Problem is, reviewers like Stephen Hunter at the Washington Post just "simply do not get it" (his own words: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/06/09/AR2005060901951.html) and trash them in reviews. Seriously, he starts out by saying he's the wrong person to review it, then proceeds to give a negative review. What ever happened to "I don't get it, so I recuse myself", I'll never know.
Well, I don't know. "I thought it was kind of arbitrary" is as good an opinion as any; I don't think someone needs to either love or hate something in order to be qualified to review it.
On a tangent, though, it's sad that whenever a movie has a female protagonist, who is competent and achieves things, and who is not constantly used as a poster girl for Important Female Issues, then that makes the movie a Girl Power movie for every second Western reviewer. It's sad, because it emphasizes how few Western movies have competent female protagonists without a Female Agenda, and how alien this concept is to some people.:/
The point isn't that the Studio Ghibli movies are anime. They aren't succeeding because they are made by Japan in a Japanese animation style which is currently "in". They are succeeding because they are interesting, original stories with genuine charm, rather than schmaltzy, PC-laden cheese produced by the mangling of public domain works or historical events into unrecognisability.
The most successful and enjoyable things Disney has recently produced have been Lilo & Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove. They were good because they were interesting, original stories, not because of the way they were animated. So it's hilarious that Disney has decided that 2D animation is dead, and if they switch to 3D everything will be all better. As I recall, Treasure Planet was partially done in 3D. It still sank like a lead balloon.
I know what movies I'll be getting for my hypothetical future children.
TFA is pretty stupid; the "nerds" mentioned don't seem very nerdy - but I don't know about "metrosexual" either. It's not a very meaningful term - it seems to be indiscriminately applied to anyone who isn't a stereotypical jock, as if there were only two possible categories of man.
My point still stands. If you are the kind of person who likes to spend lots of time behind a book or behind a computer, it's nice to have a significant other who likes to do the same. It means you can both spend time doing this without causing resentment. Maybe it doesn't appeal to you, but that doesn't mean it can't possibly appeal to anyone else.:)
If you're socially SOL in high school, you're pretty much SOL for the rest of your life, or at least until you become a totally different person.
I agree that if you weren't popular in school, then you are unlikely to achieve mainstream popularity in your later life - but that doesn't mean that you are doomed to be a miserable neurotic recluse, or that in fact everyone desires mainstream popularity.
I wasn't socially active at all in high school, because I couldn't find anybody who shared my interests. At university, I was exposed to a wider selection of people, and I found my social niche in the local roleplaying society. I was probably too shy at that point to have willingly joined said roleplaying society by myself (I had had no prior experience of roleplaying, and some people's descriptions made it sound a bit like Theatresports, which I absolutely hate), but some friends that I had made during my final school year dragged me along, and it turned out to be something I really like. But I digress.
At first I was extremely insecure in my social interactions - not because of introversion; I have always enjoyed discussing stuff I'm passionate about and find interesting - but because as I became more and more animated in my conversation I would inevitably eventually say something which I realised, as I was saying it, was really stupid. I would then instantly become convinced that I had horribly offended everyone, that everyone would remember the stupid thing I said forever, and so on. I would then shut up and not talk at all for the rest of the day. And usually spend days agonising over my stupidity afterwards.
However, since people would in fact usually appear to have completely forgotten my awful faux pas the next time I spoke to them, I eventually got over it. I still occasionally have moments when I wish that my brain had better control over my tongue, but they no longer lead to prolonged angst and insecurity.
I would describe myself as a socially normal person today, and I don't think that I've fundamentally changed at all. I don't participate in activities which most of the mainstream finds entertaining, but I don't think that's a sensible benchmark for social success. I have a partner that I love, who shares my most important ideals and interests, I have friends that I can have fun with, and I have a cordial professional relationship with my co-workers.
School is a small pond, which you should eventually leave behind you. If everyone around you is like the people you hated in school, then expand your pool of acquaintances. Somewhere in the world, people you could be friends with exist. Try to find them. If you live in a small town, and you've exhausted all the possibilities, maybe you should move somewhere else. It may be a hassle, but do you want to live somewhere where you will never be happy, for the rest of your life?
I suggest that you stop listening to people who suggest it, because it's utter BS.
By forcing yourself to engage in social activities which you dislike, and to talk to people with whom you have absolutely nothing in common about subjects which you find trite and tedious, the only thing you will achieve is making yourself more miserable.
There is a perception in mainstream society that men are "threatened" by women who are smart. Therefore, in order to "get guys", some smart women pretend to be stupid. Somehow they are always surprised to discover that the men that they attract in this way are assholes who are looking for stupid, shallow women - and who make them unhappy.
If you try to meet women through social activities that you hate, the only women you will ever meet are women who want you to be the sort of person who enjoys those activities - and so you will never be happy with them.
Now, for some people, the mere acquisition of any kind of girlfriend at all may be the point of the exercise. They may not mind that they have absolutely nothing in common with her, and that their relationship is likely to have the stability and lifespan of a nitroglycerine milkshake. If, however, you are looking for a pleasant and friendly relationship with someone you can actually talk to about something other than the weather, this route is doomed to failure.
I would suggest expanding your hobbies and activities to related pursuits which you haven't tried before, but which look like fun. In this way, you will get to know more people who share your interests. The more new people you meet, the more likely you are to find a compatible companion.
There is no magic solution or formula, it's just trial and error.
Don't change. As long as you bathe regularly and brush your teeth, I doubt that there's anything wrong with you.
I'd love to see a film of Rendezvous with Rama. Great exploration story and much better then recent disaster/exploration films.
Just dont make any of the awful follow-up books into movies.
Yeah, that would be awesome. I don't know if the plot has enough excitement for mainstream movie appeal, though - a giant spaceship arrives, we explore it a bit... and then it leaves!
I generally enjoyed the later books, except for the great cop-out ending, and the "Surprise! Random gratuitous pr0n!", which was just weird (Clarke claims that those bits were Gentry Lee's fault).
I can easily see them becoming a substandard miniseries adaptation which completely misses the boat (I'm still hoping to get hold of Riverworld, just to see if it's really as terrible as I think it is.;) ).
Re:I'm amazed it took him this long to work it out
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McVoy Strikes Back
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My point was not so much that since OS X is built on BSD it has no merit of its own or lacks originality entirely, but that it is standing on the shoulders of open-source software. Since I'd say about half of OS X is the operating system core and half is the shiny interface layer (which to a certain extent relies on the underlying structure), I don't think it's fair to call OS X a triumph of the innovativeness of closed-source software.
Regarding the cross-application consistency - I like my software to be modular, and I like to be able to choose between several different options for a particular tool. (My favourite browser, mail client and window manager are not the currently favoured defaults). This does mean that interface consistency is not guaranteed, but I find that to be a small price to pay for choice.
The standard Gnome and KDE applications are pretty consistent, but then KDE and Gnome try to be complete desktop environments. In order to get everyone who makes Linux apps to conform to an interface standard, everyone would have to agree to a single interface standard. They haven't, and I'm glad. That way lies stagnation.
I find that universally liked features tend to spread, but the remaining diversity ensures that features with a small following but little widespread appeal have a chance of surviving.
Re:I'm amazed it took him this long to work it out
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McVoy Strikes Back
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· Score: 1
It occurred to me about five minutes after using OS X: "what the hell have I been doing with this other crap?!".
Yeah, because OS X is so very innovatively wrapped around BSD.
I know you probably mean the interface. I've used OS X (admittedly not extensively) and I've used various X GUIs, and I considerably prefer the flexibility and simplicity of the latter. And the multiple workspaces. Sure, OS X is pretty, but I don't think it's particularly more usable.
I know that there are some things that still don't work out of the box on all distros (sometimes because of IP issues, and not for the developers' lack of trying), but I know how to sort them out quickly, so I don't particularly care.
Actually, Clarke wrote 2001 at the same time as he made the movie with Kubrick. The most notable difference between the two is that the centrally featured moon in the book is Iapetus, a moon of Saturn, whereas in the movie it's Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Clarke later decided that he liked the movie version more, and the later books are sequels to the movie.
I think 2001 and 2010 work equally well as movies and books, actually, and retain much the same plot, structure and spirit in both media - so I don't think this is a good example. The books don't rely on political innuendo, internal monologue or subtle and complex character interactions - they are relatively straightforward chronicles of events, and as such are the optimum kind of book for translating into film.
Dude, did you read the little yellow sidebar? Moore read the shooting script, and comments: "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed."
I was expecting this movie to be terrible (a faithful adaptation of the comic book's core plot and message is just not going to happen in the current political climate), and this is a pretty clear confirmation.
My god! These are the missing pieces to understanding half the human race that I've been searching for all my life! I just knew that behind those apparently random monosyllables and non-sequitur quips lay a complex web of intelligent discourse!
Say, is there some kind of "Elementary Man-Speak for Women" textbook I could pick up? (Please respond using plain language and really long words about feelings, or I may have trouble empathizing with what you're trying to communicate.)
And he would have got away with it too, if he had included some kind of filter which only picked flames about US politics, complaints about Slashdot groupthink and allegations that the parent poster has no girlfriend and lives in his parents' basement.:)
Many of those search engines died because their home pages were so cluttery with all of their 'added services.'
Yup. It was the big portal boom of the nineties, when suddenly every company with a website decided that it would be a great idea to give out free email addresses, news, stock quotes, humourous animations, and all sorts of other crap except information about their actual product, or any kind of useful service whatsoever. Because of course everybody loved portals!
Urgh. I remember when Deja News went to crap. Thank goodness Google picked it up.
Altavista was not the Google of 1999. It was simply the best-known of a number of search engines which used much the same algorithm and differed only in the contents of their databases.
All those search engines died because Google's algorithm was so much better that it was a waste of time to use anything else - not because of some mysterious search engine life cycle.
Until someone else comes up with the new Most Brilliant Search Algorithm Ever, Google is going to stay right where it is. If they're smart, they will continue research into making their search better and better, so that *they* are likely to come up with the Next Big Thing.
The grandparent specifically mentioned land grabs and 1980, both of which imply that he was thinking of Zimbabwe specifically. The situation in South Africa is entirely different (hysterical claims to the contrary notwithstanding). I think it's a bit of a stretch to claim that white people are being oppressed here now, although I agree that they are at a serious political disadvantage.
I believe that where you said "Africa" you meant to say "Zimbabwe". Africa is a continent, and white-on-black crime is not one of its major problems, statistically speaking.
I don't think this is a case of Joss Whedon going "Ooh, I'm going to leave stuff out of the movie so I can screw my fans and make them buy the tie-in comic book."
Most likely, it's a case of Joss Whedon going "I can't make this movie continue directly from where the series left off because then it wouldn't be a good stand-alone movie; hey, why don't I make a tie-in comic book to bridge the gap for fans who watched the series?"
The point isn't really that it's remote-controlled, the point is that it's canned. You do realise it's canned, right?
Seriously, some of the posters here seem to believe that these people are forking out bazillions to build highly advanced armed robots that roam the countryside in pursuit of free-range game. What planet do you live on?
In reality, what you're controlling by remote is a swivelling apparatus in a pen, and what you're shooting at are fenced-in animals which were probably reared by humans on a farm. Which is about as sporting as going to a farm and shooting some cows and sheep. Ooh, the adrenalin rush.
If you're going to compare this to non-remote-controlled hunting, then compare it to canned hunting in person. Comparing it to tracking animals through the forest is just ridiculous.
Uh, I live in South Africa and I've seen it. It actually got shown on TV. Various people I know bought the DVDs.
I was initially unexcited about the show, since it was billed as a "western in space" (which may be part of what it is, but definitely not all it is) and since everyone who recommended it to me was a frothing Buffy fangirl (and I find Buffy to be annoyingly over-hyped). I eventually watched it on DVD, and I think it's the best sci-fi series I've ever seen. I'm greatly looking forward to the movie, and so are at least a few other people down here - we're all hoping this will jump-start some kind of continuation.
No they arnt. If you think that "lot[s] of girls are just as turned on by..." then you must have been exposed to an extremely untypical group of women.
Bwahahahaha! Please, look up "slash fanfiction" on Google.
I think that's a sufficiently large number to be called "a lot".
Yup, I found that line equally hilarious. I live in South Africa, and my cell phone works in my house. And in everyone else's houses. And at work. And in cars. And in elevators. We don't really get basements here much, so I have no experimental data on that, but I would expect my phone to work in a basement as well. And I'm pretty sure that we put metal bits in our walls, judging by my observations of skeletal houses on construction sites.
I had heard that cell phone coverage in the US was craptastic, but my god, man, this is scary. I have never had a cell phone not work because of excessive metal shielding; it only happens outside the coverage area - when you go to a very, very small town, which is also behind a mountain.
Yes, I think you're right. Not reading is probably the foremost cause of poor language skills. If you read a lot when you're a child, you can fix even the crappiest school education - but if you don't, you're likely to suck even if you went to a private school.
You can't become familiar with the subtleties and complications of a language by rote learning, or improve your vocabulary by memorising a thesaurus. Some things you can only learn by example, and unfortunately spoken colloquial language does not provide a good example.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is, reviewers like Stephen Hunter at the Washington Post just "simply do not get it" (his own words: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/06/09/AR2005060901951.html) and trash them in reviews. Seriously, he starts out by saying he's the wrong person to review it, then proceeds to give a negative review. What ever happened to "I don't get it, so I recuse myself", I'll never know.
Well, I don't know. "I thought it was kind of arbitrary" is as good an opinion as any; I don't think someone needs to either love or hate something in order to be qualified to review it.
On a tangent, though, it's sad that whenever a movie has a female protagonist, who is competent and achieves things, and who is not constantly used as a poster girl for Important Female Issues, then that makes the movie a Girl Power movie for every second Western reviewer. It's sad, because it emphasizes how few Western movies have competent female protagonists without a Female Agenda, and how alien this concept is to some people. :/
The point isn't that the Studio Ghibli movies are anime. They aren't succeeding because they are made by Japan in a Japanese animation style which is currently "in". They are succeeding because they are interesting, original stories with genuine charm, rather than schmaltzy, PC-laden cheese produced by the mangling of public domain works or historical events into unrecognisability.
The most successful and enjoyable things Disney has recently produced have been Lilo & Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove. They were good because they were interesting, original stories, not because of the way they were animated. So it's hilarious that Disney has decided that 2D animation is dead, and if they switch to 3D everything will be all better. As I recall, Treasure Planet was partially done in 3D. It still sank like a lead balloon.
I know what movies I'll be getting for my hypothetical future children.
Ha, you assume incorrectly on both counts. ;)
TFA is pretty stupid; the "nerds" mentioned don't seem very nerdy - but I don't know about "metrosexual" either. It's not a very meaningful term - it seems to be indiscriminately applied to anyone who isn't a stereotypical jock, as if there were only two possible categories of man.
My point still stands. If you are the kind of person who likes to spend lots of time behind a book or behind a computer, it's nice to have a significant other who likes to do the same. It means you can both spend time doing this without causing resentment. Maybe it doesn't appeal to you, but that doesn't mean it can't possibly appeal to anyone else. :)
No offense, but who wants to be with a person that sits around all day and reads book and sit behind a computer?
Uh... how about another person who reads books and sits behind the computer all day?
Shoes matter an absurd amount. Exercise shoes (Nike, Reebok) are only to be worn during exercise.
Army boots: the footwear for all occasions. Applicable to both genders. :)
If you're socially SOL in high school, you're pretty much SOL for the rest of your life, or at least until you become a totally different person.
I agree that if you weren't popular in school, then you are unlikely to achieve mainstream popularity in your later life - but that doesn't mean that you are doomed to be a miserable neurotic recluse, or that in fact everyone desires mainstream popularity.
I wasn't socially active at all in high school, because I couldn't find anybody who shared my interests. At university, I was exposed to a wider selection of people, and I found my social niche in the local roleplaying society. I was probably too shy at that point to have willingly joined said roleplaying society by myself (I had had no prior experience of roleplaying, and some people's descriptions made it sound a bit like Theatresports, which I absolutely hate), but some friends that I had made during my final school year dragged me along, and it turned out to be something I really like. But I digress.
At first I was extremely insecure in my social interactions - not because of introversion; I have always enjoyed discussing stuff I'm passionate about and find interesting - but because as I became more and more animated in my conversation I would inevitably eventually say something which I realised, as I was saying it, was really stupid. I would then instantly become convinced that I had horribly offended everyone, that everyone would remember the stupid thing I said forever, and so on. I would then shut up and not talk at all for the rest of the day. And usually spend days agonising over my stupidity afterwards.
However, since people would in fact usually appear to have completely forgotten my awful faux pas the next time I spoke to them, I eventually got over it. I still occasionally have moments when I wish that my brain had better control over my tongue, but they no longer lead to prolonged angst and insecurity.
I would describe myself as a socially normal person today, and I don't think that I've fundamentally changed at all. I don't participate in activities which most of the mainstream finds entertaining, but I don't think that's a sensible benchmark for social success. I have a partner that I love, who shares my most important ideals and interests, I have friends that I can have fun with, and I have a cordial professional relationship with my co-workers.
School is a small pond, which you should eventually leave behind you. If everyone around you is like the people you hated in school, then expand your pool of acquaintances. Somewhere in the world, people you could be friends with exist. Try to find them. If you live in a small town, and you've exhausted all the possibilities, maybe you should move somewhere else. It may be a hassle, but do you want to live somewhere where you will never be happy, for the rest of your life?
I suggest that you stop listening to people who suggest it, because it's utter BS.
By forcing yourself to engage in social activities which you dislike, and to talk to people with whom you have absolutely nothing in common about subjects which you find trite and tedious, the only thing you will achieve is making yourself more miserable.
There is a perception in mainstream society that men are "threatened" by women who are smart. Therefore, in order to "get guys", some smart women pretend to be stupid. Somehow they are always surprised to discover that the men that they attract in this way are assholes who are looking for stupid, shallow women - and who make them unhappy.
If you try to meet women through social activities that you hate, the only women you will ever meet are women who want you to be the sort of person who enjoys those activities - and so you will never be happy with them.
Now, for some people, the mere acquisition of any kind of girlfriend at all may be the point of the exercise. They may not mind that they have absolutely nothing in common with her, and that their relationship is likely to have the stability and lifespan of a nitroglycerine milkshake. If, however, you are looking for a pleasant and friendly relationship with someone you can actually talk to about something other than the weather, this route is doomed to failure.
I would suggest expanding your hobbies and activities to related pursuits which you haven't tried before, but which look like fun. In this way, you will get to know more people who share your interests. The more new people you meet, the more likely you are to find a compatible companion.
There is no magic solution or formula, it's just trial and error.
Don't change. As long as you bathe regularly and brush your teeth, I doubt that there's anything wrong with you.
I'd love to see a film of Rendezvous with Rama. Great exploration story and much better then recent disaster/exploration films. Just dont make any of the awful follow-up books into movies.
Yeah, that would be awesome. I don't know if the plot has enough excitement for mainstream movie appeal, though - a giant spaceship arrives, we explore it a bit... and then it leaves!
I generally enjoyed the later books, except for the great cop-out ending, and the "Surprise! Random gratuitous pr0n!", which was just weird (Clarke claims that those bits were Gentry Lee's fault).
I can easily see them becoming a substandard miniseries adaptation which completely misses the boat (I'm still hoping to get hold of Riverworld, just to see if it's really as terrible as I think it is. ;) ).
My point was not so much that since OS X is built on BSD it has no merit of its own or lacks originality entirely, but that it is standing on the shoulders of open-source software. Since I'd say about half of OS X is the operating system core and half is the shiny interface layer (which to a certain extent relies on the underlying structure), I don't think it's fair to call OS X a triumph of the innovativeness of closed-source software.
Regarding the cross-application consistency - I like my software to be modular, and I like to be able to choose between several different options for a particular tool. (My favourite browser, mail client and window manager are not the currently favoured defaults). This does mean that interface consistency is not guaranteed, but I find that to be a small price to pay for choice.
The standard Gnome and KDE applications are pretty consistent, but then KDE and Gnome try to be complete desktop environments. In order to get everyone who makes Linux apps to conform to an interface standard, everyone would have to agree to a single interface standard. They haven't, and I'm glad. That way lies stagnation.
I find that universally liked features tend to spread, but the remaining diversity ensures that features with a small following but little widespread appeal have a chance of surviving.
It occurred to me about five minutes after using OS X: "what the hell have I been doing with this other crap?!".
Yeah, because OS X is so very innovatively wrapped around BSD.
I know you probably mean the interface. I've used OS X (admittedly not extensively) and I've used various X GUIs, and I considerably prefer the flexibility and simplicity of the latter. And the multiple workspaces. Sure, OS X is pretty, but I don't think it's particularly more usable.
I know that there are some things that still don't work out of the box on all distros (sometimes because of IP issues, and not for the developers' lack of trying), but I know how to sort them out quickly, so I don't particularly care.
2001 was a film before it was a book.
Actually, Clarke wrote 2001 at the same time as he made the movie with Kubrick. The most notable difference between the two is that the centrally featured moon in the book is Iapetus, a moon of Saturn, whereas in the movie it's Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Clarke later decided that he liked the movie version more, and the later books are sequels to the movie.
I think 2001 and 2010 work equally well as movies and books, actually, and retain much the same plot, structure and spirit in both media - so I don't think this is a good example. The books don't rely on political innuendo, internal monologue or subtle and complex character interactions - they are relatively straightforward chronicles of events, and as such are the optimum kind of book for translating into film.
Dude, did you read the little yellow sidebar? Moore read the shooting script, and comments: "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed."
I was expecting this movie to be terrible (a faithful adaptation of the comic book's core plot and message is just not going to happen in the current political climate), and this is a pretty clear confirmation.
My god! These are the missing pieces to understanding half the human race that I've been searching for all my life! I just knew that behind those apparently random monosyllables and non-sequitur quips lay a complex web of intelligent discourse!
Say, is there some kind of "Elementary Man-Speak for Women" textbook I could pick up? (Please respond using plain language and really long words about feelings, or I may have trouble empathizing with what you're trying to communicate.)
And he would have got away with it too, if he had included some kind of filter which only picked flames about US politics, complaints about Slashdot groupthink and allegations that the parent poster has no girlfriend and lives in his parents' basement. :)
Many of those search engines died because their home pages were so cluttery with all of their 'added services.'
Yup. It was the big portal boom of the nineties, when suddenly every company with a website decided that it would be a great idea to give out free email addresses, news, stock quotes, humourous animations, and all sorts of other crap except information about their actual product, or any kind of useful service whatsoever. Because of course everybody loved portals!
Urgh. I remember when Deja News went to crap. Thank goodness Google picked it up.
Altavista was not the Google of 1999. It was simply the best-known of a number of search engines which used much the same algorithm and differed only in the contents of their databases.
All those search engines died because Google's algorithm was so much better that it was a waste of time to use anything else - not because of some mysterious search engine life cycle.
Until someone else comes up with the new Most Brilliant Search Algorithm Ever, Google is going to stay right where it is. If they're smart, they will continue research into making their search better and better, so that *they* are likely to come up with the Next Big Thing.
*cough* South-African apartheid... *cough*
The grandparent specifically mentioned land grabs and 1980, both of which imply that he was thinking of Zimbabwe specifically. The situation in South Africa is entirely different (hysterical claims to the contrary notwithstanding). I think it's a bit of a stretch to claim that white people are being oppressed here now, although I agree that they are at a serious political disadvantage.
I believe that where you said "Africa" you meant to say "Zimbabwe". Africa is a continent, and white-on-black crime is not one of its major problems, statistically speaking.
I don't think this is a case of Joss Whedon going "Ooh, I'm going to leave stuff out of the movie so I can screw my fans and make them buy the tie-in comic book."
:P
Most likely, it's a case of Joss Whedon going "I can't make this movie continue directly from where the series left off because then it wouldn't be a good stand-alone movie; hey, why don't I make a tie-in comic book to bridge the gap for fans who watched the series?"
It's not all an evil conspiracy.
The point isn't really that it's remote-controlled, the point is that it's canned. You do realise it's canned, right?
Seriously, some of the posters here seem to believe that these people are forking out bazillions to build highly advanced armed robots that roam the countryside in pursuit of free-range game. What planet do you live on?
In reality, what you're controlling by remote is a swivelling apparatus in a pen, and what you're shooting at are fenced-in animals which were probably reared by humans on a farm. Which is about as sporting as going to a farm and shooting some cows and sheep. Ooh, the adrenalin rush.
If you're going to compare this to non-remote-controlled hunting, then compare it to canned hunting in person. Comparing it to tracking animals through the forest is just ridiculous.
no one outside the USA has seen this serie
Uh, I live in South Africa and I've seen it. It actually got shown on TV. Various people I know bought the DVDs.
I was initially unexcited about the show, since it was billed as a "western in space" (which may be part of what it is, but definitely not all it is) and since everyone who recommended it to me was a frothing Buffy fangirl (and I find Buffy to be annoyingly over-hyped). I eventually watched it on DVD, and I think it's the best sci-fi series I've ever seen. I'm greatly looking forward to the movie, and so are at least a few other people down here - we're all hoping this will jump-start some kind of continuation.
Sure enough, there's Norway, Maine. Shouldn't take him that long.
...except for that stopover in Iceland (described as "his home country", so no wriggling out of that one).
No they arnt. If you think that "lot[s] of girls are just as turned on by ..." then you must have been exposed to an extremely untypical group of women.
Bwahahahaha! Please, look up "slash fanfiction" on Google.
I think that's a sufficiently large number to be called "a lot".
Yup, I found that line equally hilarious. I live in South Africa, and my cell phone works in my house. And in everyone else's houses. And at work. And in cars. And in elevators. We don't really get basements here much, so I have no experimental data on that, but I would expect my phone to work in a basement as well. And I'm pretty sure that we put metal bits in our walls, judging by my observations of skeletal houses on construction sites.
I had heard that cell phone coverage in the US was craptastic, but my god, man, this is scary. I have never had a cell phone not work because of excessive metal shielding; it only happens outside the coverage area - when you go to a very, very small town, which is also behind a mountain.
Yes, I think you're right. Not reading is probably the foremost cause of poor language skills. If you read a lot when you're a child, you can fix even the crappiest school education - but if you don't, you're likely to suck even if you went to a private school.
You can't become familiar with the subtleties and complications of a language by rote learning, or improve your vocabulary by memorising a thesaurus. Some things you can only learn by example, and unfortunately spoken colloquial language does not provide a good example.