unixknight

In a virtual world where geography is meaningless... why not?

Saw Batman v Superman:Dawn of Justice over the weekend. I liked it. I thought Ben Affleck did a great job as Batman/Bruce Wayne. I know a lot of people didn't like it and the critics hated it. I think that was probably because the movie was a bit too long and was trying to do too much. They could have tightened up the story a lot more and eliminated a lot of the extraneous stuff, but overall it was a good story and wasn't as violent and destructive as the previous Superman film.

I don't think their goal is to eliminate religion per se, but rather to force it to conform and validate them. "Live and let live" isn't good enough for these people, they want you to acknowledge the moral equivalency of their choices to your own. If Christianity in general were to do that tomorrow, I guarantee the pressure on religion would cease. (Yes, Judaism and Islam also condemn homosexual behavior, but those aren't the majority in this country, and the LGBTQ community do not see them as a threat. Muslim owned bakeries won't do same sex wedding cakes either, but nobody bothers them.)

On the upside, you can make a killing on eBay if you ever liquidate even a portion of it. This is how I paid for a diamond ring for my wife for Christmas a couple years ago... and that was just selling my leftovers.

So those of you who are good parents, who read to your kids, who raise them in loving homes... You should feel guilty and aware of how unfair that is to the kids who don't get those "advantages."

Yeah I have a convention in Washington DC in June I want to attend, and I want to wear the sit so that's my deadline. Plus, to be able to fit more comfortably in it I need to lose a few pounds so that's an incentive as well.

I haven't made much progress in the last few weeks because I've been taking a little break, but this weekend I plan to resume work and finish the knee joints.

That's pretty awesome. I have a Black Templars army for 40K and a Bretonnia force for Warhammer Fantasy before they killed it. As for unexpected hobbies, here's my current project underway, which I've mentioned before at some point...

Tabletop? What do you play?

@LeSellers The school in the article is a private school. Not that public schools wouldn't do the same thing, to be fair. This is the "new morality" and it's viewed as the baseline - not a matter to be debated. The narrative now is that if you see any problem with same sex couples or "gender identity issues" it's because you're objectively wrong. "The wrong side of history" and whatnot. This is not a topic we'll be able to discuss with school officials because to them, it would be no different than objecting to kids being taught that 2+2 = 4. Remember when that point of view was the underdog, and we were forever being lectured about moral relativism? Now that they have the advantage, all that talk has gone right out the window and it's conform or be shouted down. How quickly people forget.

You're probably right. Maybe that doesn't matter so much though... There's a ton of videos on YouTube of people expressing their dismay at this behavior. That woman is being publicly shamed. Nobody cares where she goes to school or whether she gets kicked out. All people want is to see karma biting her on the backside through the shaming. It'll blow over before too long, but I suspect she'll wish she had kept her mouth shut before it's over. She probably won't change her mind, but at least she'll know better than to make a public fool of herself.

The reaction videos on YouTube seem to be just about universally negative toward the woman doing the bullying, across all races. I find it comforting,

Self-imposed segregation FTL

@cdowis They were Death Wish and The Thaw. They were good episodes, and you're right that the way they explored these ideas do have relevance from a spiritual perspective, although that probably wasn't their intent. Death Wish was about the ethical dilemma over suicide and one's right to end their life, and The Thaw was about defeating Fear itself.

DS9 was mixed for me. It had a few pretty good episodes, and I liked Quark and Garak a lot. Being post Roddenberry it's more friendly to the spiritual side of life which I like, and unusual for Star Trek it did several seasons of one continuous story arc, which it pulled off well. That said, it felt repetitive a lot. So many of the episodes ran together for me. Adding the Defiant was a good move because it gave the series some mobility though, and that helped a lot.

What I liked best about Babylon 5 was that even though its creator is an atheist, he treats religion with great respect and it's an important part of the story. Contrast with Gene Roddenberry, who held religion in contempt and did what he could to sanitize it from Star Trek.

All that is true, but I'd point out that this was a Season 7 episode, and this was the first time her childhood pain had been revealed... and that would have been okay if they'd been building up to it. As it came across, it just felt like one more factor in why B'Elanna is such a pain to deal with. There's almost a sort of template in Voyager episodes for B'Elanna: Something triggers B'Elanna She starts acting on her own, irrationally Somebody else notices and tries to help She roughly refuses help and becomes belligerent Chakotay and/or Janeway try to talk her down. They fail. The situation comes to a head B'Elanna cries it out and everything's back to normal. I can think of at least 3 episodes that follow this format: Lineage, Barge of the Dead and Extreme Risk. To be honest, if my wife were to not only make a unilateral decision like that but also try to force her way, disregarding my input, that would be a severe threat to the marriage. This episode tied off the problem with a bow at the end (which, granted, is normal for a show of this type). That issue could have made for some good drama in later episodes but, as Voyager is known for best, it was a missed opportunity. See, I know you're right in practice, but I'd argue that was a contributing weakness. There were a few examples in Star Trek where consequences matter, either directly or because they came back later to haunt the person. Khan came back for Kirk, Picard's actions in previous actions were questioned in The Drumhead, Wesley has to repeat a year at Starfleet Academy in "The First Duty," to name three. That needed to happen MORE, because the episodes that don't hit the reset button at the end are often more interesting.

Yeah I can't disagree about Trek's weaknesses. It doesn't stand up well to any speculative sci fi TV show, IMHO. Yeah that one was my favorite episode of the series. I also really liked the one that told the backstories of the crew interlaces with Mal alone on the ship, disabled, trying to repair it. I think it would be worth another try if you get a chance. The themes and stories take a long time to build, but they pay off huge later. I'm not knocking Firefly, I just think it gets a little more credit than it deserves when it comes to its depth. I think the Serenity movie was a great send-off.

I give credit where credit's due to Firefly, in that the dialogue was memorable and quotable, the characters memorable and lovable, and the action was great. What it lacked, IMHO, was depth. Babylon 5 was incredibly deep, exploring themes of good, evil, religion (in a respectful way, utterly unlike Star Trek), philosophy... Firefly was great fun but ultimately for me it was bubblegum.

Yeah Firefly was pretty good, as was Babylon 5. Battlestar Galactica had its moments, but tapered after a while. Star Trek has a few gems, but you really have to sit through a lot of schlock to find them. Even so, I can't stay mad at Trek. It gives me endless hours of amusement poking fun at it and analyzing it

I'd argue that she could have made use of B'Elanna's skills as an engineer without making her Chief Engineer and giving her as much access as she had. B'Elanna consistently demonstrated an inability to handle the level of authority and access entrusted to her. The episode I started this thread with is a perfect example. She had to have some seriously high level access to not only reprogram the Doctor, but to also lock security out of Sickbay, FPS.

Yep. There's never been any question that B'Elanna is a brilliant engineer... and maybe in a Maquis setting her character flaws are tolerable, but seem to be a massive liability in the more regimented, disciplined environment on a Federation Starship. You know, they could have really done some interesting things with that, but instead what we got was just B'Elanna throwing a temper tantrum every other episode and people just tolerate it because of her engineering talent.

Agreed. Sometimes it's so obvious you can almost hear the lines of dialogue being delivered in the original characters' voices. Yep, which were also efforts to explore interesting philosophical questions but weren't well implemented. That's true, though I think Voyager was more prone to that than most. The most horribly egregious example I can think of was one where the Doctor gave some hostile aliens the ship's warp core as ransom to get the Captain back. The aliens took both, of course, and the Doctor's justification for this? "Voyager can survive without a warp core, but not without her Captian." Which, of course, is utter hogwash. A starship in deep space with no functioning warp drive is dead. By the time it could make its way to the nearest star system at sublight speed everyone on board would have long since died of starvation. If the Captain were killed that would be bad... but Chakotay had demonstrated competence as a commander and could have taken over for Janeway. You're right about the cardboard, but that's exactly the problem. Previous incarnations of Star Trek had much more well rounded and developed characters. You can have much more depth with a TV show than a movie because the characters have so much more screen time. IF you seize the opportunity, that is. Good point about the female characters too. Thing is, Worf didn't have to be a cardboard Klingon and he wasn't. They did a fantastic job of fleshing him out into, arguably, the most awesome Trek character ever. (It doesn't hurt that Worf also has had more screen time than any other character.) Worf had the usual Klingon anger management issues, but he struggled with that because he had the desire to be better, to control it, to focus on honorable behavior and not just simple Klingon bloodlust. He wanted to improve himself by using his best Klingon characteristics. (His breakout episode was "Heart of Glory" IMHO.) B'Elanna is the opposite... she doesn't try to better herself, only mitigate her Klingon half which she despises. It's a tough thing to portray on screen, and sadly I think the writers, actress and directors weren't up to the task. I'd say that shows even more the bizarre and inconsistent writing in that show. Such a great premise, so utterly wasted. Chakotay was a member of that same terrorist group and yet comes off as the most reasonable and charismatic character on the entire ship, more often than not. In many ways he's exactly the opposite of B'Elanna.

That's where it gets sticky, I suppose. Jaywalking and busted tail lights are justifiable reasons to stop, but I could see the ACLU looking to get involved if a certain demographic are disproportionately targeted. (Or if it appears they are.) I agree with greater attention to communities known to be sympathetic to terrorism, but at the same time it has to be done in a way to avoid victimizing the innocent as well as maintaining the superior moral position. Not at all. I just mean that I'm not okay with people using their non-Government authority to arbitrarily silence those they don't agree with. I won't delete posts on my club message board for expressing beliefs I don't share. One can certainly choose not to read such posts. (I have to, since I'm also one of the mods there, but I chose a co-moderator who is a Liberal so that we'd balance each other.) People have a right to say what they want but I also have a right to walk away (or argue, if I prefer, which I usually do ) It's one thing to disassociate yourself. It's another thing entirely to try and silence someone.

Yes! That's it exactly. If there's a reasonable, articulable suspicion then it isn't profiling because the race or religion or whatever of the person is irrelevant! If it's a justifiable Terry stop, then what do those percentages matter? I never said that. I think you and LeSellers both are attributing statements to me that I haven't made. What do yuo want me to say? Freedom of association is a thing.