[SPOILERS] [BSG] Battle "Scar"
Bozo the Evil Klown
three eps.
S
P
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Experience is said to be a good teacher, in part because evolution
helps to weed out those who fail to learn from it. Memories can be a
funny thing, though, as their importance isn't always related to how
deeply they're ingrained in our temporal lobes. How often do we find
ourselves having to look up some useful (or even vital) data we had
once memorized for the final exam- yet almost everyone remembers the
one who first broke your heart, even if it's someone you haven't seen
in decades. Emotional impact is one of the key factors in how vividly
a memory is stored, and in turn, how often said memory pops up to color
our day-to-day thoughts and actions.
A few things I flashed back to on this week's ep:
- A nod to us TOS fans- the mining ship on the asteroid looks just like
the mining ship in the original rag-tag Fleet. Good to see they're
equipped to mine asteroids, rather than hauling up all that mass from a
planetary body large enough for an environment.
- Kind of a dense asteroid field, though it could be a ring or a
recently-broken-up body. The richness of the metal content indicates
that it was once part of a mass large enough to have experienced
gravitational differentiation, so it's unlikely to be a planet in the
process of accreting. Bottom line, the close-packed asteroid swarm was
*an integral part of the story*.
- In fact, it's kind of refreshing to see their DRADUS system isn't the
sort of magical sensors that can tell you what sort of civilization is
on a planet ten light-years away.
- The contrails behind the Vipers were a bit much. Combat pilots
usually fail to see the beauty of contrails...
- Fair fights are for games; in war you want the situation to be as
*unfair* in your advantage as possible. Starbuck was very correct to
set the nugget straight, since that sort of idealism could cost the
lives of more than just him.
- So Raiders reincarnate, too- makes sense, to keep their experience as
Boomer said. Do toasters resurrect? The Raiders appear to be largely
organic, while the toasters seem to be the last mechanical Cylons left.
For that matter, do Base Ships reincarnate? Or even Resurrection
Ships?
- Aside from a very few eps, the en masse attacks stopped after the
"33" ep, long before the Resurrection Ship was destroyed. And even if
that is the reason why the Cylons are hesitant to risk their metal
butts attacking the Fleet, given the apparent importance of the Fleet
to at least one Cylon faction it's only a matter of time before they
send out another one- most likely a far better defended one.
- "We don't need another Tigh." Friendly competition between pilots is
one thing, but the juicer vs. speed freak bit was distinctly
*unfriendly*. Cat must be wondering if Starbuck's relationship with
the Adama family has anything to do with her position. She sees
Starbuck as a former great, slipping into the bottle and is eager to
prove her own worth to take her place.
- And this week the shooting range used pictures of a toaster instead
of Boomer.
- Speaking of 'relationships,' how many 'shippers have the
Starbuck/Apollo scene running on a continuous loop? <G>
- "Who are you? What do you want? Do you have anything worth living
for?" At the end Starbuck opens up to Helo. Is she more comfortable
talking to someone she isn't as emotionally tied up with, or maybe she
doesn't want Apollo to know she's pining for Anders? Having
something/someone to live for definitely changes one's outlook, but now
that the devil-may-care Starbuck *understands* how that is changing her
thinking and decisions, will she accept it or try to over-compensate
the other way?
- Does the CAG fly anymore? Or even brief the pilots?
- Starbuck *really* hates to lose- note how she turned Cat's win (And
to be fair, could Cat have taken Scar if Starbuck hadn't set up the
shot for her?) into a memorial for all their lost comrades. Of course
Cat still thinks she's good enough for Starbuck's job. She may well be
a good flier, but Starbuck's out-of-the-box thinking makes her a
formidable opponent in or out of the cockpit.
- Wonder how they'll resolve (*if* they resolve) the drug thing?
Liquor is easily enough made from other organics, but supplies of
stimulants and other pills must be in ever-shorter supply.
Flashback fever aside, this was an outstanding ep even by "Galactica"
standards. Almost frightening to see someone out-angst Lee, but the
emotional scars from Starbuck's inability to return for Anders like she
promised has to be hurting, and it will remain an open wound until it's
resolved.
NEXT WEEK: Equal time for the anti-peacenik terrorists!!
*****
The Joker in the Eeeeeeeeeevil Cabal deck of cards.
"You're a figment of my imagination- the *least* you could do is take
your top off!!"
Rodney McKay to his hallucination of Samantha Carter
Atlas Bugged
"Bozo the Evil Klown" <Evilk...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1139181706.4...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> "Previously on 'Battlestar Galactica' " has applied to most of the last
> three eps.
>
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> sort of magical sensors that can tell you what sort of civilization is
> on a planet ten light-years away.
The science in BSG is truly unforgivable except for people who don't give a
whit about science. But the story is what matters, and as long as they keep
some kind of internal consistency, it's fine. Moore is so inattentive to
that sort of detail, however, I'm afraid they'll even mess that up.
>
> - Fair fights are for games; in war you want the situation to be as
> *unfair* in your advantage as possible. Starbuck was very correct to
> set the nugget straight, since that sort of idealism could cost the
> lives of more than just him.
That was an actual bit of wisdom, as true in the real world as in BSG's
fictional one. A high point, therefore, for the show.
>
> - Wonder how they'll resolve (*if* they resolve) the drug thing?
> Liquor is easily enough made from other organics, but supplies of
> stimulants and other pills must be in ever-shorter supply.
This kind of concern for logic in BSG's setting is a road to ruin if you
want to enjoy the show.
>
> Flashback fever aside, this was an outstanding ep even by "Galactica"
> standards. Almost frightening to see someone out-angst Lee, but the
> emotional scars from Starbuck's inability to return for Anders like she
> promised has to be hurting, and it will remain an open wound until it's
> resolved.
A number of posters here have complained about Sackoff's acting ability, so
I watched close. She looks good to me. It's hardly her fault if the young
actress is eclipsed by greats like Olmos and Hogan.
Robert J. Kolker
E
>
> Experience is said to be a good teacher, in part because evolution
> helps to weed out those who fail to learn from it.
That is not evolution. Learning is not passed on to one's genes. The
built in ability to learn may be evolutionary, but specific lessons are not.
Bob Kolker
David Johnston
<atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>"Bozo the Evil Klown" <Evilk...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:1139181706.4...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>> "Previously on 'Battlestar Galactica' " has applied to most of the last
>> three eps.
>>
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>> - In fact, it's kind of refreshing to see their DRADUS system isn't the
>> sort of magical sensors that can tell you what sort of civilization is
>> on a planet ten light-years away.
>
>The science in BSG is truly unforgivable except for people who don't give a
>whit about science.
What science in BSG would that be?
David Johnston
<now...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>Bozo the Evil Klown wrote:
>
> E
>>
>> Experience is said to be a good teacher, in part because evolution
>> helps to weed out those who fail to learn from it.
>
>That is not evolution. Learning is not passed on to one's genes.
He didn't say it was. He said that people who don't learn from
experience will tend to die.
Andrew Venor
> "Previously on 'Battlestar Galactica' " has applied to most of the last
> three eps.
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> - So Raiders reincarnate, too- makes sense, to keep their experience as
> Boomer said. Do toasters resurrect? The Raiders appear to be largely
> organic, while the toasters seem to be the last mechanical Cylons left.
> For that matter, do Base Ships reincarnate? Or even Resurrection
> Ships?
In Ron Moores blog at www.scfif.com/battlestar he says that the Cylon
centurions do not reincarnate.
ALV
Atlas Bugged
"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
news:43e65892...@news.telusplanet.net...
> What science in BSG would that be?
If you mean that in a clever way, yes, precisely.
If you are posing a question, the answer is, "the science which is referred
to by virtue of the literary genre of *science* fiction."
Robert J. Kolker
>
> He didn't say it was. He said that people who don't learn from
> experience will tend to die.
That is not related to evolution. The choice not to learn has no genetic
significance. Natural selection works on populations, not individuals.
Bob Kolker
>
David Johnston
<now...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>David Johnston wrote:
>
>>
>> He didn't say it was. He said that people who don't learn from
>> experience will tend to die.
>
>That is not related to evolution. The choice not to learn has no genetic
>significance.
You are thinking that personality has no genetic component?
Dorkless Von Heinybeiter
news:gaCdnZrnH-BvIXve...@comcast.com:
In other words, AssfuckBugger is making up as he goes along. He doesn't
like BSG, so he does his best to knock it down. That's the only reason why
he's in this group, except to spam his firefly FAQ.
David Johnston
<atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 20:29:19 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>The science in BSG is truly unforgivable except for people who don't give
>>>a
>>>whit about science.
>
>"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
>news:43e65892...@news.telusplanet.net...
>> What science in BSG would that be?
>
>If you mean that in a clever way, yes, precisely.
>
No. I mean it in a honest way. What is the science in BSG which is
so unforgivable?
Atlas Bugged
> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 20:29:19 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>The science in BSG is truly unforgivable except for people who don't
>>>>give
>>>>a
>>>>whit about science.
>>
>>"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
>>news:43e65892...@news.telusplanet.net...
>>> What science in BSG would that be?
>>
>>If you mean that in a clever way, yes, precisely.
>>
"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
news:43e6afaf...@news.telusplanet.net...
> No. I mean it in a honest way.
Then why did you delete the alternate answer I gave?
>What is the science in BSG which is
> so unforgivable?
This NG is crowded but my answer will likely just point you to other threads
that have already exposed the bad pseudoscience.
Science fiction as a genre runs the gamut from "hard" sci-fi all the way out
to near-fantasy. BSG's tone, look, and mood suggest far greater reliance
upon good extrapolative sci-fi than is actually in evidence.
The "science" of BSG seems to wink in and out of existence purely for the
purpose of serving the story, and worse, like the old STAR WARS and BSG:TOS,
all three exist as war dramas first, and science-fiction stories second (or
third and fourth in the earlier shows.)
New BSG has succeeded by being a *good* war drama and by giving secondary,
but sufficient, attention to the ways in which technology affects human
choices. That last is a rough definition of "science fiction."
But the science in "science-fiction" can't just be arbitrarily anything the
writers want it to be. It must maintain some internal consistency, plus a
varying degree of external consistency depending upon how "hard" or
extrapolative it is.
The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space? And everyone still
preoccupied with "gods?" Really, really bad.
I don't even begrudge them the near-fantasy use of FTL since we're all used
to it, it having been used to death as a sci-fi staple, even though actual
physics says it has to be impossible. But STAR TREK and the SG's tend to
acknowledge these leaps and work better within them.
The "science" in BSG could fill up an entire volume, but most of it would
discuss all the contradictions. It is much better for a fan of BSG if s/he
doesn't know a whole lot about science.
The rest of us must make an effortful suspension of disbelief, something far
less necessary in some other shows, including FIREFLY. See the discussion
of this in the FAQ there for more on how I view this. That's here (as
reference, not plug this time): <http://snipurl.com/k8ui> .
And if you need to see how BSG's science can be plain annoying, and
routinely tossed overboard just to make for stylish effects, try this
thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.battlestar-galactica/msg/aec8428739a0c697
Kweeg
news:BbKdndW79Z6puHre...@comcast.com...
<snip>
> The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
> bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
> that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space? And everyone still
> preoccupied with "gods?" Really, really bad.
So books / movies like Dune are bad science fiction?
--
Qapla'
Kweeg
Ten of Canadian Clubs in the Eeeevil Trek Cabal
http://members.shaw.ca/iksbloodoath
"Half a gallon a'scotch!" Scotty (Spectre of the Gun)
"So say we all!"
Atlas Bugged
> news:BbKdndW79Z6puHre...@comcast.com...
> <snip>
>> The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us
>> some
>> bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>> that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space? And everyone still
>> preoccupied with "gods?" Really, really bad.
> <snip>
"Kweeg" <kw...@nospam.shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:rLFFf.571215$ki.181140@pd7tw2no...
> So books / movies like Dune are bad science fiction?
No. Just "soft" science fiction, much closer to fantasy. Heinlein is often
cited as "hard" sci-fi. Lucas is usually sci-fi settings only, a sort of
faux sci-fi.
I'm most annoyed by fantasy masquerading as sci-fi.
Roslin's actual pursuit of a religion-based quest was a close brush with
disaster for the show.
Use of the "Ascended" in the Stargates is a mistake, but they keep it in
check (the whole aspect is probably derived from the Stan Lee's The Watcher,
who was unable to interfere.)
To make this very clear, Joss Whedon famously pointed out that his "psychic"
character was as far as he was willing to go in making FIREFLY unreal, and
even this "psychic" was never fully established to be doing "spooky" stuff
instead of just some powerful form of inference. But either way, her powers
derived from something done in a laboratory.
Lizard
<now...@nowhere.com> wrotC:DRIVE_E
Those who do not learn from experience die young, and thus, leave no
or fewer offspring.
Those who do learn from experience live longer, and thus leave more
offspring.
How is this not evolution?
The brain is a mass of cells, no different from the heart or the lungs
or the liver. If an individuals brain is wired so that they learn
faster/better (for example, they produce more of whatever proteins
cause new nerve connections to form) this gives them an edge in
survival, which in turn means more chances to replicate their DNA --
passing along their gift for gaining knowledge.
Andrew
"Andrew Venor" <alv...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:nY6dnSWBc4aVJHve...@comcast.com...
Interesting. So if a Cylon is organic based (humanform, raider, basestar
etc.) it can ressurect. This strongly implies that the centurians are
purely (or mostly) electronic/mechanical.
Seems to me, if the Cylons are willing to ressurect raiders to retain their
experience, that it would be useful to have the ability to ressurect the
cylon footsoldiers as well. Of course if the footsoldiers are
electronic/mechanical, then its just a matter of downloading data from their
blackbox recorder (assuming there is one) and revising the master software
program(s) to account for failures (sucess).
This also raises a questions - When did Cylons cross over from
mechanical/electronic to organic based models? In the 1st Cylon war, there
were no humanforms (of course there could of been organics such as raiders
and basestars) and the Cylon 'God' decided they needed to make an
infiltration unit (the humanforms)...
- Andrew
John Schilling
Depends on how forgiving you are, I suppose. But the hyperdense
"asteroid field" in the most recent episode, was pretty much an open
declaration of, "it looked Real Kewl when we saw it in Star Wars ESB,
so we hit our technical advisor upside the head with a baseball bat
until he stopped screaming".
And, as has been mentioned before, the Magic Hybrid Baby Blood Cancer
Cure from a couple episodes back, was rather over the top as well.
We haven't mentioned it before but I'll bring it up now - the ability
to detect nuclear weapons, as such, from miles away, is also quite
ridiculous.
The new incarnation of BSG *sometimes* makes a real effort to get the
science right, which perhaps earns it a bit more forgiveness than would
otherwise be the case. But it also raises expectations, and if it doesn't
even try to meet them that is going to annoy some of us.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
George Johnson
news:ds85n...@drn.newsguy.com...
Well, if there was some manner in which to accomplish a long range
density scan (without losing signal resolution as a factor of distance and
doing it efficently as a multi-frequency sweep would require a rapid 3D
spherical sector-by-sector scan), the mere existence of plutonium (it
doesn't occur naturally) floating in space would be a rather good tip off.
I allow looseness in Science Fiction as there is the "If we could
theorize it properly there is a damn good chance we could actually for real
build these things." Since they cannot, they usually don't. Real Science
Fiction based on the physics we know for certain to be true would be dead
boring for the overstimulated audience that exists these days.
Atlasbugged
news:11ufd46...@corp.supernews.com...
> I allow looseness in Science Fiction as there is the "If we could
> theorize it properly there is a damn good chance we could actually for
> real
> build these things."
That's a good standard, especially for what they call "hard" sci-fi.
If you can actually build it, there's not much "fi." And if theory suggests
it's impossible, you are going a bit outside of "sci."
There is, of course, the area of "soft" sci-fi, where things get much more
speculative, such as with TREK, GATE, WARS, and unfortunately the new BSG.
And there is "fantasy," which I argue is not sci-fi at all, whether hard or
soft.
>Since they cannot, they usually don't. Real Science
> Fiction based on the physics we know for certain to be true would be dead
> boring for the overstimulated audience that exists these days.
It presents many problems, indeed. It's one reason FIREFLY rules.
It certainly did a few things here and there that were simply out of line,
but it did more than any other show to stay within the current theoretical
boundaries, such as no faster-than-light travel, and a fusion-based space
drive.
Then it had the *nerve* to *still* be better than any other sci-fi show in
history. Definitely not too shabby.
--
SERENITY/FIREFLY FAQ
http://snipurl.com/k8ui
george...@comcast.net
> for?" At the end Starbuck opens up to Helo.
That was one of the most moving parts of the episode. I was happy to
see the old B5 scene with Capt. Sheridan come back to prominence. "It's
easy to find something to die for. But do you have something worth
living for?"
More subtly, extending the theme of finding something to live for, that
same scene featured the cavatina from 'The Deer Hunter', the
academy-award winning Vienam War movie. And in a sense, the characters
in 'Deer Hunter' had to confront the same dilemma as Capts. Sheridan
and Starbuck: to find something worth living for.
-George
Milan Pollé
--
"Lizard" <liz...@dnai.com> schreef in bericht
news:auseu1d9qflod4fnr...@4ax.com...
> Those who do not learn from experience die young, and thus, leave no
> or fewer offspring.
>
> Those who do learn from experience live longer, and thus leave more
> offspring.
>
> How is this not evolution?
<offtopic>
Actually this is adaptation, survival of the fittest, it has nothing to do
with evolution, quite the opposite.
Survival of the fittest is when you have a certain species with some amount
of variation to it, certain variations will be most suited to survive in
their surroundings, these particular variations will prevail. Given enough
time the genes responsible for the other variations will be lost (when
damaged they can't be repaired anymore by the genes of the genetically too
similar partner). In effect this is a loss of genes, the opposite of the
evolution theory.
(for instance; of a type of birds with variable beak length, only the
variation with the short beaks is left, the gene that caused the variation
is eventually lost)
Same thing happens when breeding a certain type of dog, breed out too much
variation and the type will become quite weak because too many of its other
genes will have become irrepairably damaged in the process.
This phenomenon is called genetic degeneration and is something that is
commonly seen. It is the opposite of evolution and happens so much faster
that even if evolution was possible in practice, it wouldn't stand a chance
against it.
</offtopic>
David Johnston
<ln.bewfmt....@nalim.nl> wrote:
>
>
>--
>
>
>"Lizard" <liz...@dnai.com> schreef in bericht
>news:auseu1d9qflod4fnr...@4ax.com...
>
>> Those who do not learn from experience die young, and thus, leave no
>> or fewer offspring.
>>
>> Those who do learn from experience live longer, and thus leave more
>> offspring.
>>
>> How is this not evolution?
>
><offtopic>
>
>Actually this is adaptation, survival of the fittest, it has nothing to do
>with evolution, quite the opposite.
Ah. I smell a creationist. Because only a creationist would claim
that the selection process has nothing to do with evolution.
David Johnston
<atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 22:05:07 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 20:29:19 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>>>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>The science in BSG is truly unforgivable except for people who don't
>>>>>give
>>>>>a
>>>>>whit about science.
>>>
>>>"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
>>>news:43e65892...@news.telusplanet.net...
>>>> What science in BSG would that be?
>>>
>>>If you mean that in a clever way, yes, precisely.
>>>
>
>
>"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
>news:43e6afaf...@news.telusplanet.net...
>> No. I mean it in a honest way.
>
>Then why did you delete the alternate answer I gave?
Because it wasn't responsive.
>
>The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
>bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space?
I'd have to go back and watch an old episode to see whether they bank.
But of course that's nothing special by the standard of television.
And everyone still
>preoccupied with "gods?" Really, really bad.
Were you labouring under the misimpression that people would stop
being preoccupied with gods just because they had spaceships?
>
>I don't even begrudge them the near-fantasy use of FTL since we're all used
>to it, it having been used to death as a sci-fi staple, even though actual
>physics says it has to be impossible. But STAR TREK and the SG's tend to
>acknowledge these leaps and work better within them.
Seems the same to me.
Mike Hall
>>The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
>>bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>>that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space?
>
> I'd have to go back and watch an old episode to see whether they bank.
> But of course that's nothing special by the standard of television.
Nah. The space fights are as realistic as possible, more so that the
laser-zap space operas. They even show the maneuvering thrusters.
Still, that training wheel is stupid since there is no gravity in space. A
spin in a viper should be infinitely more dizzying!
Mike Hall
Atlas Bugged
> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Then why did you delete the alternate answer I gave?
"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
news:43e74ac...@news.telusplanet.net...
> Because it wasn't responsive.
Well, I believe it was quite responsive. I have also discussed, in another
part of this thread, the requirements of different types of sci-fi WRT
science. Also, multiple posters have expressed their reservations about the
bad science in BSG, including a PhD. in astrophysics, to whose post I
directed you, and you deleted that too.
So at some point, I have to just suggest you review the various points which
have been made, and stop "arguing by deletion," IOW just avoiding the
arguments you don't like.
>
>>The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
>>bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>>that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space?
>
> I'd have to go back and watch an old episode to see whether they bank.
> But of course that's nothing special by the standard of television.
Right, but there's levels of dramatic license within science fiction. BSG
is not acquitting itself well on this measure. The poster named Bob has
suggested BSG is a redemption play (here, and many other places,
http://snipurl.com/lsfv), and he may be right.
But one reason his view is important is that you can see many other aspects
of the show are being routinely tossed aside to make this point (or, if
Bob's wrong, some less clear point.) The show has dreadful continuity. And
last episode we even got a "previously" shot that was never shown
previously.
In short, drama, theme, and style are of paramount importance in BSG.
Getting the science to look reasonably believable is not.
>
> Were you labouring under the misimpression that people would stop
> being preoccupied with gods just because they had spaceships?
A spacefaring culture is dead - as in deceased - if it is overly preoccupied
with faith at the expense of facts, reality, empiricism. It's a flaw in the
story.
>
>>I don't even begrudge them the near-fantasy use of FTL since we're all
>>used
>>to it, it having been used to death as a sci-fi staple, even though actual
>>physics says it has to be impossible. But STAR TREK and the SG's tend to
>>acknowledge these leaps and work better within them.
>
> Seems the same to me.
Not even close. "Warp speed" is a fictional construct, but I know exactly
what speed it's supposed to be. "Wormholes" are extrapolations of what
physicists suspect may actually be possible. Etc. By contrast, Moore just
ignores things. A "jump" is largely unexplained.
That's OK, but he's saying he doesn't give much of a frak about making the
science realistic looking. That's his call, but I was pointing it out.
pyotr filipivich
<atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote on Mon, 06 Feb 2006 21:28:41 GMT in
alt.tv.firefly :
>"George Johnson" <matr...@voyager.net> wrote in message
>news:11ufd46...@corp.supernews.com...
>> I allow looseness in Science Fiction as there is the "If we could
>> theorize it properly there is a damn good chance we could actually for
>> real
>> build these things."
>
>That's a good standard, especially for what they call "hard" sci-fi.
>
>If you can actually build it, there's not much "fi." And if theory suggests
>it's impossible, you are going a bit outside of "sci."
>
>There is, of course, the area of "soft" sci-fi, where things get much more
>speculative, such as with TREK, GATE, WARS, and unfortunately the new BSG.
>
>And there is "fantasy," which I argue is not sci-fi at all, whether hard or
>soft.
I've heard it put that the difference between Science Fiction and
Fantasy, is that in Fantasy, you can be granted a wish. In Science
Fiction, you can buy a wish.
>
>>Since they cannot, they usually don't. Real Science
>> Fiction based on the physics we know for certain to be true would be dead
>> boring for the overstimulated audience that exists these days.
>
>It presents many problems, indeed. It's one reason FIREFLY rules.
>
>It certainly did a few things here and there that were simply out of line,
>but it did more than any other show to stay within the current theoretical
>boundaries, such as no faster-than-light travel, and a fusion-based space
>drive.
>
>Then it had the *nerve* to *still* be better than any other sci-fi show in
>history. Definitely not too shabby.
Oh, most defiantly. And it told a ripping good story in the process.
--
pyotr filipivich
Typos, Grammos and da kind are the result of ragin hormones
Fortesque Consulting: Teaching Pigs to Sing since 1968.
Bruce Stewart
>> On Mon, 6 Feb 2006 05:29:56 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>Then why did you delete the alternate answer I gave?
>
> "David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
> news:43e74ac...@news.telusplanet.net...
>> Because it wasn't responsive.
>
> Well, I believe it was quite responsive. I have also discussed, in
> another part of this thread, the requirements of different types of sci-fi
> WRT
> science. Also, multiple posters have expressed their reservations about
> the bad science in BSG, including a PhD. in astrophysics, to whose post I
> directed you, and you deleted that too.
Which point is that the asteroid belt is less than 1MY, obvious to me, but
then it appears you are intentionally looking for faults.
>
> So at some point, I have to just suggest you review the various points
> which have been made, and stop "arguing by deletion," IOW just avoiding
> the arguments you don't like.
>>
>>>The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us
>>>some
>>>bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>>>that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space?
>>
>> I'd have to go back and watch an old episode to see whether they bank.
>> But of course that's nothing special by the standard of television.
>
> Right, but there's levels of dramatic license within science fiction. BSG
> is not acquitting itself well on this measure. The poster named Bob has
> suggested BSG is a redemption play (here, and many other places,
> http://snipurl.com/lsfv), and he may be right.
>
> But one reason his view is important is that you can see many other
> aspects of the show are being routinely tossed aside to make this point
> (or, if
> Bob's wrong, some less clear point.) The show has dreadful continuity.
> And last episode we even got a "previously" shot that was never shown
> previously.
>
One of the Deleted scenes from Pegasus. You are dealing now with time
pressures on a TV series which has to deal with less on air time per
episode than a '60s or '70s series.
> In short, drama, theme, and style are of paramount importance in BSG.
> Getting the science to look reasonably believable is not.
So in your favourite show, how did their Artifical gravity work then?
>>
>> Were you labouring under the misimpression that people would stop
>> being preoccupied with gods just because they had spaceships?
>
> A spacefaring culture is dead - as in deceased - if it is overly
> preoccupied
> with faith at the expense of facts, reality, empiricism. It's a flaw in
> the story.
Hmm, if they did actually directly interact with their "Gods" when they did
have spacefaring capability, they wouldn't need "faith".
<political troll>
OBTW, if what you say is true, that means there's not much future for the
US, if your current President's world view becomes preeminent.
</political troll>
>>
>>>I don't even begrudge them the near-fantasy use of FTL since we're all
>>>used
>>>to it, it having been used to death as a sci-fi staple, even though
>>>actual
>>>physics says it has to be impossible. But STAR TREK and the SG's tend to
>>>acknowledge these leaps and work better within them.
>>
>> Seems the same to me.
>
> Not even close. "Warp speed" is a fictional construct, but I know exactly
> what speed it's supposed to be. "Wormholes" are extrapolations of what
> physicists suspect may actually be possible. Etc. By contrast, Moore
> just
> ignores things. A "jump" is largely unexplained.
>
Great, I see what it does, no explanation needed.
> That's OK, but he's saying he doesn't give much of a frak about making the
> science realistic looking. That's his call, but I was pointing it out.
Well, are you wanting a Weberesque 20 pages of Infodump?
Do we really want long technical made up "stuff", which a few months down
the road will found to be completely wrong?
Bruce S.
--
Replace by by blueyonder
Atlasbugged
news:0q2Gf.16266$wl.1...@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
> Which point is that the asteroid belt is less than 1MY, obvious to me, but
> then it appears you are intentionally looking for faults.
No, but it's fair to say I'm adding them up. Past some point, you lose
believability even for the purposes of fiction.
>
> One of the Deleted scenes from Pegasus. You are dealing now with time
> pressures on a TV series which has to deal with less on air time per
> episode than a '60s or '70s series.
Sure I assume that's *why* there's the defects of which I complain, in part.
The defects remain.
>
>> In short, drama, theme, and style are of paramount importance in BSG.
>> Getting the science to look reasonably believable is not.
>
> So in your favourite show, how did their Artifical gravity work then?
There were lengthy discussions of this in <alt.tv.firefly> back in August
which you may review. In short, getting from point A to point B at
faster-than-light speed renders an impossibility onscreen. Getting people
to stick to the floors is trivial. FIREFLY found some unclear way to do
that. It doesn't rank with lightspeed as a violation of believability, not
even close.
>
> <political troll>
> OBTW, if what you say is true, that means there's not much future for the
> US, if your current President's world view becomes preeminent.
> </political troll>
No problem. You may be right, but a noisy, ignorant minority base is part
of the coalition that got him elected, that's all.
If that base had actual control over technology or economy, Americans would
be eating dirt, as so much of the non-capitalist world has to.
The stem cell thing is illustriative. It's a litmus test for *true*
religious primitivism.
Many folks who are otherwise part of the religious base are bailing on that
issue because they have someone sick in their family. And American courts
*will* prosecute parents that fail to adopt modern medicine on religious
grounds.
In short, personal religious "views" are nobody's business, but in the
sociopolitical sphere, religion is mass death. Americans know this just
fine. Cartoon, anyone?
>
[FTL "jumps"]
> Great, I see what it does, no explanation needed.
*Some* explanation of *some* of the science is needed. If not, it's
fantasy, a separate genre.
>
> Well, are you wanting a Weberesque 20 pages of Infodump?
Strawman. Of course I do not.
>
> Do we really want long technical made up "stuff", which a few months down
> the road will found to be completely wrong?
No. We want reasonable speculations that make the drama and setting more
believable and more intense. Or: we want the show to acknowledge it's
"soft" sci-fi, and not pretend to more, as the SG's do nicely.
BSG TOS was completely goofy and family-oriented. If Moore wants to upgrade
it to adult stuff, that's great, but he should try to keep it that way on
all levels.
Lizard
>"Lizard" <liz...@dnai.com> schreef in bericht
>news:auseu1d9qflod4fnr...@4ax.com...
>
>> Those who do not learn from experience die young, and thus, leave no
>> or fewer offspring.
>>
>> Those who do learn from experience live longer, and thus leave more
>> offspring.
>>
>> How is this not evolution?
>
><offtopic>
>
>Actually this is adaptation, survival of the fittest, it has nothing to do
>with evolution, quite the opposite.
(Rest of drivel deleted)
You have not Clue One what evolution is; please go back to first grade
and start over. This time, be sure you go to a school which teaches
religion in philosophy courses and not science courses.
Further debate on this topic with you is pointless until you
re-educate yourself; it would be akin to trying to discuss algebra
with someone whose numbering system only included 'None', '1', and
'many'. If you want to hire me as a science tutor for you, we might be
able to work something out, but I don't see why I should do for free
what your schools failed to do.
David Johnston
<atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 6 Feb 2006 05:29:56 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>Then why did you delete the alternate answer I gave?
>
>"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
>news:43e74ac...@news.telusplanet.net...
>> Because it wasn't responsive.
>
>Well, I believe it was quite responsive. I have also discussed, in another
>part of this thread, the requirements of different types of sci-fi WRT
>science.
But that wasn't what I was asking. I was asking what specific
scientific travesties you were objecting to.
>In short, drama, theme, and style are of paramount importance in BSG.
>Getting the science to look reasonably believable is not.
>>
>> Were you labouring under the misimpression that people would stop
>> being preoccupied with gods just because they had spaceships?
>
>A spacefaring culture is dead - as in deceased - if it is overly preoccupied
>with faith at the expense of facts, reality, empiricism.
Except of course that the colonies in general didn't turn to faith
until they were effectively dead and they needed a source of hope when
any rational evaluation of their prospects would assess that they were
almost certainly doomed. As a culture, the colonies basically are
already dead. Quite apart from that, your claim doesn't really seem
to be based in anything substantive. How is it "dead" just because it
turns to religion rather than vice versa?
It's a flaw in the
>story.
>>
>>>I don't even begrudge them the near-fantasy use of FTL since we're all
>>>used
>>>to it, it having been used to death as a sci-fi staple, even though actual
>>>physics says it has to be impossible. But STAR TREK and the SG's tend to
>>>acknowledge these leaps and work better within them.
>>
>> Seems the same to me.
>
>Not even close. "Warp speed" is a fictional construct, but I know exactly
>what speed it's supposed to be.
No you don't. Warp speed moves at the speed of plot. In two
different episodes the same warp speed will yield radically different
transit times.
"Wormholes" are extrapolations of what
>physicists suspect may actually be possible.
Not exactly. "Real" wormholes would have so much gravity associated
with them that the first time they turned on a Stargate, the planet
they are would have been converted into an asteroid belt.
Milan Pollé
primary emotional reactions :^) Must have struck a nerve somewhere.
David Johnston
<ln.bewfmt....@nalim.nl> wrote:
>Nice to see such well thought out and meaningful responses
To the claim that selection has nothing to do with evolution when
selection is a primary operating element of evolution? You get what
you put in.
Stephen Adams
>Nice to see such well thought out and meaningful responses instead of
>primary emotional reactions :^) Must have struck a nerve somewhere.
Please, please, PLEASE include some context - it's hard to know what or
who you are talking about. Thanks.
-Stephen
--
Space Age Cybernomad Stephen Adams
malchu...@AMgmail.com (remove SPAM to reply)
EvilBill
>
> Not even close. "Warp speed" is a fictional construct, but I know
> exactly what speed it's supposed to be. "Wormholes" are
> extrapolations of what physicists suspect may actually be possible.
> Etc. By contrast, Moore just ignores things. A "jump" is largely
> unexplained.
>
Well, one of the reasons Voyager was often such a heap of crap was its
overreliance on technobabble. Personally I don't mind if the principles
behind technologies aren't explained much when I watch the show, I just
assume that they've been around a long time so people just take them for
granted.
I mean, how many people now know the engineering principles behind their
computer's processor, or their modem? <g>
--
--
"I hope you don't object to my badgering the witless!"
EvilBill - http://www.evilbill.org.uk
yahoo: evilbill_agqx
David Chapman
> Atlas Bugged wrote:
>>
>> Not even close. "Warp speed" is a fictional construct, but I know
>> exactly what speed it's supposed to be. "Wormholes" are
>> extrapolations of what physicists suspect may actually be possible.
>> Etc. By contrast, Moore just ignores things. A "jump" is largely
>> unexplained.
>>
>
> Well, one of the reasons Voyager was often such a heap of crap was its
> overreliance on technobabble.
Technobabble I can live with. The biggest reason Voyager was crap was
because they continued to press the reset button despite being in a scenario
which should strictly forbid it. Voyager could and should have been the
best of the Trek shows, instead of the worst.
--
"My son is not a terrorist - he is a junior IT support officer."
CatPanDaddy
> On Mon, 6 Feb 2006 05:29:56 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 22:05:07 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> On Sun, 5 Feb 2006 20:29:19 -0500, "Atlas Bugged"
>>>>> <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>The science in BSG is truly unforgivable except for people who don't
>>>>>>give
>>>>>>a
>>>>>>whit about science.
>>>>
>>>>"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
>>>>news:43e65892...@news.telusplanet.net...
>>>>> What science in BSG would that be?
>>>>
>>>>If you mean that in a clever way, yes, precisely.
>>>>
>>
>>
>>"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
>>news:43e6afaf...@news.telusplanet.net...
>>> No. I mean it in a honest way.
>>
>>Then why did you delete the alternate answer I gave?
>
> Because it wasn't responsive.
>
>
>>
>>The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
>>bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>>that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space?
>
> I'd have to go back and watch an old episode to see whether they bank.
> But of course that's nothing special by the standard of television.
>
I would think that banking would be for the benefit of the fragile human body
inside the ship. Pulling negative G-forces isn't fun so it makes sense to turn
so that you "climb" relative to your target if only for this reason.
CatPanDaddy
"Atlasbugged" <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ccPFf.33911$An4....@fe04.news.easynews.com...
>
> There is, of course, the area of "soft" sci-fi, where things get much more
> speculative, such as with TREK, GATE, WARS, and unfortunately the new BSG.
>
I just got a quick question about this, just because I haven't seen anything
official on this one...
I was only about 12 or so the first time I saw Star Wars, so I really don't know
who was making what claims about what genre that series was meant to be. But I
didn't think the creators of SW claimed it was even soft sci-fi (or anything
beyond fantasy or mythology or fairy tales.) Do you have anything official I
can read, not from the misinformed marketing people or some of the fans but from
the actual producers?
David Johnston
wrote:
>>>The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
>>>bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>>>that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space?
>>
>> I'd have to go back and watch an old episode to see whether they bank.
>> But of course that's nothing special by the standard of television.
>>
>
>I would think that banking would be for the benefit of the fragile human body
>inside the ship. Pulling negative G-forces isn't fun so it makes sense to turn
>so that you "climb" relative to your target if only for this reason.
I'm not sure what you are talking about. "Banking" is when you tilt
an aircraft's wings to make it turn. It only works when you have
wings and an atmospheric medium. Despite that we see ships mimicking
it in things like Star Wars, the Original Battlestar Galactica and
post TOS Star Trek. In reality in space you could only achieve a
visibly curving course by swinging the source of your thrust (normally
your butt) at an angle to the direction of your movement or by taking
advantage of a very intense gravity field.
CatPanDaddy
> On Tue, 7 Feb 2006 20:14:55 -0600, "CatPanDaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net>
> wrote:
>
>>>>The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
>>>>bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
>>>>that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space?
>>>
>>> I'd have to go back and watch an old episode to see whether they bank.
>>> But of course that's nothing special by the standard of television.
>>>
>>
>>I would think that banking would be for the benefit of the fragile human body
>>inside the ship. Pulling negative G-forces isn't fun so it makes sense to
>>turn
>>so that you "climb" relative to your target if only for this reason.
>
> I'm not sure what you are talking about. "Banking" is when you tilt
> an aircraft's wings to make it turn. It only works when you have
> wings and an atmospheric medium.
Okay, that makes sense. I've just noticed that even if I am "piloting" a
fighter set in space (where there is no up or down), that I can't break my habit
of tilting my craft and then pulling upward to acquire my target. It's become
second nature for me especially because I have a weak stomach and don't even
want to think of pushing my nose down.
David Buchner
> The show wants us to have a strong sense of "realism" so it throws us some
> bones suggesting it's on the "hard" side. No gravity or oxygen in space,
> that's good. But aerial "dogfights" in space? And everyone still
> preoccupied with "gods?" Really, really bad.
My neighbors drive cars with computer-controlled fuel injection and
traction control, and *they* still seem preoccupied with "gods" too. At
least as preoccupied as the average, secular BSG-citizen seems to be.
I wish I could get a handle on just what it is that's so wrong, in your
estimation, about the space "dogfights" thing.
Because I've been kinda going along enjoying those "bones" the show
throws us to suggest it's on the hard side. The way the vehicles move,
the way there don't seem to be magical "sensors" and they have to rely
on some rudimentary optical, radar, and particle-detection instruments
to tell when somebody's coming, and so on. As in FIREFLY, this stuff
doesn't have to be a physics or astronomy textbook, to do a
halfway-convincing job of conveying the *feel* of living in space.
Chris Basken
> "George Johnson" wrote...
>>Since they cannot, they usually don't. Real Science
>>Fiction based on the physics we know for certain to be true would be dead
>>boring for the overstimulated audience that exists these days.
>
> It presents many problems, indeed. It's one reason FIREFLY rules.
>
> It certainly did a few things here and there that were simply out of line,
> but it did more than any other show to stay within the current theoretical
> boundaries, such as no faster-than-light travel, and a fusion-based space
> drive.
They had no FTL in Firefly? Them's a lot of habitable planets packed
closely together, then...
Brian Henderson
<jedit_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Technobabble I can live with. The biggest reason Voyager was crap was
>because they continued to press the reset button despite being in a scenario
>which should strictly forbid it. Voyager could and should have been the
>best of the Trek shows, instead of the worst.
Like all quest shows, Voyager could never get home because the show
would have ended. They had to keep pressing the reset button and
finding some reason, no matter how stupid, why the latest "thing
that's gonna get them home" isn't going to work.
Atlasbugged
news:Ub6dnfjTBp6hg3fe...@giganews.com...
> They had no FTL in Firefly?
Correct.
>Them's a lot of habitable planets packed
> closely together, then...
Correct again, a significant problem WRT their desire to "keep it real."
An actual astrophysicist examined the problem and gave it a big fat "maybe."
But best current theory has FTL utterly, completely impossible.
Bottom line, based on current science, is that FTL is much more out there
than FIREFLY's questionable cluster of planets.
See the FAQ for more, but that web page which goes into detail on crowded
solar systems is here:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue439/labnotes.html
And the FAQ leads you to many more resources, perhaps a hundred or so:
http://snipurl.com/k8ui
Here's the section of the FAQ where I discuss the scientific problems. They
exist, but they pale compared to all other sci-fi attempts that ever hit the
screen: Compare to Mooore's otherwise wonderful BSG, where he clearly gives
science a back seat.
__________________________________
Bugged Sayeth:
"Sci-fi fans often call it "hard" sci-fi (or "hard-er," this is debated.
Whedon himself, however suggests Firefly is hard sci-fi .) This usually
means the science will be fairly realistic and will be a fair extrapolation
from today's science, just a bit more advanced. Exceptions do occur when
they are simply unavoidable. For example, long-space-distance "phone calls"
are realtime, which means they must violate lightspeed, even within a solar
system.
Way-futuristic stuff that seems almost magical - or is - is clearly
verboten. So, you don't see ships zipping around at 10 times the speed of
light, molecules rearranged to create whatever, or "transporters" a la Trek
or Stargate Whatever and the like. On the other hand, there are scarce laser
weapons, very advanced medicine, fast, cheap, easy sub-light travel, and
most else permitted by today's science but perhaps not yet concretized in
technology you can use. Serenity's mysterious engine is said to be
fusion-based; that's perfect for Firefly because the science is old hat, but
the technology is yet-to-come. And there's no sound in space, ever, even
though some mistakenly thought the BDM messed up. Firefly does all it can
to respect the science and holds reason as the sole means of knowledge."
___________________________________
Whedon has said repeatedly that River's questionable psychic abilities were
as far as he wanted to go in terms of violating "hard" sci-fi strictures.
So there was serious effort to keep it extrapolative and realistic, even
though Whedon was clear that this stuff annoyed him. Whedon wanted to keep
FIREFLY "real" on many levels, and that's a big reason it sparkles.
Astrobiochemist
They actually said that in the movie. Of course, this leads to the
problem of there being a LOT of planets within that system's habitable
zone. This also has the porblem of having moons large enough to
produce 1g and have enough tidal forces from their respective planets
gravity to cause a habitable zone around the planet, rather than just
around the star.
One hell of a star system.
Astrobiochemist
If you think of learning from experience as a type of intelligence with
a genetic component, then it can be passed to the organisms offspring.
If learning from experience helps the organism to survive long enough
to pass down their genes (maybe it helps the person live longer but if
both people who learn from experience and people who don't learn from
experience live long enough to pass on their genes and raise their
offspring, then it isn't reprodcutively advantageous), then that gene
(and the rest of the genes from that individual) will survive over the
genes of organisms who don't learn from their mistakes.
This is natural selection, the process which Darwin defined to be the
impetus that drove evolution.
David Johnston
Yes, given a choice between FTL and the bizarre system in Firefly I'd
take FTL.
Al Gore
Astrobiochemist <CCSB...@yahoo.com> wrote:
To quote Wash: "I dunno, it sounds like science fiction to me."
Al Gore
Basken wrote:
That's why one sees those shots with 2 or 3 planets hanging in the sky
in some background shots.
Lizard
<ln.bewfmt....@nalim.nl> wrotC:DRIVE_E
>Nice to see such well thought out and meaningful responses instead of
>primary emotional reactions :^) Must have struck a nerve somewhere.
>
No real emotion at all.
If someone comes up to you and says, "Since 2+2=5, and triangles have
four sides, we see that Einstein was wrong about the speed of light.",
you know that there's no point is discussing physics with him -- he
doesn't even understand basic math. There needs to be a common
framework of basic knowledge before any kind of advanced topics can be
discussed.
You don't have that basic knowledge, at least when it comes to
biology. You do not know what 'evolution' is. The amount of education
necessary to give you the knowledge you need to even begin to discuss
the topic is far beyond what can be sanely put into a USENET post.
This is not a matter of emotion, but of fact. If I were to say to
someone "Japanese for 'Hello' is 'wuggawuggabugga'. Also, there are
only six syllables in the Japanese language.", and they replied "You
do not speak Japanese", that would not be an emotional response, but a
simple factual one.
Of course, you think you DO know what you're talking about, and thus,
will make no effort to correct your deficiencies. If I were the
compassionate sort, I'd call that a pity, but I really don't care.
Mark N
That's an interesting comment, coming from a guy who lives in a spaceship!
Mark
David Chapman
That's not the reset button to which I referred. Things like the loss of
crew, the loss of shuttles, damage to the ship and so on - those couldn't be
dismissed but were. It was like watching the car chase in Bullitt frame by
frame.
David Buchner
> Whedon has said repeatedly that River's questionable psychic abilities were
> as far as he wanted to go in terms of violating "hard" sci-fi strictures.
> So there was serious effort to keep it extrapolative and realistic, even
> though Whedon was clear that this stuff annoyed him. Whedon wanted to keep
> FIREFLY "real" on many levels, and that's a big reason it sparkles.
And all this does is make me excited to see what Tim Minear would do
with THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS.
David Buchner
> Yes, given a choice between FTL and the bizarre system in Firefly I'd
> take FTL.
How in the hell can it be "bizarre," yet??!!??
We only have a few "systems" identified -- and they're naturally going
to be the easy ones to spot, at this stage!
Not. Enough. Data.
Ryan P.
> That's not the reset button to which I referred. Things like the loss of
> crew, the loss of shuttles, damage to the ship and so on - those couldn't be
> dismissed but were. It was like watching the car chase in Bullitt frame by
> frame.
>
That was an annoyance, I'll admit. The least they could have done was
address each problem directly, come up with a solution, and then moved
on. But you're right, unlimited shuttle craft and the
magically-self-repairing ship were the biggest flaws of the show. There
was never a sense of "Oh no, that's gone forever!"
The "Year of Hell" two-parter was more like what the entire series
should have been like.
Kweeg
news:PxuGf.378$CV....@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
That's the truth. When I first saw that one I thought, finally they fired
the crappy writers, grown some balls and have taken this show in the
direction it should have gone to begin with, needless to say that feeling
didn't last long.
--
Qapla'
Kweeg
Ten of Canadian Clubs in the Eeeevil Trek Cabal
http://members.shaw.ca/iksbloodoath
"Half a gallon a'scotch!" Scotty (Spectre of the Gun)
"So say we all!"
Bob
wrote:
>> They had no FTL in Firefly? Them's a lot of habitable planets packed
>> closely together, then...
>That's why one sees those shots with 2 or 3 planets hanging in the sky
>in some background shots.
It was one of those "planned galaxies" with community emphasis.
--
"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession.
I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first."
--Ronald Reagan
Bob
>If someone comes up to you and says, "Since 2+2=5 ... he
>doesn't even understand basic math.
What if I told you that 11 + 3 = 2?
It's true - on a clock.
Chris Basken
> "Chris Basken" wrote...
>>They had no FTL in Firefly?
>
> Correct.
>
> >Them's a lot of habitable planets packed
>
>>closely together, then...
>
> Correct again, a significant problem WRT their desire to "keep it real."
>
> An actual astrophysicist examined the problem and gave it a big fat "maybe."
> But best current theory has FTL utterly, completely impossible.
Huh. Actually, I respect this kind of decision. I think I would have
opted for more terraformed colonies, though. But then, I've only seen
Serenity, so maybe that's what they are.
How did they get to this system from Earth?
> Whedon has said repeatedly that River's questionable psychic abilities were
> as far as he wanted to go in terms of violating "hard" sci-fi strictures.
> So there was serious effort to keep it extrapolative and realistic, even
> though Whedon was clear that this stuff annoyed him. Whedon wanted to keep
> FIREFLY "real" on many levels, and that's a big reason it sparkles.
This is one thing I don't understand. Why put it in a SF context if
you're not gonna do SF? Why not just make it an *actual* western?
Robert J. Kolker
> On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:49:20 -0500, Lizard <liz...@dnai.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If someone comes up to you and says, "Since 2+2=5 ... he
>>doesn't even understand basic math.
>
>
> What if I told you that 11 + 3 = 2?
That is addition modulo decimal 12. The only context in which I could
figure 2 op 2 = 5 is where a op b = a + b + 1. Unfortunately op is not
an associative operation so its usefulness is limited.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
> Al Gore wrote:
>>
>>
>> To quote Wash: "I dunno, it sounds like science fiction to me."
>
>
> That's an interesting comment, coming from a guy who lives in a spaceship!
If living on a spaceship were normal then it would be the very
antithesis of science fiction. I find that line very witty.
Bob Kolker
David Johnston
>Atlasbugged wrote:
>> "Chris Basken" wrote...
>>>They had no FTL in Firefly?
>>
>> Correct.
>>
>> >Them's a lot of habitable planets packed
>>
>>>closely together, then...
>>
>> Correct again, a significant problem WRT their desire to "keep it real."
>>
>> An actual astrophysicist examined the problem and gave it a big fat "maybe."
>> But best current theory has FTL utterly, completely impossible.
>
>Huh. Actually, I respect this kind of decision. I think I would have
>opted for more terraformed colonies, though. But then, I've only seen
>Serenity, so maybe that's what they are.
The colonies were "terraformed". However, there's simply no way to
fit that many inhabitable masses into a habitable zone and of course
they were being terraformed far more quickly than is believable.
>
>How did they get to this system from Earth?
>
>> Whedon has said repeatedly that River's questionable psychic abilities were
>> as far as he wanted to go in terms of violating "hard" sci-fi strictures.
>> So there was serious effort to keep it extrapolative and realistic, even
>> though Whedon was clear that this stuff annoyed him. Whedon wanted to keep
>> FIREFLY "real" on many levels, and that's a big reason it sparkles.
>
>This is one thing I don't understand. Why put it in a SF context if
>you're not gonna do SF? Why not just make it an *actual* western?
Firefly was SF. Not all SF has to have a Star Trek-like insouciant
disregard for the constraints of reality.
David Johnston
wrote:
>David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> wrote:
>
>> Yes, given a choice between FTL and the bizarre system in Firefly I'd
>> take FTL.
>
>How in the hell can it be "bizarre," yet??!!??
Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
absurd. I could believe in some theoretical breakthrough that would
find a loophole in relativity although I wouldn't bank one. But
there's simply no place to put all those planets and moons where they
can get enough sunlight unless you are postulating some multiple star
system with something like a dozen stars in it, and such a system
exists nowhere within a hundred light years of where we are.
obv...@aol.com
David Johnston wrote:
> Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
> absurd.
What if part of the terraforming was to create the large bodies in the
first place? I would think that a dozen inhabitable planets could be
placed around our own sun quite easily. I imagine that if the sun was
100 times bigger, you could fit 100 times more planets around it.
>But there's simply no place to put all those planets and moons where they
> can get enough sunlight unless you are postulating some multiple star
Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
same speed around the sun?
Couldn't you mess with the upper atmosphere or different worlds to
increase heat retention on planets farther away from the sun?
Couldn't you build larger planets that had a certain amount of
geothermal heating...enough to make areas of the planet inhabitable
even in low sunlight distances?
Couldn't you have planets where one side always faced the sun...thus
providing a warm enough / light enough side for habitation?
Couldn't you have planets much closer to the sun where all inhabitants
lived indoors...filtered light and cooling systems (a giant
metropolis)?
Seems like lots of possibilities if you could really terraform an
entire system.
Atlas Bugged
> This is one thing I don't understand. Why put it in a SF context if
> you're not gonna do SF? Why not just make it an *actual* western?
It is sci-fi.
You mean why not go all out? If it's gonna be "fi," what's the problem with
blowing or even dropping the "sci?"
Most important is that technology is a key, fundamental aspect that
separates human from animal. Anti-technology is literally pro-death.
Without it, few today would survive infancy.
Sci-fi has become a serious literary genre because extrapolating about
what's "next" profoundly affects the human condition.
It's more important than all other literary conventions, from romance to
mystery to you-name-it.
Technology fundamentally impacts morality and ethics. "Customs" or
"culture" literally pale by comparison.
FIREFLY is simply *not* merely a Western in space (OUTLAND came close,) and
the new BSG is *not* merely a war drama in space. STAR WARS was, and so too
was BSG TOS, and that's why they sucked.
True - and great - sci-fi makes a *reasonable* speculation about what
technology might achieve, and how humans will have to react and change.
Nothing in the human condition is more important than technology.
Non-sci-fi can't address these crucial questions, and outright fantasy
suffers from the same exact infirmity.
Bruce Stewart
> "Bruce Stewart" <bruce_...@by.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:0q2Gf.16266$wl.1...@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
>> Which point is that the asteroid belt is less than 1MY, obvious to me,
>> but then it appears you are intentionally looking for faults.
>
> No, but it's fair to say I'm adding them up. Past some point, you lose
> believability even for the purposes of fiction.
I believe you are setting the bar much too high for *any* visual fiction.
Considering BSG has had twice the amount of episodes then Firefly, that
would obviously have more opportunity to add up faults.
>>
>> One of the Deleted scenes from Pegasus. You are dealing now with time
>> pressures on a TV series which has to deal with less on air time per
>> episode than a '60s or '70s series.
>
> Sure I assume that's *why* there's the defects of which I complain, in
> part. The defects remain.
>>
>>> In short, drama, theme, and style are of paramount importance in BSG.
>>> Getting the science to look reasonably believable is not.
>>
>> So in your favourite show, how did their Artifical gravity work then?
>
> There were lengthy discussions of this in <alt.tv.firefly> back in August
> which you may review. In short, getting from point A to point B at
> faster-than-light speed renders an impossibility onscreen. Getting people
> to stick to the floors is trivial. FIREFLY found some unclear way to do
> that. It doesn't rank with lightspeed as a violation of believability,
> not even close.
There are 3 ways to generate "gravity", have an acceleration in a direction,
which gives the force equivalent on the floor (So a linear acceleration or
a rotating section), some kind of energistic field, or have under the deck
plating, superdense exotic matter.
Now the last two to me are just as much a violation of believeability as a
Jump type FTL drive.
>>
>> <political troll>
>> OBTW, if what you say is true, that means there's not much future for the
>> US, if your current President's world view becomes preeminent.
>> </political troll>
>
> No problem. You may be right, but a noisy, ignorant minority base is part
> of the coalition that got him elected, that's all.
>
> If that base had actual control over technology or economy, Americans
> would be eating dirt, as so much of the non-capitalist world has to.
>
> The stem cell thing is illustriative. It's a litmus test for *true*
> religious primitivism.
>
> Many folks who are otherwise part of the religious base are bailing on
> that
> issue because they have someone sick in their family. And American courts
> *will* prosecute parents that fail to adopt modern medicine on religious
> grounds.
>
> In short, personal religious "views" are nobody's business, but in the
> sociopolitical sphere, religion is mass death. Americans know this just
> fine. Cartoon, anyone?
Hee!
From this side of the Atlantic, it looks like it's in the ascendant in the
US. What you also forgetting is that they believe that There Is No Future,
as the End Times are here or just about arrive and Rapture is on its way.
As an aside: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29552
I would also disagree with your point about the religion + Science thing. A
lot of the pre 20th C, scientists believed that it was their religious
obligation to find out more about the Universe. As the Universe was God's
creation, to find out more about God, you had to find out more about the
Universe.
>>
> [FTL "jumps"]
>> Great, I see what it does, no explanation needed.
>
> *Some* explanation of *some* of the science is needed. If not, it's
> fantasy, a separate genre.
That means you haven't been reading much fantasy at all :) , most of the
fantasy I've read gets fairly involved with the reality model for that
world.
>>
>> Well, are you wanting a Weberesque 20 pages of Infodump?
>
> Strawman. Of course I do not.
>>
>> Do we really want long technical made up "stuff", which a few months down
>> the road will found to be completely wrong?
>
> No. We want reasonable speculations that make the drama and setting more
> believable and more intense. Or: we want the show to acknowledge it's
> "soft" sci-fi, and not pretend to more, as the SG's do nicely.
But then the SGs do have explanations for lots of the stuff which goes on,
so what makes you classify stuff soft and hard Sci-fi?
>
> BSG TOS was completely goofy and family-oriented. If Moore wants to
> upgrade it to adult stuff, that's great, but he should try to keep it that
> way on all levels.
It could be argued that all the involved explanations seen on many series
*is* what make things non-adult. Getting on without all the explanations
and accepting stuff, as is, seems to me, make it "harder".
To me, the feel of BSG is like CJ Cherryh's Merchanter novels, except that
the Paranoia dial has been turned down a bit. (But then, Ms Cherryh seems
have, in all her books, the dial turned up to 11 :) ).
Bruce S.
--
Replace the by by blueyonder.
Atlas Bugged
>> Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
>> absurd.
<obv...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1139445316.1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Exactly.
Everything theorized and experimentally known, but for only weak
speculation, suggests that nothing goes faster than light or ever will.
Getting more worlds into a solar system is nothing more than a mechanical
engineering challenge, albeit fabulously difficult and large-scale.
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue439/labnotes.html
the other Eric
Sure you can do all that and more -in fiction-. Heck you can do
anything you like. It is fiction.
Regards,
-Eric
David Johnston
>> David Johnston wrote:
>>> Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
>>> absurd.
>
><obv...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:1139445316.1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> What if part of the terraforming was to create the large bodies in the
>> first place?
If they had that ability they would have had no reason to leave the
solar system in the first place. Why travel for decades when you
could just magically conjure up new worlds where you were? Also,
that's not what the narration describes.
I would think that a dozen inhabitable planets could be
>> placed around our own sun quite easily. I imagine that if the sun was
>> 100 times bigger, you could fit 100 times more planets around it.
>>
>>>But there's simply no place to put all those planets and moons where they
>>> can get enough sunlight unless you are postulating some multiple star
>>
>> Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
>> same speed around the sun?
Such an arrangement is not dynamically stable and could not occur
naturally and last more than a few decades. The slightest difference
in velocity would cause one planet to overtake another and collide and
it would be impossible to prevent the velocities from being different
unless the planets were moving in perfect circles without ever being
affected by outside gravitational influences.
>>
>> Couldn't you mess with the upper atmosphere or different worlds to
>> increase heat retention on planets farther away from the sun?
Sure. Of course that won't give you enough light to support green
plants. Note that the "outer planets" weren't identifiable by their
lack of sunlight.
>>
>> Couldn't you build larger planets that had a certain amount of
>> geothermal heating...enough to make areas of the planet inhabitable
>> even in low sunlight distances?
Same problem.
>>
>> Couldn't you have planets where one side always faced the sun...thus
>> providing a warm enough / light enough side for habitation?
That would help. Of course "outer planets" also weren't identifiable
by never having any night.
>>
>> Couldn't you have planets much closer to the sun where all inhabitants
>> lived indoors...filtered light and cooling systems (a giant
>> metropolis)?
You could, but we never saw a planet like that. Nor would the "inner
planets" be the most populous, long settled ones as occurs in the
series.
Mark N
You mean Wash's line or Zoe's line?
Mark
Mike Hall
> Bob wrote:
>> Lizard wrote:
>>>If someone comes up to you and says, "Since 2+2=5 ... he
>>>doesn't even understand basic math.
>> What if I told you that 11 + 3 = 2?
> That is addition modulo decimal 12. The only context in which I could
> figure 2 op 2 = 5 is where a op b = a + b + 1. Unfortunately op is not an
> associative operation so its usefulness is limited.
It's always worth a few childish laughs when someone doesn't know why 1 + 1
= 69...
Mike Hall
ANIM8Rfsk
obv...@aol.com at obv...@aol.com wrote on 2/8/06 5:35 PM:
>
> David Johnston wrote:
>> Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
>> absurd.
>
> What if part of the terraforming was to create the large bodies in the
> first place? I would think that a dozen inhabitable planets could be
> placed around our own sun quite easily. I imagine that if the sun was
> 100 times bigger, you could fit 100 times more planets around it.
>
>> But there's simply no place to put all those planets and moons where they
>> can get enough sunlight unless you are postulating some multiple star
>
> Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
> same speed around the sun?
Even if you could, that's a dozen. You need hundreds.
Yeah, you can build a Kemplerer Rosette. Don't even need a sun in the
middle. But you aren't going to FIND one. And a true Kemplerer Rosette
isn't composed of similar size masses anyway.
>
> Couldn't you mess with the upper atmosphere or different worlds to
> increase heat retention on planets farther away from the sun?
Even if you made it HOT it's not going to be BRIGHT.
>
> Couldn't you build larger planets that had a certain amount of
> geothermal heating...enough to make areas of the planet inhabitable
> even in low sunlight distances?
See above.
>
> Couldn't you have planets where one side always faced the sun...thus
> providing a warm enough / light enough side for habitation?
That still only works in a very narrow zone.
>
> Couldn't you have planets much closer to the sun where all inhabitants
> lived indoors...filtered light and cooling systems (a giant
> metropolis)?
What's the point?
>
> Seems like lots of possibilities if you could really terraform an
> entire system.
Not really, not scattering Earth masses all over.
Build yourself a Ringworld. :)
>
--
The "Upward Foundation" in Phoenix AZ, 623-848-9725, 623-247-6142, 602
242-6839, 602 246-9186, 623 848-3568, also using the name "Foundation For"
are liars and scam artists. They make junk phone calls often several times
a day to the same number and refuse to remove you from their calling list
(they will give you a non working number to call to be removed, and the
contact address on their website is phony). This has been going on for a
decade. Do not deal with them.
ANIM8Rfsk
2/8/06 4:23 PM:
> Atlasbugged wrote:
>> "Chris Basken" wrote...
>>> They had no FTL in Firefly?
>>
>> Correct.
>>
>>> Them's a lot of habitable planets packed
>>
>>> closely together, then...
>>
>> Correct again, a significant problem WRT their desire to "keep it real."
>>
>> An actual astrophysicist examined the problem and gave it a big fat "maybe."
>> But best current theory has FTL utterly, completely impossible.
>
> Huh. Actually, I respect this kind of decision. I think I would have
> opted for more terraformed colonies, though. But then, I've only seen
> Serenity, so maybe that's what they are.
>
> How did they get to this system from Earth?
That's a hell of a question. But a better one is, given the insane level of
magic technology required, you've GOT to be able to do a better job with
THIS system.
>
>> Whedon has said repeatedly that River's questionable psychic abilities were
>> as far as he wanted to go in terms of violating "hard" sci-fi strictures.
>> So there was serious effort to keep it extrapolative and realistic, even
>> though Whedon was clear that this stuff annoyed him. Whedon wanted to keep
>> FIREFLY "real" on many levels, and that's a big reason it sparkles.
>
> This is one thing I don't understand. Why put it in a SF context if
> you're not gonna do SF? Why not just make it an *actual* western?
--
Clell Harmon
>
>David Johnston wrote:
>> Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
>> absurd.
>
>What if part of the terraforming was to create the large bodies in the
>first place? I would think that a dozen inhabitable planets could be
>placed around our own sun quite easily. I imagine that if the sun was
>100 times bigger, you could fit 100 times more planets around it.
>
>>But there's simply no place to put all those planets and moons where they
>> can get enough sunlight unless you are postulating some multiple star
>
>Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
>same speed around the sun?
If a planet moved at the same speed through out its orbit,
yes. But since they do not, no.
>
>Couldn't you mess with the upper atmosphere or different worlds to
>increase heat retention on planets farther away from the sun?
If one ignored the dramatic fall off in the amount of energy
imparted to a planetary surface with each successive viable orbit, I
guess. But since you can't, no.
>
>Couldn't you build larger planets that had a certain amount of
>geothermal heating...enough to make areas of the planet inhabitable
>even in low sunlight distances?
Large planets don't radiate much in the way of heat. Lethal
radiation, yes, but not heat.
>
>Couldn't you have planets where one side always faced the sun...thus
>providing a warm enough / light enough side for habitation?
Suggestions for how you stop a planets rotation short of a
tidal lock?
>
>Couldn't you have planets much closer to the sun where all inhabitants
>lived indoors...filtered light and cooling systems (a giant
>metropolis)?
This doesn't fit the definition of terraforming.
>
>Seems like lots of possibilities if you could really terraform an
>entire system.
Not if real world physics are involved.
--
This message is sent to you from the International Center for The Advanced Application of Hindsight.
obv...@aol.com
David Johnston wrote:
> ><obv...@aol.com> wrote in message
> >> What if part of the terraforming was to create the large bodies in the
> >> first place?
>
> If they had that ability they would have had no reason to leave the
> solar system in the first place. Why travel for decades when you
> could just magically conjure up new worlds where you were?
Well, there is some chance that the terraforming technology was
developed while the people were traveling through space for a 1000
years (or whatever).
>Also, that's not what the narration describes.
What exactly does the narration state?
> >> Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
> >> same speed around the sun?
>
> Such an arrangement is not dynamically stable and could not occur
> naturally and last more than a few decades.
I'm not trying to make the claim that it would occur naturally. You
may notice that I clearly prefaced the questions with a what if the
whole solar system was terraformed.
I do find it odd that some planets in our own dinky little solar system
have 50+ moons, but that people believe it is 'impossible' for a sun to
have 50+ planets.
> >> Couldn't you have planets where one side always faced the sun...thus
> >> providing a warm enough / light enough side for habitation?
>
> That would help. Of course "outer planets" also weren't identifiable
> by never having any night.
I probably wasn't watching close enough so I never noticed if each and
every planet was shown during the nighttime. Of course that makes no
difference to the 'what if' question.
>> Couldn't you have planets much closer to the sun where all
inhabitants
> >> lived indoors...filtered light and cooling systems (a giant
> >> metropolis)?
>
> You could, but we never saw a planet like that.
Weren't the inner planets, more controlled by the government, basically
giant cities where everythng took place indoors?
> Nor would the "inner planets" be the most populous, long settled
>ones as occurs in the series.
Why not? If everyone came to the solar system via ship, initially
everyone would be quite used to living indoors only and all the
technology would revolve around living indoors. It is also, as you see
with cities all over this world, cheaper to build an infrastructure if
people are close together. It seems to me that it would make perfect
sense for the inner planets to have dense, metropolitan populations.
David Johnston
>
>David Johnston wrote:
>
>> ><obv...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> >> What if part of the terraforming was to create the large bodies in the
>> >> first place?
>>
>> If they had that ability they would have had no reason to leave the
>> solar system in the first place. Why travel for decades when you
>> could just magically conjure up new worlds where you were?
>
>Well, there is some chance that the terraforming technology was
>developed while the people were traveling through space for a 1000
>years (or whatever).
Definitely not. It's only five hundred years into the future.
Realistically it's barely enough time to develop and do mere
terraforming on more or less ideal candidates, much less develop and
use the technology required to make a planet from scratch.
>
>>Also, that's not what the narration describes.
>
>What exactly does the narration state?
That they "found" a huge solar system with dozens of planets and
hundreds of moons that could be terraformed.
>
>> >> Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
>> >> same speed around the sun?
>>
>> Such an arrangement is not dynamically stable and could not occur
>> naturally and last more than a few decades.
>
>I'm not trying to make the claim that it would occur naturally. You
>may notice that I clearly prefaced the questions with a what if the
>whole solar system was terraformed.
There was never any indication that they possessed that kind of planet
moving technology. Nor is Miranda's out of the way location
consistent with such a scheme. Note that Miranda had a perf7ectly
habitable climate despite being far enough out of the way that it
could simply be forgotten.
>
>I do find it odd that some planets in our own dinky little solar system
>have 50+ moons, but that people believe it is 'impossible' for a sun to
>have 50+ planets.
It's not that it is impossible for a sun to have 50 planets. It's
that it's impossible for a sun to have hundreds of celestial bodies
all of which can be made as habitable as Earth which is the claim the
narration makes.
>
>> Nor would the "inner planets" be the most populous, long settled
>>ones as occurs in the series.
>
>Why not? If everyone came to the solar system via ship, initially
>everyone would be quite used to living indoors only and all the
>technology would revolve around living indoors.
Because cooling an inner world's domed cities would be far more
difficult than heating an outer world's domed cities. And once
again, it doesn't match the narration where all the planets are "new
Earths".
the other Eric
obv...@aol.com wrote:
<snip>
> > >> Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
> > >> same speed around the sun?
> >
> > Such an arrangement is not dynamically stable and could not occur
> > naturally and last more than a few decades.
>
> I'm not trying to make the claim that it would occur naturally. You
> may notice that I clearly prefaced the questions with a what if the
> whole solar system was terraformed.
>
> I do find it odd that some planets in our own dinky little solar system
> have 50+ moons, but that people believe it is 'impossible' for a sun to
> have 50+ planets.
What makes our system dinky? Our sun has way more than 50 major
objects orbiting it however we don't call most of them planets because
they are too far away. 50 planets is no big deal. The problem would
be 50 Earth like planets. Earth is in a sweet spot. Too close to the
star and a planet cooks like Venus. Too far away and it will freeze
like Mars. Sure advanced technology can expand that habitable belt a
little bit but it won't turn Pluto into an Earth.
The other idea is use technology to put more planets in that 'sweet
spot'. Well they can't eliminate error. Eventualy a mistake will be
made and oh boy you thought our multi car pile ups were bad.
> > Nor would the "inner planets" be the most populous, long settled
> >ones as occurs in the series.
>
> Why not?
The same reason the Sahara Desert isn't our most populous region. Some
people might use technology to adapt but it won't be many.
> If everyone came to the solar system via ship, initially
> everyone would be quite used to living indoors only and all the
> technology would revolve around living indoors. It is also, as you see
> with cities all over this world, cheaper to build an infrastructure if
> people are close together. It seems to me that it would make perfect
> sense for the inner planets to have dense, metropolitan populations.
Have you ever baked a frozen pizza at 450 degrees? Did you feel the
blast of hot air hit your hand when you pulled the pizza out? Most
people wouldn't want to live in a place that was that hot.
Regards,
-Eric
Daniel Damouth
news:43ea3090...@news.telusplanet.net:
> On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 16:21:31 -0600, buc...@wcta.net (David
> Buchner) wrote:
>
>>David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, given a choice between FTL and the bizarre system in
>>> Firefly I'd take FTL.
>>
>>How in the hell can it be "bizarre," yet??!!??
>
> Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
> absurd.
The science of "Firefly" reminds me of the original BSG. Both were
clearly written by people that neither know nor care much about science
or the structure of the universe. These are people who don't know what
a galaxy is, how far apart things are, how fast things move, and are
shaky on concepts such as gravity, light, and sound. It takes an
amazing amount of brainpower (as evidenced elsewhere in this thread) to
begin to wank a science fiction story out of "Firefly".
Joss Whedon has stated that Serenity moves "at the speed of plot", and
that tells you what you need to know. He's said that his wants his
creations to work on three levels: emotion, spectacle, and message.
Science and even logic clearly occupy a lower level.
Joss succeeds so well at the things he cares about that I'm ok with him
not being at all interested or educated in science. He writes fantasy,
sometimes with the trappings of robots or spaceships.
-Dan Damouth
Robert J. Kolker
> What makes our system dinky? Our sun has way more than 50 major
> objects orbiting it however we don't call most of them planets because
> they are too far away. 50 planets is no big deal. The problem would
> be 50 Earth like planets. Earth is in a sweet spot. Too close to the
> star and a planet cooks like Venus. Too far away and it will freeze
> like Mars.
When Mars had an atmospher it might have been reasonably comforatble
(like the arctic, but at the equator). I would classify
mars-with-atmosphere-and-water as a goldilocks planet. Mars had liquid
water at one time.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
> Joss Whedon has stated that Serenity moves "at the speed of plot", and
> that tells you what you need to know. He's said that his wants his
> creations to work on three levels: emotion, spectacle, and message.
> Science and even logic clearly occupy a lower level.
Science played a minor role in -Firefly- other than to provide a wessel
for Malcolm Reynolds and his brave band. It is a story of Man against
the State, by and large and is loaded with enough libertarian goodies to
keep folks like me (way to the right of Ghengis Kahn) happy. For people
who are sick and fed up with pinko stinko commie liberal political
correctness, -Fireflay- is wonderfully astringent. So what if the
science is shakey?
>
> Joss succeeds so well at the things he cares about that I'm ok with him
> not being at all interested or educated in science. He writes fantasy,
> sometimes with the trappings of robots or spaceships.
Absolutely right on correct! It is excellent entertainment. I am sorry
that -Firefly- did not last long enough to jump its shark. I loved the
show in a way I do not love BSG (which I also enjoy very much). There
are very few characters on BSH that have me yelling out "Fucking A!" or
"My man!". In fact I can't think of any. But BSG is about the human race
on the edge of extinction. The BSG human race is a race of highly
probable loosers which is entertaining in a sober kind of way. -Firefly-
was more about winners and survivors.
The emblem of BSG is Commander Adama rallying the troops with a "So say
we all"
Firefly is Mal kicking Crow into the jet intake. Crunch! Darn!
Bob Kolker
Atlas Bugged
> I believe you are setting the bar much too high for *any* visual fiction.
> Considering BSG has had twice the amount of episodes then Firefly, that
> would obviously have more opportunity to add up faults.
But the show can balance that with more reasonable speculations, which
increase the believability.
>
> There are 3 ways to generate "gravity", have an acceleration in a
> direction,
> which gives the force equivalent on the floor (So a linear acceleration or
> a rotating section), some kind of energistic field, or have under the deck
> plating, superdense exotic matter.
> Now the last two to me are just as much a violation of believeability as a
> Jump type FTL drive.
I don't want to do this debate again (from <alt.tv.firefly> back around
August), but you've obviously forgotten rotating space ships and even velcro
boots.
You are assuming that "artificial gravity" literally means gravity is being
man-made. All that's actually happening is that people are prevented from
floating. Admittedly we don't know how, but it's doable. It's *been* done.
The mechanism for it is invisible and presumably advanced on Sci-Fi Friday
and on FIREFLY, but they could just crimp the action and use any of a
variety of simple, current, visible techniques.
On the other hand, going from point A to point B at light speed is undoable,
no way, no how, at least as far as we can tell.
The fact that FTL and generating *actual* gravity are the same underlying
beast is irrelevant. It's the result that matters, and one is trivial, the
other presently unthinkable.
> I would also disagree with your point about the religion + Science thing.
> A
> lot of the pre 20th C, scientists believed that it was their religious
> obligation to find out more about the Universe. As the Universe was God's
> creation, to find out more about God, you had to find out more about the
> Universe.
Fine, but when the bible said pi=3 (as it does - twice,) they disposed of
God's take on it handily. Ditto heliocentrism. Where they didn't, you had
executions, primitivism, the Dark Ages.
>
> That means you haven't been reading much fantasy at all :) , most of the
> fantasy I've read gets fairly involved with the reality model for that
> world.
You mean internal consistency? Sure, that's important for good
storytelling. It is sci-fi's inestimable virtue, however, that it tells a
story that has cash value by concurring somewhat with what really goes on.
>
> But then the SGs do have explanations for lots of the stuff which goes on,
> so what makes you classify stuff soft and hard Sci-fi?
FTL travel looks to be impossible now and forever. So why isn't SG fantasy?
Because it is crucial that their FTL is an imagined tech breakthrough, not
the act of a wizard or demon.
>
> It could be argued that all the involved explanations seen on many series
> *is* what make things non-adult.
OK, lot's of things can be argued. Fewer succeed.
>Getting on without all the explanations
> and accepting stuff, as is, seems to me, make it "harder".
No. Genetic engineering, for example is coming. Fiction that deals with
those implications, however far-flung, is intense and valuable, because
that's coming, sooner - or later.
FTL might be coming, but don't bet the farm, and that could be a future no
one will see for Millenia.
Wizards are inventions carried over from mankind's deepest ignorance. There
is not the slightest reason to think they're ever coming, and taking them as
anything but sheer entertainment suggests a failure to engage reality at
all, or immaturity. That's not to criticize sheer entertainment at all,
which I myself value.
My illustriative comment on this is that although we lump Dracula and
Frankenstein together as famous monsters from film, they are philosophically
as different as night and day.
Johnboy
"David Buchner" <buc...@wcta.net> wrote in message
news:1hag81b.1vx4ghc1iplyw2N%buc...@wcta.net...
> David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> wrote:
>
>> Yes, given a choice between FTL and the bizarre system in Firefly I'd
>> take FTL.
>
> How in the hell can it be "bizarre," yet??!!??
>
> to be the easy ones to spot, at this stage!
>
> Not. Enough. Data.
I agree. Almost everything we know about orbital mechanics has been gained
from looking at exactly ONE solar system. So why does anyone assume that
the distribution of planets and moons in nearby systems have to resemble -
even slighty - the arrangement of planets and moons in our own little corner
of the 'verse? And yet that seems to be the implicit argument against the
solar system in Firefly - a dozen terraformable, inhabitable planets? What
rubbish!!
Why should it be rubbish? Maybe our own solar system is the wierdo of the
local star cluster? Evidence (all pretty imprecise) from recent stellar
surveys, for example, has implied very different solar systems e.g. massive
gas giants in tight, close orbit around stars.
So let's begin by looking at the facts - here is what we *know*:
Fact: There are three planets in our system that orbit within our "habitable
zone" - Venus, Earth and Mars.
Fact: There are lots of other planets that are outside that zone - Mercury
is too close to the sun, and all the others are too far away.
Fact: Some of those "other" planets are teeny-tiny, but some are whoppers.
Fact: Some of the whoppers produce their own heat.
Fact: Some of these whoppers have moons so massive that they support an
atmosphere
Now, here is another fact that I vaguely understand: Take two massive
objects that are orbiting around each other. Make one (a star) much more
massive than the other (a planet). There will be five points where other,
smaller bodies (e.g. asteroids) will seem to maintain station with respect
to the planet. These are called Lagrange points.
Of the five Lagrange points, three are unstable - objects will start to
drift unless you apply thrust.
But if the star is over 25 times as massive as the planet then the other two
Lagrange points are stable - park an object there and it'll stay there, in
exactly the same orbit as the planet.
Provided this "25 times more massive" rule is met, then you'll have two
stable Lagrange points for any object in orbit - the Sun-Earth combination
has two, the Earth-Moon combination has two, etc. So does the Sun-Jupiter
combination, and the name of the asteroids there give us the generic term
"trojan points".
Now, all of the above are *facts*, at least as much as I understand them.
Can I then extrapolate these facts and come up with a solar system with
dozen's of planets? I think so:
Take a star that is MUCH more massive than our own. Orbit three very large
gas giants in the habitable zone. Now have three Earth-sized objects in
orbit around each of those Super-Jupiters. There, you've got nine
terraformable "planets" right away.
If the star is over 25 times the mass of these massive Super-Jupiters, then
each gas giant will have two trojan points, so you can have another six
"planets" in stable orbit. How massive they can be is determined by the
mass of the star and the gas giant, but I'm imagining that the star is huge,
and the gas giants are much more massive than our own examples.
So, there, you're already up to 15 objects that are Mars-to-Earth sized,
and all are in the habitable zone around the star.
Now, if you have some gas giants outside the habitable zone *but* they give
off their own heat - like Jupiter but on a much larger scale - then you can
have "mini-habitable zones" ringing each one. If each gas giant had
planet-sized objects orbiting them then you can have dozens of terraformable
"planets" that by rights should be too far out from the star, but can in
fact support life.
So you can have many dozens of potential "habitable planets" in your system,
and you don't need to resort to magic-scifi. You don't have to move them
around like marbles - they are where they have always been - and you don't
need to fiddle with their gravity - it's just right, thank you very much.
You just need to fiddle with the atmosphere, then plonk some people, some
blankets, and some horses on it and see how they go.
Is just a solar system possible? I think so.
Is it likely? I don't know. But I would argue that nobody knows, because
there is simply not enough information to go by.
But I do know one thing - given the vast number of stars, if it *is*
physically possible to have this arrangement then it is inevitable that just
such arrangements exist. It's just luck that Whedon found one.
FOOTNOTE: I know that people will argue that these objects are not "planets"
but moons. Yeah, sure, if you use the terminology of the early 21st
century. But maybe 500 years from now the definition has changed somewhat,
and "planet" means a breathable world that orbits around something that
*isn't* terraformable. It's only when your habitable body orbits around
something that is itself inhabited then it's called a "moon".
In other words; Gas Giants orbit the Sun. Planets orbit Gas Giants (or are
trojans to same). And Moons orbit Planets.
Of course, there are hundred's of moons, and making them fit into the
Firefly universe is much more difficult. For one thing, you *do* need to
fiddle with their gravity, so you need super-scifi magic fairey dust. So
having our hero's walking around these moons is a real stretch, gotta
admit.
But dozens of inhabited planets? A doddle.
Cheers,
Johnboy
David Chapman
> And all this does is make me excited to see what Tim Minear would do
> with THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS.
Cast Jewel Staite and watch it die a death, probably.
--
"My son is not a terrorist - he is a junior IT support officer."
George Johnson
news:7lilu1lvh246cqb4o...@4ax.com...
| On 8 Feb 2006 16:35:16 -0800, obv...@aol.com wrote:
|
| >
| >David Johnston wrote:
| >> Hundreds of terraformable objects in a single star system? It's
| >> absurd.
[clipping out stuff]
| >Couldn't you have planets where one side always faced the sun...thus
| >providing a warm enough / light enough side for habitation?
|
| Suggestions for how you stop a planets rotation short of a
| tidal lock?
[end clip]
Well, there is always the really crude method of surface-mounted
pointable jets.
Let's go with the "Superman pushes the Earth" mental though experiment
for the readers here...
I know the whole "Superman pushes the Earth around" is pure bullcrap
physics-wise as Superman would have to either temporarily negate the
inertial mass of the entire Earth plus make the spot he's pushing on an
indestructable objet. The net result is since Superman has a distinctly
tiny net mass (although for theory's sake he can be considered
indestructable) and the entire Earth has a distinctly huge mass there is no
way he could even begin to add accelleration in any distinct direction even
if the Earth was also an indestructable object. A realist result would be
Superman pushes the Earth, the Earth stays put, but the surface of the Earth
he is pushing compresses or explodes.
Back to the bigass surface-mounted pointable jets for scooting the
planet about...
These jets can be used to increase the speed of the Earth's rotation or
slow it down easily, but at the cost of destroying everything near them.
The resulting amount of wind (using hydrogen-oxygen jets would require
splitting a decent percent of the ocean's mass and the heated winds would
most likely fry everything alive on the planet's surface) would cause severe
atmospheric effects and ruin the agriculture. This doesn't count fuel costs
or material costs for simplicity or the resulting earthquakes from
transmitted vibrations of the jets pushing against the Earth.
But let's say we have a huge dead planet we need to scoot, don't mind
venting a good portion of the atmosphere into space, and have a magical fuel
source. Large pointable surface-mounted jets could push a planet provided
they aren't going to have the propulsion mass absorbed back into the
atmosphere. Just fire them off in lesser hemispherical ring pointing
opposite the desired direction of motion. Of course, another trick would be
to move a superdense mass in a stationary point near the Earth and pull the
Earth using gravity from that superdense mass. This would be much easier to
control, but still cause tidal problems and earthquake problems for the
inhabitants of Earth.
the other Eric
Sure but my point was that as terriformed planets are placed farther
from a star they will be colder. Maybe there could be a green house
trick to do more with less but that would only work up to a point.
Regards,
-Eric
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> FOOTNOTE: I know that people will argue that these objects are not "planets"
> but moons. Yeah, sure, if you use the terminology of the early 21st
> century. But maybe 500 years from now the definition has changed somewhat,
> and "planet" means a breathable world that orbits around something that
> *isn't* terraformable. It's only when your habitable body orbits around
> something that is itself inhabited then it's called a "moon".
Unless it is a little tin can in which case it is just a sattelite. I
would not dignify ISS alpha shitcan one with the name moon.
Bob Kolker
Jago MacSchwartz Pennis
<c.ha...@mchsi.com> wrote:
> >Seems like lots of possibilities if you could really terraform an
> >entire system.
>
> Not if real world physics are involved.
Science Fiction. It's SCIENCE and it's FICTION. If it wasn't we'd all
be living in spaceships today. I know people love to show off their
knowledge and understanding of what is scientifically possible, but to
say that sometning is impossible because today's scientific theories
forbid it is just... well, silly.
But, hey. Go on about your business of harrumphing and mutterings of
impossibilities. I'm sure someone is impressed.
obv...@aol.com
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
>I would not dignify ISS alpha shitcan one with the name moon.
Technically speaking, our own moon is not even a 'moon' by definition.
Moons are supposed to form naturally around the larger object. Theory
has it that our own 'moon' is a big pile of crap that got chipped off
of our planet in a massive collision with space junk...thus, not a
'moon' by the strictest definition of the term.
C.O.Jones
<now...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Science played a minor role in -Firefly- other than to provide a wessel
> for Malcolm Reynolds and his brave band. It is a story of Man against
> the State, by and large and is loaded with enough libertarian goodies to
> keep folks like me (way to the right of Ghengis Kahn) happy. For people
> who are sick and fed up with pinko stinko commie liberal political
> correctness, -Fireflay- is wonderfully astringent. So what if the
> science is shakey?
Just curious. Can anyone here come up with a Science Fiction movie that
doesn't have "shakey science?" Or, in case 2001 is in the contending
with it's Intelligent Design story line, TWO "real" scifi movies?
--
////////// \\\\\\\\\\\
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
-- Harlan Ellison
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Science Fiction. It's SCIENCE and it's FICTION. If it wasn't we'd all
> be living in spaceships today. I know people love to show off their
> knowledge and understanding of what is scientifically possible, but to
> say that sometning is impossible because today's scientific theories
> forbid it is just... well, silly.
The only thing that is flat out impossible is a logical contradiction.
Everything else is up for grabs.
On the other hand the cosmos is what it is so not just anything can be
true in the cosmos. There are some iherent constraints. Be we do not
necessarily know what they are. The burden of science is to find out how
the world really works. We must not let our aesthetic and philosophical
proclivities get in the way of find out What Is. There is only one God.
The God of What Is. Serve It and It will reward your curiosity.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
Our entire planet was made of rubble in the first place if the
Kant-Langrange Nebular hypothesis is true.
Bob Kolker
>
obv...@aol.com
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
> obv...@aol.com wrote:
> > Technically speaking, our own moon is not even a 'moon' by definition.
> > Moons are supposed to form naturally around the larger object. Theory
> > has it that our own 'moon' is a big pile of crap that got chipped off
> > of our planet in a massive collision with space junk...thus, not a
> > 'moon' by the strictest definition of the term.
>
> Our entire planet was made of rubble in the first place if the
> Kant-Langrange Nebular hypothesis is true.
Our planet is made of rubble that collected in the 'natural' matter of
gravity. A 'moon' would be made the same way as the pile of junk
collected in orbit about a planet. Our moon was not made that way.
Therefore, our 'moon' is not a 'moon' by the strictest definition just
as all the captured asteroid type moons of the outer planets in our
solar system are not 'moons' in the strictest sense.
CatPanDaddy
"Atlas Bugged" <atlasbug...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:xZudnW1PM4B...@comcast.com...
>
> Fine, but when the bible said pi=3 (as it does - twice,)
Wow... I wanna read that. Which chapters and verses?
obv...@aol.com
C.O.Jones wrote:
> Just curious. Can anyone here come up with a Science Fiction movie that
> doesn't have "shakey science?"
How about "Logans Run'?
...or, to answer your question more generally, any movie that depicts
distant space travel will undoubtedly go off into the rhelm of fiction
rather than science. Why? Well, my theory is that people just can't
handle the fact that our pathetic lifespans don't make meaningful space
travel 'possible'. You aren't going to get anywhere in 100 years.
Now, if we genetically engineer the 'human' so that it lives for say
50,000 years...then space travel would be no big deal. Not only that,
but the 'humans' would have the ability to cross train and excel at
many disciplines like we see in Star Trek. After all, they would need
to do something to keep themselves busy for the 1000 years between each
solar system they visit. ;-)
...and, yes, when they make movies about those 'humans', they will have
to adjust the movie to remove all the boring travel time, just like
Firefly/Serenity has to make realistic filming adjustments (must have
proper lighting and gravity conditions for decent filming of the
storyline).
ANIM8Rfsk
obv...@aol.com at obv...@aol.com wrote on 2/8/06 10:02 PM:
>
> David Johnston wrote:
>
>>> <obv...@aol.com> wrote in message
>>>> What if part of the terraforming was to create the large bodies in the
>>>> first place?
>>
>> If they had that ability they would have had no reason to leave the
>> solar system in the first place. Why travel for decades when you
>> could just magically conjure up new worlds where you were?
>
> Well, there is some chance that the terraforming technology was
> developed while the people were traveling through space for a 1000
> years (or whatever).
And what have they accomplished? If they can live in ships for a thousand
years, why not just hover around here until you're ready to fix Earth? Why
burn the fuel and take the chances involved with travelling to a new system?
>
>> Also, that's not what the narration describes.
>
> What exactly does the narration state?
>
>>>> Couldn't you have a dozen planets share the same exact orbit at the
>>>> same speed around the sun?
>>
>> Such an arrangement is not dynamically stable and could not occur
>> naturally and last more than a few decades.
>
> I'm not trying to make the claim that it would occur naturally. You
> may notice that I clearly prefaced the questions with a what if the
> whole solar system was terraformed.
The narration says they found a system with hundreds of Earths.
>
> I do find it odd that some planets in our own dinky little solar system
> have 50+ moons, but that people believe it is 'impossible' for a sun to
> have 50+ planets.
'hundreds' is at minimum 4 times 50. And even if it DID, there's no
(reasonable) way to make them habitable.
>
>>>> Couldn't you have planets where one side always faced the sun...thus
>>>> providing a warm enough / light enough side for habitation?
>>
>> That would help. Of course "outer planets" also weren't identifiable
>> by never having any night.
>
> I probably wasn't watching close enough so I never noticed if each and
> every planet was shown during the nighttime. Of course that makes no
> difference to the 'what if' question.
>
>>> Couldn't you have planets much closer to the sun where all
> inhabitants
>>>> lived indoors...filtered light and cooling systems (a giant
>>>> metropolis)?
>>
>> You could, but we never saw a planet like that.
>
> Weren't the inner planets, more controlled by the government, basically
> giant cities where everythng took place indoors?
>
>> Nor would the "inner planets" be the most populous, long settled
>> ones as occurs in the series.
>
> Why not? If everyone came to the solar system via ship, initially
> everyone would be quite used to living indoors only and all the
> technology would revolve around living indoors. It is also, as you see
> with cities all over this world, cheaper to build an infrastructure if
> people are close together. It seems to me that it would make perfect
> sense for the inner planets to have dense, metropolitan populations.
>
--
ANIM8Rfsk
c.ha...@mchsi.com wrote on 2/8/06 9:59 PM:
nor the results we've seen of their terraforming, nor the terraforming
machines we've seen.
>
>>
>> Seems like lots of possibilities if you could really terraform an
>> entire system.
>
> Not if real world physics are involved.
>
> --
> This message is sent to you from the International Center for The Advanced
> Application of Hindsight.
--
Atlasbugged
> news:xZudnW1PM4B...@comcast.com...
>> Fine, but when the bible said pi=3 (as it does - twice,)
"CatPanDaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> wrote in message
news:ILmdnX8aM-4...@comcast.com...
>> Wow... I wanna read that. Which chapters and verses?
Naturally, I don't bother with the Bible much, but the reference is
well-known and I believe one mention is in Kings 1.
Sections from Judges are my favorite, evidently recommending gang rape and
dismemberment.
Use this to find endless others, many far worse:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Stephen Adams
It doesn't say that. It gives the dimensions of a bowl used in the
temple, and the measurements given work out to PI=3, if one assumes
that it's reporting the dimensions exactly accurately. This is only
an issue for those of the extreme literalist camp. The rest of the
world understands the notion of 'aproximation' ;-)
-Stephen
--
Space Age Cybernomad Stephen Adams
malchu...@AMgmail.com (remove SPAM to reply)
Arthur Hansen
the other Eric wrote:
> Sure but my point was that as terriformed planets are placed farther
> from a star they will be colder. Maybe there could be a green house
> trick to do more with less but that would only work up to a point.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Eric
Venus could be quite terraformable if we could get the excess CO^2 out
of it's atmosphere and a solar shroud. And while Firefly's technology
is just more "real" it is definitely much more advanced than our own.
The Firefly sun could be a much brighter (and hence hotter) star (hence
the references to "Blue Sun" in the show. It could have a much larger
"habitible" area that is cluttered with planetoids.
And even the small planetoids could have things like gravity generators
to have 1G gravity on them and terraforming pyramids that make the
atmosphere out of the crustal restructering.
With artificial gravity, smaller planets might be a *better* choice, as
you only have to make a much smaller amount of atmosphere per planet.
Arthur hansen
Atlasbugged
>>news:xZudnW1PM4B...@comcast.com...
>>> Fine, but when the bible said pi=3 (as it does - twice,)
> "CatPanDaddy" <c...@cat.pan.net> writes:
>>Wow... I wanna read that. Which chapters and verses?
"Stephen Adams" <ada...@no.spam> wrote in message
news:dsfup...@news1.newsguy.com...
> It doesn't say that. It gives the dimensions of a bowl used in the
> temple, and the measurements given work out to PI=3, if one assumes
> that it's reporting the dimensions exactly accurately.
TRANSLATION:
It *does* say that. And it says that twice.
>This is only
> an issue for those of the extreme literalist camp. The rest of the
> world understands the notion of 'aproximation' ;-)
There is no problem understanding rounding error, approximation, whatever.
Some of us just think that if GOD is writing his instruction manual for his
human creations, He would either get it right or at least do a footnote to
clue us in.
Then there is that wild theory running about that perhaps primitive men
actually wrote the bible, and the whole supernatural invisible all-powerful
friend thing might not be exactly as alleged.
Silly, but that's how some people see it.
ANIM8Rfsk
rpa...@delete.this.part.wi.rr.com wrote on 2/8/06 3:47 PM:
> David Chapman wrote:
>
>
>> That's not the reset button to which I referred. Things like the loss of
>> crew, the loss of shuttles, damage to the ship and so on - those couldn't be
>> dismissed but were. It was like watching the car chase in Bullitt frame by
>> frame.
>>
>
> That was an annoyance, I'll admit. The least they could have done was
> address each problem directly, come up with a solution, and then moved
> on. But you're right, unlimited shuttle craft and the
> magically-self-repairing ship were the biggest flaws of the show. There
> was never a sense of "Oh no, that's gone forever!"
>
> The "Year of Hell" two-parter was more like what the entire series
> should have been like.
Of course, as many times as they hit the reset button in Voyager, there's no
real reason they shouldn't get a fresh supply of everything each time.