when it was originally filmed. IIRC, the audio track with the line "...you don't taste very good" that appeared on the original VHS transfers had been damaged to the point where it couldn't be lifted. For that scene, the production team had to use one of the alternate tracks for the remastering.
I agree that we can't pin all of our economic woes on the President (but let's admit it, we all do from time to time). Many of my beefs listed are the result of corporations exploiting their power - the same corporations that channel hundreds of millions of dollars into W's re-election war chest. I admit the bubble was going to burst regardless of who was elected in 2000. I am not an economist either, but your arguments sound valid. I'm not blaming Bush for the recession. My complaint is with how he is handling the results of it.
If I may provide an anecdote: I live in the Metro Phoenix area. We are home to many corporations with large vested interests in technology and IT. American Express, Honeywell, McDonnal Douglass, General Dynamics, Intel and Motorola all have a fairly large tech presence here. Needless to say, when the bottom fell out, our community was hit harder than many. Continuous layoffs, offshoring, and for those of us who were lucky enough to keep our jobs, we were faced with cancelled bonuses and severing of many significant benefits. The tech job scene here pretty much sucked for three years. One day, in 2003, the president paid a visit to one of the local community colleges do discuss his economic "vision" of the future for the Phoenix valley. That was the day that dubbya irrevocably lost my vote. His answer to our high unemployment rate: "More hi-tech education!!" At that moment, I realized that not our president has not a fucking clue about the current plight of the American middle-class technology worker. Tell the half-dozen or so PhD's that my company alone laid off that the solution to our problem is more education. In the four years of Bush's presidency, I haven't heard him mention once the issue of good, high-skilled, good paying jobs being shipped to Bangalore (please correct me if I'm wrong). This is a symptom of his greater problem; he runs away or avoids issues dealing with the economy. Anytime someone mentions it, you'll hear the same canned response: "our economy is strong, and my tax cuts are working". I called bullshit when he first said it, and I call bullshit nearly four years later as he keeps repeating it. I'd have more respect for the man if he would simply acknowledge that there are problems that need to be fixed.
Sorry if that turned into a rant, but it is getting kinda late over here:)
The bullet-list he posted is practically cut & paste from Kerry-Edwards literature. Those factoids ARE Kerry's stump speech! (He even listed them in the same order as on johnkerry.com)
I was just at johnkerry.com and failed to see the list you're referring to. Any similarity between my points and Kerry's platform is wholly coincidental. This is the short-list of why dubbya lost my vote. Gods forbid this campaign be about the issues that are really facing this nation, not who deserved what medal 35 years ago.
Maybe you don't actually know what's coming from the Kerry campaign, but have a viewpoint warped by filtering through 2 or 3 layers of media pontificating.
The points I cited come from either personal experience (as I stated), or from official Dep't. of Labor statistics/congressional reports/SEC releases. Google for them if you doubt their authenticity. If you have any counterpoints for what I brought up, please let me know. I'd love to hear how deficit, rampant unemployment, flat wages, and coddling up to big business can be good for this beloved nation of mine.
If the GOP can have Fox News, we can have F9/11. Not exactly fair or balanced, but hey!
Perhaps you should clarify "we". From a moderate viewpoint, the "bleeding-heart, Bush-is-a-terrorist, Michael Moore crowd" is just as ludicrous and uninformed as the "bible-thumping, big-business, tax-breaks-for-the-rich" side of the GOP. I am not a supporter of W. But I don't need to put out a propaganda film that would make Joseph Goebbles blush to prove my point. MM does *nothing* for informing the American public by putting out his drivel. He's only playing to his own crowd of "loonie-lefties". As a moderate who does not want four more years W, I find F9/11 to be insulting and counter-productive. Anyone with half a critical mind will dismiss it (like Fox news) for what it is: distorted partisan crap.
You want factual ammo against W? How about this:
The defecit he's created is the largest in history. This coming off a four-year surplus under Clinton.
Support the War in Iraq or not, we went there under bad intellegence (WMD, Al-Quaida link). That means that either a) Our intel agencies are horridly inept and incompetent, or b)We were lied to. Both of these warrant a new president, either through elections or impeachment.
W promised 5 million new jobs. To paraphrase John Kerry, "he's about 6 million short". My mother-in-law, who has 10 years experience as a network admin was forced to take a job paying $10 an hour once her unemployment benefits ran out.
Millions of good-paying, highly skilled jobs are going overseas. W's response: "The economy's getting stronger".
Wages for American workers have been flat for the past year, while worker productivity has skyrocketed. Avarage fortune 500 CEO compensation has increased 20% in the past 12 months!!
I am fortunate enough to be one of the minority who has decent medical coverage. However, in the four years since W. took office my out of pocket medical expenses have increased 250%
Halliburton, Enron: Did Bush/Cheney do anything unethical or illegal in thier recent dealings with these companies? We need an independant counsel to investigate this. Call it a witch-hunt if you will, but if either of these two made a personal profit off of the war or by bilking American workers out of their life savings, they need to be prosecuted.
"Am I better off now than four years ago?" Hell no!!! I feel like I've been given the job in this administration that Monica Lewinsky had in the last one. It's amazing: we'll impeach a president over lying about a blowjob, but let the lies, deceit and broken promises of this current adminstration go unpunished. Those of us who are against W don't need a shitslinger like MM, we need someone who is capable of tearing him down with facts not propaganda.
Yes, I have read the Silmarillion (and about 1/2 way through Unfinished Tales). But I have to somewhat disagree with your assesment. I wouldn't call the differences between the Elves "cultural differences"; Some swore the Oath of Feanor, others did not. Was the culture and technology of an Elf from Doriath much different from an Elf from Gondolin? They all worship the same gods, they all share a common history, they all knew the same songs and legends. I'm not criticizing the good Professor. Nor am I claiming his elvish characters were 1-sided, far from it. The mythology he wrote in a single lifetime would take a real society decades, if not centuries to create. But from a pure anthropological perspective, they were essentially a single culture.
I don't see why not. After all, humans have both advanced cultures capable of computers and rockets and primitive ones that can't even count beyond three.
Yes, this argument is true from an anthropological standpoint, but for fantasy/sci-fi filmmaking it doesn't work. In these genres, cultures within a species are usually merged into an archetype (or stereotype, if you will). The Empire: white homo-sapiens with British accents, Hutts: gangsters and criminals, Jawas: scavengers. SW isn't the only franchise that's guilty of this. Look at Star Trek; Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans - they have virtually no cultural diversity shown within their ranks. They all revolve around a common racial theme. Even Tolkien, as brilliant and diverse as his world was, found himself doing the same with his races. Dwarves were gruff, short tempered and loved living underground. Elves were stoic and mystical. Orcs were feral and vicious. Only when you got to the humans did you see any real cultural diversity.
Imagine if Lucas had done as you suggest. Would the Alliance have allied themselves with the Wookiees armed with spears and rocks, or would they have made a call to Chewie's friends on the other side of the planet to send over some Ion cannons and thermal detonators??
I heard somewhere Endor was originally supposed to be full of Wookies - what happened to that??
It is well known that Lucas originally wanted Wookiees at the end of ROTJ. However, through the trilogy we see (through Chewbacca) that the Wookiees are in fact a technologically advanced race. You couldn't have a race that was capable of fixing a hyperdrive fighting its wars with sticks and rocks! Lucas wanted to stick with the theme of the technologically "superior" empire being defeated by primitive weaponry. Hence, we get (reverse the syllables in "Wookiee") "Ewoks".
However, George never abandoned the idea of seeing the Wookiees fighting on their own turf. We will see the "Battle of Kashyyyk" in Episode III.
There was a Saturday Morning cartoon called "Ewoks" and one called "Droids". IIRC they ran between 1984-1985. Both series will be released on dvd this winter.
I've said this before, it'll never happen for one good reason. MS has already been found to be a Monopoly for its stranglehold on desktop OS's. By purchasing SCO, it would gain the rights to UNIX that SCO has. The Justice Dep't. would never allow MS to own both Windows and Unix.
Not at all:) Funny, I can't remember what my boss told me an hour ago, but I can instanly recall the easter egg code from a game I haven't played in nearly 15 years.
So having the shareholders rise up and start a class action lawsuit against SCO's upper management for acts in violation of U.S. securities fraud laws wouldn't be good enough?
IANAL, but you can't sue someone for Securities fraud. If a public company misrepresents itself, and as a result, a shareholder loses money, you may be able to take up civil action, but Securities Fraud in and of itself, is a criminal, not civil matter. I really hope the little Pump & Dump scheme eventually leads to an indictment for Darl and co. He and his circle became rich as SCO's stock soared in the spring of '03, then they sold and left the poor shareholders with a worthless penny stock when their house of cards started tumbling.
How about combining the goatse guy and Darl's likeness for a mascot?
Well, the penalty for Securities Fraud usually involves a federal "Pound Me in the Ass" prison, so this is certainly appropriate;)
There are other televised competitions that cater to niche crowds that, unless you are a hardcore fan (of *watching*, not just participating) would be boring as hell. Two that spring to mind immediately: Golf and Bowling. How either of these two sports survived (or in Golf's case, thrived) on television is beyond me. Neither have *any* action to speak of, both move at a snail's pace, neither involve any significant strategy, and neither are really "in your face" competitive. I'm not saying that makes them bad sports, but it does make for bad television. But somehow, there are enough fans to keep televising them viable. I think that with the past two generations having grown up on video games, ESPN can afford to risk an hour a week to televising video game tournaments. The fan base is definitely there.
You know, cheezy B-Movies are great for just this reason: they're low budget, so you don't have expectations, and they're great fun to tear to shreds. This is the formula that made MST3K so successful, and soooooo damn funny. When I think of "the worst movie of all time", I always exclude B-flicks. A horrible movie to me is one that has a budget, and actors that should be able to pull off a decent film. But due to a horrible story/bad direction/studio interference sucks in ways unimaginable.
I'd have to say my "worst film" would have to be the 1999 turd Wing Commander. I was a great fan of the WC video game franchise. WC1 was the first pc game to successfully merge a great game with great cinemantics. We take this for granted now, but in 1990, it was pretty revolutionary. For Wing Commander 3 & 4, Chris Roberts went from using animations to live actors in the game. We're talking the likes of Mark Hamill, Malcom McDowell, John Rhys-Davies, Jason Bernard, and Tom Wilson. And it worked very well. Great gameplay with a great story backing it up.
So when I heard that Chris Roberts was taking up writing and directing WC the movie, I had pretty high hopes for it. Wow, was I in for a shock. The story and characters were so loosly related to the game as not to be recognizable. And it was written by the same guy!!!! The Kilrathi, the giant cat warriors from the first three games that were the main antagonists were reduced to slimy green anthropod-things that had a whole two minutes of screen time. Everything that was great about the game was lost to the film. And the film itself added elements that were just plain stoooopid.
Slashdot Mirror
You would prefer another target?? A military target?
I hate to oversimplify the war by comparing it to a piece of fantasy, but it does seem relevant at this point. The "contractors" were living in a legitimate military target. What we're seeing in Iraq is different. You remember when the ground war was on, several journalists were killed in the course of the fighting. But they were embedded with the US forces. When the Iraqi army fired on our troops, the civilian reporters were taken out as well. The Iraqi's weren't firing on the civilians, they were firing on a legitimate military target. The accepted rules of warfare state that you don't intentionally target civilians. However, if you blow up a factory that's producing tanks that kills its civilian workforce, that is accepted. What we're seeing in iraq is the deliberate and systematic kidnapping and murder of civilians. Having a civilian truck driver killed as he is transporting goods to feed our war effort is one thing. To kidnap the driver and use him for terror leverage is a totally different story. At the point he is seperated from the military goods he is transporting, he is no longer a legitimate target. To make matters even worse, many of those kidnapped have nothing to do with the war effort. The two Italian women alleged to be killed this week were charity workers. At no time should they have been considered a legal target. But that is the crux of the problem. The enemy we are fighting has absolutely no regard for accepted rules of warfare or even the most rudimentary concept of humanity.
If you listen to the commentary on AOTC, when the Geonosians are shown giving the DS plans to Dooku, Lucas chimes in "Now Jay & Silent bob know who it was that built the Death Star".
Actually, there was a significant resistance in Germany from the Werewolfs, resistance still loyal to the Nazi party. They engaged in similar acts as the Iraqi resistance: intimidation and assasination of leaders who supported the Allied occupation, bombings, etc. Several factors led to the breaking of this resistance. Your point #2 is a good example. Another thing that must be remembered is that we weren't the only ones in Germany during its reconstruction. The American approach to the resistance was a faaar cry from how the Soviets dealt with it. The Russians were absolutely ruthless when it came to wiping out Nazi sympathizers (or those suspected of being Nazi sympathizers). I'm sure this had quite an effect as well.
I do honor America's intentions in Iraq. For all the sobbing people make about the "thousands of poor iraqis" killed in the conflict, there is a certain truth that is eluding them: It's a fucking war. And in war, innocent people will die. In the end of WWII, it was not uncommon for 100,000 innocent Japanese civilians to die in a single bombing campaign. I believe the US is acting nobly in trying to minimize the civilian casualties during this conflict through the use of precision munitions. But when your enemy is purposly embedding their positions within major population centers, what are ya gonna do?? The terrorists fire a mortar into a busy marketplace, intentionally killing civilians. The US responds by firing back on the attackers, who conveniently happen to be surrounded by civilians themselves. It's all a propaganda ploy. It's the insurgents who are the true monsters, intentionally using the Iraqi people as shields and political collateral.
I've heard some rather hawkish folks say that we should employ the same tactics as the terrorists - kidnap their families and loved ones and decapitate them on national TV, following in a similar vein to how Russia dealt with suspected Nazi insurgants - mass and indescriminate executions. Part of me feels that this might be effective: find the one thing the bastards care about and destroy it in the most violent and humiliating way possible, break their spirit and their will to fight. Make their followers think twice before they kidnap some innocent charity worker. But then I have to remember that we are obligated to take the "moral high ground" in this war, as difficult as that will be. As Americans, we have our honor in how we fight our battles, and we simply do not do business like that.
Jeezus, you finally get the trilogy on DVD and still you bitch. If you have such a hardon for seeing the "classic", "unfuckedwith", "beforeGeorgeLucasRapedMyChildhood" "twoAudioChannel", "matteLinesEverywhere" trilogy, jump on a torrent or dust off your VHS and get fucking over it already.
The Last Starfighter was the first move with CG special effects. Bzzzzt!!! Wrong!! LSF came out two years after TRON did.
Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada!
...without the Smoke & Mirrors.
Don't blame the sanctions for the deaths that Saddam caused. The oil-for-food/medicine program was in place to alleviate the Iraqi peoples' suffering. I suppose it was America's fault that all the money generated from this program (billions of dollars) was stolen by Saddam's regime and never made it to the people it was intended for.
I'd be shocked to see a poll that actually shows a majority of viewers accepting the prequels as "on par" with episodes 4,5,6.
Here's one.
Just cause they made millions of $ doesn't mean they didn't suck.
Please re-read my original post. I never said millions of dollars. I said millions of fans. Big difference.
Good point about Lucas' motivation. But your comment about him being "burned out" is unfounded. If you watch the upcoming Empire of Dreams, you'll see just how much pressure he was under to get the first film out. The studio was fighting him all the way, effects shots weren't working, and by the time it was over, he was expecting a bomb that would end his career. Now, he calls the shots. It's his schedule, his money (Fox doesn't pay for production, they only distribute) and his vision. Honestly, the man's probably never been happier. And when you refer to "we" when discussing SW fans, remember, that there are millions of fans worldwide that *love* the entire story, prequels, and SE's included. We're not all in the "boo-hoo, George lucas raped my childhood" camp.
Ack!!! Libertarian who wants bush out of office, yes. Liberal? Hell no :)
Most economic arguments regarding presidents are silly and irrelevant. All-in-all, no president really has THAT much control over the freight train that is the economy.
Agreed, the cause wasn't his fault, but I do blame him for his total lack of action in getting it back to where it should be. The administration has the power to regulate offshoring while still operating in a free global market - notice I didn't say *stop* offshoring. Our government tightly regulates trade in goods through tarrifs and incentives to "most favored" nations. Offering nice fat tax incentives to companies that keep a certain percentage of their tech workforce stateside would be a good start.
Yeah, I'm pissed about the disparity between the worker slaving to pay his mortgage and put his kids through school without even a raise to match cost-of-living expenses, and the CxOs of his company voting their own salaries through the roof. Threat of layoff = higher productivity for less pay in the short term. Higher productivity leads to greater output leads to higher shareholder value. As long as the shareholders are happy, they won't bitch when CEO Joseph J. Whitey gives himself a $350,000 a year raise. This kind of economics works for Bush. His campaign contributors are made rich. And he can use the rising stock cost as "evidence" of an "improving economy", while ignoring more relevant figures like consumer confidence (in the toilet), and employment (First President since the Depression to come out of his term with *fewer* jobs than he went in with!!) Can he regulate how corporations mete out their payroll? Probably not. But how can a *moral man*, as he claims to be, tolerate and even encourage this type of, perhaps not illegal, but certainly unethical behavior??
and wars cost lots and lots of money.
Ok, you're saying big war = big defecit. I guess you got me there :) Putting on my flame-retardant suit, I'll say that I did support the invasion. But I certainly hope that Dubbya delivers on his promise to have the cost of reconstruction and security covered by Iraqi oil exports. Pardon me for not crunching the numbers, but IIRC, the projected cost of the War is but a fraction of the estimated budget defecit for '05. Feel free to slap me down if I'm wrong.
Now that said, I don't like W that much. Sadly, I don't like Kerry either, so I have no clue who to vote for.
I seldom vote "the lesser of two evils". That's why I wrote in Dave Mustaine in '96.
There were several audio tracks recorded for ESB when it was originally filmed. IIRC, the audio track with the line "...you don't taste very good" that appeared on the original VHS transfers had been damaged to the point where it couldn't be lifted. For that scene, the production team had to use one of the alternate tracks for the remastering.
If I may provide an anecdote: I live in the Metro Phoenix area. We are home to many corporations with large vested interests in technology and IT. American Express, Honeywell, McDonnal Douglass, General Dynamics, Intel and Motorola all have a fairly large tech presence here. Needless to say, when the bottom fell out, our community was hit harder than many. Continuous layoffs, offshoring, and for those of us who were lucky enough to keep our jobs, we were faced with cancelled bonuses and severing of many significant benefits. The tech job scene here pretty much sucked for three years. One day, in 2003, the president paid a visit to one of the local community colleges do discuss his economic "vision" of the future for the Phoenix valley. That was the day that dubbya irrevocably lost my vote. His answer to our high unemployment rate: "More hi-tech education!!" At that moment, I realized that not our president has not a fucking clue about the current plight of the American middle-class technology worker. Tell the half-dozen or so PhD's that my company alone laid off that the solution to our problem is more education. In the four years of Bush's presidency, I haven't heard him mention once the issue of good, high-skilled, good paying jobs being shipped to Bangalore (please correct me if I'm wrong). This is a symptom of his greater problem; he runs away or avoids issues dealing with the economy. Anytime someone mentions it, you'll hear the same canned response: "our economy is strong, and my tax cuts are working". I called bullshit when he first said it, and I call bullshit nearly four years later as he keeps repeating it. I'd have more respect for the man if he would simply acknowledge that there are problems that need to be fixed.
Sorry if that turned into a rant, but it is getting kinda late over here :)
I was just at johnkerry.com and failed to see the list you're referring to. Any similarity between my points and Kerry's platform is wholly coincidental. This is the short-list of why dubbya lost my vote. Gods forbid this campaign be about the issues that are really facing this nation, not who deserved what medal 35 years ago.
Maybe you don't actually know what's coming from the Kerry campaign, but have a viewpoint warped by filtering through 2 or 3 layers of media pontificating.
The points I cited come from either personal experience (as I stated), or from official Dep't. of Labor statistics/congressional reports/SEC releases. Google for them if you doubt their authenticity. If you have any counterpoints for what I brought up, please let me know. I'd love to hear how deficit, rampant unemployment, flat wages, and coddling up to big business can be good for this beloved nation of mine.
Fwiffo, darling. Answer the door!
Perhaps you should clarify "we". From a moderate viewpoint, the "bleeding-heart, Bush-is-a-terrorist, Michael Moore crowd" is just as ludicrous and uninformed as the "bible-thumping, big-business, tax-breaks-for-the-rich" side of the GOP. I am not a supporter of W. But I don't need to put out a propaganda film that would make Joseph Goebbles blush to prove my point. MM does *nothing* for informing the American public by putting out his drivel. He's only playing to his own crowd of "loonie-lefties". As a moderate who does not want four more years W, I find F9/11 to be insulting and counter-productive. Anyone with half a critical mind will dismiss it (like Fox news) for what it is: distorted partisan crap.
You want factual ammo against W? How about this:
"Am I better off now than four years ago?" Hell no!!! I feel like I've been given the job in this administration that Monica Lewinsky had in the last one. It's amazing: we'll impeach a president over lying about a blowjob, but let the lies, deceit and broken promises of this current adminstration go unpunished. Those of us who are against W don't need a shitslinger like MM, we need someone who is capable of tearing him down with facts not propaganda.
Yes, I have read the Silmarillion (and about 1/2 way through Unfinished Tales). But I have to somewhat disagree with your assesment. I wouldn't call the differences between the Elves "cultural differences"; Some swore the Oath of Feanor, others did not. Was the culture and technology of an Elf from Doriath much different from an Elf from Gondolin? They all worship the same gods, they all share a common history, they all knew the same songs and legends. I'm not criticizing the good Professor. Nor am I claiming his elvish characters were 1-sided, far from it. The mythology he wrote in a single lifetime would take a real society decades, if not centuries to create. But from a pure anthropological perspective, they were essentially a single culture.
Yes, this argument is true from an anthropological standpoint, but for fantasy/sci-fi filmmaking it doesn't work. In these genres, cultures within a species are usually merged into an archetype (or stereotype, if you will). The Empire: white homo-sapiens with British accents, Hutts: gangsters and criminals, Jawas: scavengers. SW isn't the only franchise that's guilty of this. Look at Star Trek; Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans - they have virtually no cultural diversity shown within their ranks. They all revolve around a common racial theme. Even Tolkien, as brilliant and diverse as his world was, found himself doing the same with his races. Dwarves were gruff, short tempered and loved living underground. Elves were stoic and mystical. Orcs were feral and vicious. Only when you got to the humans did you see any real cultural diversity.
Imagine if Lucas had done as you suggest. Would the Alliance have allied themselves with the Wookiees armed with spears and rocks, or would they have made a call to Chewie's friends on the other side of the planet to send over some Ion cannons and thermal detonators??
It is well known that Lucas originally wanted Wookiees at the end of ROTJ. However, through the trilogy we see (through Chewbacca) that the Wookiees are in fact a technologically advanced race. You couldn't have a race that was capable of fixing a hyperdrive fighting its wars with sticks and rocks! Lucas wanted to stick with the theme of the technologically "superior" empire being defeated by primitive weaponry. Hence, we get (reverse the syllables in "Wookiee") "Ewoks".
However, George never abandoned the idea of seeing the Wookiees fighting on their own turf. We will see the "Battle of Kashyyyk" in Episode III.
There was a Saturday Morning cartoon called "Ewoks" and one called "Droids". IIRC they ran between 1984-1985. Both series will be released on dvd this winter.
I've said this before, it'll never happen for one good reason. MS has already been found to be a Monopoly for its stranglehold on desktop OS's. By purchasing SCO, it would gain the rights to UNIX that SCO has. The Justice Dep't. would never allow MS to own both Windows and Unix.
Not at all :) Funny, I can't remember what my boss told me an hour ago, but I can instanly recall the easter egg code from a game I haven't played in nearly 15 years.
IANAL, but you can't sue someone for Securities fraud. If a public company misrepresents itself, and as a result, a shareholder loses money, you may be able to take up civil action, but Securities Fraud in and of itself, is a criminal, not civil matter. I really hope the little Pump & Dump scheme eventually leads to an indictment for Darl and co. He and his circle became rich as SCO's stock soared in the spring of '03, then they sold and left the poor shareholders with a worthless penny stock when their house of cards started tumbling.
How about combining the goatse guy and Darl's likeness for a mascot?
Well, the penalty for Securities Fraud usually involves a federal "Pound Me in the Ass" prison, so this is certainly appropriate ;)
There are other televised competitions that cater to niche crowds that, unless you are a hardcore fan (of *watching*, not just participating) would be boring as hell. Two that spring to mind immediately: Golf and Bowling. How either of these two sports survived (or in Golf's case, thrived) on television is beyond me. Neither have *any* action to speak of, both move at a snail's pace, neither involve any significant strategy, and neither are really "in your face" competitive. I'm not saying that makes them bad sports, but it does make for bad television. But somehow, there are enough fans to keep televising them viable. I think that with the past two generations having grown up on video games, ESPN can afford to risk an hour a week to televising video game tournaments. The fan base is definitely there.
I'd have to say my "worst film" would have to be the 1999 turd Wing Commander. I was a great fan of the WC video game franchise. WC1 was the first pc game to successfully merge a great game with great cinemantics. We take this for granted now, but in 1990, it was pretty revolutionary. For Wing Commander 3 & 4, Chris Roberts went from using animations to live actors in the game. We're talking the likes of Mark Hamill, Malcom McDowell, John Rhys-Davies, Jason Bernard, and Tom Wilson. And it worked very well. Great gameplay with a great story backing it up.
So when I heard that Chris Roberts was taking up writing and directing WC the movie, I had pretty high hopes for it. Wow, was I in for a shock. The story and characters were so loosly related to the game as not to be recognizable. And it was written by the same guy!!!! The Kilrathi, the giant cat warriors from the first three games that were the main antagonists were reduced to slimy green anthropod-things that had a whole two minutes of screen time. Everything that was great about the game was lost to the film. And the film itself added elements that were just plain stoooopid.