pavonis

You could at least narrow the problem down. Did she break the law? Did she do something you didn't like politically? FFS, it's not like I asked you for an essay on the subject. Her page on Wikipedia isn't telling me anything about what your point is, so what do you expect me to do, read your mind? Or should I look up all your old posts on nightly and figure out what you mean from that?

No, I do not recall hearing or reading about Samantha Power. Would you care to elaborate on your point, or should I drop everything and study her biography for this discussion?

I'm sure someone could write a program that could create John Williams-style scores for any future Star Wars films, or re-edits of existing films.

One could argue that the legislative branches, at least, should be enlarged, not shrunk. If people feel like their votes "don't matter", it is probably because so many people are being represented by only a few. The average ratio of population to Congressional representative is something like 600,000:1. The original idea was 30,000:1. Even with modern communication tools, it's not as easy to stay in contact with your representatives (they really don't listen without money and/or votes on the line anyway) and Congress doesn't do a good job of staying in touch with the populace. But there is no political will to increase the size of Congress, because apparently government is always "too big" even though no one has specified what the right size is, nor what kind of metric for "size" should be used.

Maybe serving in legislatures should be more like jury duty, for at least a subset of the representation. Make it a chore rather than a life goal, but with a modicum of civic pride and duty attached, and more people might feel like their votes and other associated political activity matters.

Pavonis- Let's say that after the midterm elections are over we find out Nikki Haley was using our nation's surveillance tools to spy on opposition candidates in close races. Of course, she claims someone else did it in her name. Would you be concerned?

Are you asking whether I'd be concerned about Nikki Haley in particular doing that, or the situation in general? I'd have to wonder whether warrants were issued and whether all legal procedures were followed. I don't want to see the abuse of power and corruption of law enforcement agencies for political purposes. But, then, I'm not assuming that has already happened.

To turn the problem around on you, what if the "opposition candidates" happened to be part of an organized crime syndicate? Would the mob bosses be off limits for criminal investigation just because they're running for political office?

Yeah, maybe we do have that now. Here's a link to a discussion of the topic. There is evidence that term limits for legislators simply shifts power to un-elected agency bureaucrats and to the executive branch in general.

The people with the most time in their job tend to be good at the job. Removing people just when they're getting good at it doesn't seem like it serves the electorate as much as it might seem. People like term limits because they don't like politicians. More specifically, they don't like other people's elected politicians. With re-election rates for incumbents at 90% or more, at least at the federal level, it's not hard to see that the people like their own elected officials just fine. They don't like all the other jerks elected by the rest of the people.

So experience in a job should be penalized?

What if we end up with only the congenitally rich serving in Congress, trading the term-limited seats around like a bong at a frat party?

No bias on your part, of course.

What - do you think the FBI, et al., aren't following all the proper legal procedures during their investigations? Who told you they weren't?

6. Life Ascending by Nick Lane. A good book on the process of evolution, particularly the molecular basis for it. Fascinating stuff. It's really piquing my interest in biophysics.

You don't mean to troll? You've been doing accidentally all these years?

The PT needed to be the Clone Wars. The rest of the details were sketched out in the few relevant lines of the OT. The rest of the PT needed to be "rhymed" with the OT. They did that some but not enough. I figured Anakin would be more like a Han-Luke-Lando hybrid, if I thought about it at all.

How is the spore drive connected to TOS?

Trek is dead. Long live Trek. It keeps evolving.

 

They're all in their own box. Every season of every Trek show can be "in their own box".

 

Not sure what you mean there. Not really, when you think about it.

 

I wasn't completely serious, but if a fan wanted to deal with all the inconsistencies and canon/decanonized details of Trek, they could just say it's in a different timeline or parallel universe, or whatever. The concepts allow pretty much anything that someone might consider inconsistent to be handwaved away within the established rules of the universe.

No doubt. That's the only way to demonstrate their devotion to the franchise.

They're all in their own box. Every season of every Trek show can be "in their own box".

At least the guy they cast as Pike resembles Hunter, to my eye.

Really? Seemed like he didn't, to me.

I really like the exchange in the trailer where Han asks for Chewie's opinion, and then says, "Well, what do you know?" It seems very Ford-esque. I can definitely see HF saying exactly that in exactly that way.

So, it's going to be "Ell-Three", not "Leet". Makes sense.

It's hard to believe that when I first heard about this film being made, I was skeptical. Now I'm excited! It's going to be fun, the way ANH was back in the day.

I don't know. Han was cynical, but his skepticism of the force wasn't stupid.

Say ten thousand Jedi in a galaxy of 3 million inhabited planets, and say 1 billion people per planet, gives a population on the order of a quadrillion (10¹⁵). That means there is one Jedi for every 300 billion individuals. It's not hard to believe that most people in the Republic era had never even seen a Jedi. In the Imperial era, with active suppression of the Jedi, it wouldn't be hard for people to completely unaware of the force even if they had at least heard of the Jedi Order. "A mystical energy field that controls destiny" is kind of far-fetched if you think about it from a non-fan, in-universe, perspective.

The videos are funny, though.

You seem to be passing off your subjective opinion as fact here.

 

Look, what I find bad writing, you might actually enjoy and call good. And vice versa. Doesn't make you or me right or wrong. I'm simply stating why I have issues with TLJ. If you don't have those same issues, fine. But it is not nitpicky to question why an obvious tactic isn't tried, or at least explained why they don't just do it. In the example I present for the space chase, they spend the time, energy and effort to state "we are both at max speed and are going to just hang back and fire at the rebels to remind them we are still here and chasing them." Would it have been so terrible to also state "we can't warp ahead of them, because of <fill in the reason here>." OMG, one effing line is just too much explanation!

 

 

No. If anything, I think you're trying to pass off your subjective opinion as fact in this discussion. I am pointing out that not liking something isn't the same as it being poorly crafted. For instance, you may not like what I'm writing here in this thread, but you can't say that I'm writing it poorly just because you don't agree with me. You don't like TLJ, and that's fine. Why you don't like it is completely subjective. Whether it is poorly made or well made is not subjective.

As for explaining certain details, well, I think it's a slippery slope. Explain something like why they're not hyperspace jumping in front of the ships - say it's because the hyperspace engines can't pull off such a high-precision jump - and then the same nitpicker will ask why they can't jump that precisely. Then what? Do we need a discussion on hyperspace navigation principles to justify that explanation?

Also, to nitpick a bit (for fun), since the ships' engines were on, they couldn't have been at "max speed", because that makes no sense. They were under constant acceleration. If both fleets were at maximum acceleration, then the problem was which fleet could maintain that condition for the longest time. Larger ships accelerate more slowly, but can sustain their acceleration for longer assuming they have more "fuel". They would have caught the rebels eventually, seeing as that's pretty much what happened except that Holdo went kamikaze on their lead ship....it's an interesting kinematics problem, actually.

Wait, why are we overthinking Them Scissorpunch and not talking about L3-37?

Is she going to be "Leet" or "Ell-three", or what? And why are starfighters and 'droids labeled with our alphabet rather than Aurebesh?

What I am saying is when I saw TLJ for the first time, there were scenes where I asked myself why things were written the way they were. That bothered me so much that they took me out of the movie experience. When that happens, to me, that is bad writing.

No, that's not bad writing, that's just you being a nitpicky Star Wars fan. That you were taken out of the movie experience by a consideration only a detail-oriented fan would ponder should not be part of evaluating the quality of the film's story-telling. Not every little detail needs to be explained, or even can be explained. That's half the reason the EU exists - to give nitpicky SW fans a place to sort out details that no one else cares about.

As to the second part of your question, I would say subjectively bad (I am only speaking for myself) for the reasons I stated above, because it was poorly written in my view. For example, when one asks themselves why the First Order doesn't just hyperspace ahead of the Resistance during the space chase while watching the movie for the first time, and there is no good answer why they didn't (or even one stated at all), THAT indicates bad writing to me.

When it comes to tactics and strategy in SW, or most other science fiction stories, I assume characters are knowledgeable about the matters they are dealing with unless it is made clear that they are not. Why not hyperspace jump in front of the Resistance fleet? Apparently it would be either impractical or it is unnecessary. The characters shouldn't need to explain that to anyone around them, any more than Admiral Holdo needed to justify her orders to Poe. Should the First Order admiral, or Admiral Holdo, give a soliloquy to explain the tactical situation?

I've never seen scissors in Star Wars.

It is in my view, and relative to me, but I am not claiming that as a universal truth. If you like it, your mileage will vary. I am not saying TLJ's failures are universally bad, because the audience is divided. Some loved the movie. I just happen to be in the camp that do not.

 

 

 

But there is no such thing as art being objectively bad. It can only be subjectively bad.

I'm confused. You said that poor writing is the same as choices you don't like.

Your examples of choices, to me, has a direct effect on the quality of the films, and are the same thing as poor or inadequate writing

So is TLJ subjectively bad because you don't like it, or objectively bad because it is poorly written or told as a story? If art can't be objectively bad, then why would anyone need to justify their dislike for something like TLJ? I don't like The Shining, but that doesn't mean it is a poorly-written story, and it surely isn't anything like AOTC.

Your examples of choices, to me, has a direct effect on the quality of the films, and are the same thing as poor or inadequate writing. I'd say they are one and the same.

Every story you don't like is a poorly-crafted story, then?

I don't like lots of stuff, but that doesn't make the stuff I don't like objectively bad. AOTC is objectively bad. TLJ is just disliked, not objectively bad.