Hm, for some reason this post never got published. Made a lot more sense the week I saw three nuclear weapons disarmed on TV, but here it is:
Disarming a nuclear weapon pops up occasionally on TV and in movies (I'm looking at you Chuck, Castle and even SGU). They always make it seem like a super complicated task. I'm not sure that it is all that difficult (this is one of those posts where I'm way outside my realm of knowledge).
What I'm willing to concede:
-Even if you know how to disarm a nuclear bomb it would be crazy scary.
-Conventional bombs may have fake wires and components that will cause the bomb to explode if tampered with and it is possible that a nuclear bomb would also have this.
But:
Nuclear weapons are really hard to make. Getting the material may be the hardest part, but even with the material it is quite a task. My understanding is those scientists at Los Alamos (many of the greatest in American history) were provided the radio active material. Today a semi-trained bomb maker with some parts from radio shack and a lawn store can make a conventional bomb, but only certain governments have made nuclear weapons.
Something that hard to make shouldn't be too hard to stop.
Typically nuclear weapons work by using a conventional explosive to smash two pieces of radio active material together. Dirty bombs work by having a conventional bomb spread radio active material. So the key is just to separate the radioactive part from the conventional weapon.
Yes it is good to stop the conventional weapon as well to avoid any damage and yes the bomb maker might make that tricky, but then the scary part is disarming a bomb, not disarming a NUCLEAR bomb.
Ok, maybe it isn't super easy, but definitely seems more straight forward than whatever they end up doing on TV. Plus while they are screwing around with guessing which wire they could be trying to get the material and conventional bomb as far away from each other as possible.
I took a look on the web to see what others think and here's wired's take.
Showing posts with label scifi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scifi. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Inception
I just watched Inception (I know, so last year) and this post will include spoilers.
Maybe I just expected too much from it and maybe I had heard enough little spoilers that it wasn't as surprising as it would have been in the theater. But I wasn't that impressed. I actually hope that there is something I missed that makes it awesome.
-My biggest complaint was that I didn't care about any of the characters. No one had enough of a back story or connections to others to care about them. I don't expect every movie to be Serenity, but even the Matrix with its awkward dialog was able to give viewers a reason to care about nearly every major character. Same with Memento where the main character doesn't even know his own story.
-One of the main attractions was a mind bending journey through levels of dreams. But once they said they can have dreams in dreams, everything past that seemed reasonably straight forward. I thought Memento was awesome so I can be impressed by Nolan's mind bending style. They linearly dropped from one dream level to the next then back up. Did I miss the bendy part? Also when a show/movie ends with someone waking up from one dream to find themselves in another it is cliche. So why is a whole movie about multilevel dreams ground breaking? What would have been awesome is if they split off on different dream paths. Then they could create ways to cut between the different dream worlds, or even create dream circles where they go from one level to the next and end up at the first one. Then they'd have to deal with dropping back out of that circle. And it would be truly difficult to sort out if you'd made your way back out of all the dreams. Ok, I guess it is telling that I'm not impressed by a linked list and I think the movie would be improved by exploring some of the more difficult problems with complicated linked lists. Oh, or what if there are two groups in shared dreams and then they are connected together and the dreams have to some how merge and then people could move between the two group dreams. I was going to say that this could have been a cool dollhouse like TV show, but dollhouse actually touched on quite a bit of this already.
-Along the lines of the previous point another attraction was the mystery ending. But I don't really see the mystery. There was no point I saw where it seemed like he could have gotten stuck in a dream. I figured that the reason we didn't see the top stop spinning is that the main character decided he didn't care, then reading Nolan's quotation in wikipedia it seems he agrees. The only point that made me think it was a dream is that the Grandpa was back in America instead of in Paris, which seemed more like over editing than a hint that he was stuck in a dream world.
-I read something that mentioned that the movie doesn't really get dreams right, but that's ok, because it is almost impossible to create a reasonable movie that accounts for the full weirdness of dreams. But I would have appreciated a little more attention paid to the true weirdness of dreams. And if I spend 50 years in a dream world where I can build whatever I want, there are going to be some way crazier architecture. One of the only movies/tv episodes I've seen that comes anywhere close to getting the strangeness of dreams right is the last episode of season 4 of Buffy and now that I think about it, it is a shared dream between several people and involves multiple levels of dreaming (and it is Whedon so viewers care about the characters). How's that for throwing down the gauntlet, I'm claiming that an episode of Buffy is a better shared multilevel dream story than Inception. Hm, really didn't mean to make this a post about how everything Whedon has ever done is better than this movie.
-They spent some time training the architect. The scenes were cool and the character was important to the story. But I thought they should have showed off those skills she learned during the mission. Show us how the city or hotel folds in on itself. Or have her make some adjustments on the fly. Otherwise those training scenes just seem like a moment to play with visual effects and provide an excuse for involving the character.
-There were some reasonably cool action scenes, but nothing that the Matrix trilogy didn't do better years ago. And in the ice scene it wasn't just that I didn't care about the characters, I could hardly tell who was who.
-Not only didn't I care about the characters, I also didn't care about the mission. They spent a whole sentence establishing why planting the idea would be a good thing, given to us by the guy the main character just tried to steal from.
Ok, now what is it that I'm missing that everyone else liked so much and found so mind bending and discussion inspiring? Is this a Big Lebowski where a second viewing magically transforms the film? Or did other scifi fans have the same, ho hum, reaction that I did? Have years of Philip K Dick inspired stories caused an immunity to the trippiness of dream and reality questioning tales?
Maybe I just expected too much from it and maybe I had heard enough little spoilers that it wasn't as surprising as it would have been in the theater. But I wasn't that impressed. I actually hope that there is something I missed that makes it awesome.
-My biggest complaint was that I didn't care about any of the characters. No one had enough of a back story or connections to others to care about them. I don't expect every movie to be Serenity, but even the Matrix with its awkward dialog was able to give viewers a reason to care about nearly every major character. Same with Memento where the main character doesn't even know his own story.
-One of the main attractions was a mind bending journey through levels of dreams. But once they said they can have dreams in dreams, everything past that seemed reasonably straight forward. I thought Memento was awesome so I can be impressed by Nolan's mind bending style. They linearly dropped from one dream level to the next then back up. Did I miss the bendy part? Also when a show/movie ends with someone waking up from one dream to find themselves in another it is cliche. So why is a whole movie about multilevel dreams ground breaking? What would have been awesome is if they split off on different dream paths. Then they could create ways to cut between the different dream worlds, or even create dream circles where they go from one level to the next and end up at the first one. Then they'd have to deal with dropping back out of that circle. And it would be truly difficult to sort out if you'd made your way back out of all the dreams. Ok, I guess it is telling that I'm not impressed by a linked list and I think the movie would be improved by exploring some of the more difficult problems with complicated linked lists. Oh, or what if there are two groups in shared dreams and then they are connected together and the dreams have to some how merge and then people could move between the two group dreams. I was going to say that this could have been a cool dollhouse like TV show, but dollhouse actually touched on quite a bit of this already.
-Along the lines of the previous point another attraction was the mystery ending. But I don't really see the mystery. There was no point I saw where it seemed like he could have gotten stuck in a dream. I figured that the reason we didn't see the top stop spinning is that the main character decided he didn't care, then reading Nolan's quotation in wikipedia it seems he agrees. The only point that made me think it was a dream is that the Grandpa was back in America instead of in Paris, which seemed more like over editing than a hint that he was stuck in a dream world.
-I read something that mentioned that the movie doesn't really get dreams right, but that's ok, because it is almost impossible to create a reasonable movie that accounts for the full weirdness of dreams. But I would have appreciated a little more attention paid to the true weirdness of dreams. And if I spend 50 years in a dream world where I can build whatever I want, there are going to be some way crazier architecture. One of the only movies/tv episodes I've seen that comes anywhere close to getting the strangeness of dreams right is the last episode of season 4 of Buffy and now that I think about it, it is a shared dream between several people and involves multiple levels of dreaming (and it is Whedon so viewers care about the characters). How's that for throwing down the gauntlet, I'm claiming that an episode of Buffy is a better shared multilevel dream story than Inception. Hm, really didn't mean to make this a post about how everything Whedon has ever done is better than this movie.
-They spent some time training the architect. The scenes were cool and the character was important to the story. But I thought they should have showed off those skills she learned during the mission. Show us how the city or hotel folds in on itself. Or have her make some adjustments on the fly. Otherwise those training scenes just seem like a moment to play with visual effects and provide an excuse for involving the character.
-There were some reasonably cool action scenes, but nothing that the Matrix trilogy didn't do better years ago. And in the ice scene it wasn't just that I didn't care about the characters, I could hardly tell who was who.
-Not only didn't I care about the characters, I also didn't care about the mission. They spent a whole sentence establishing why planting the idea would be a good thing, given to us by the guy the main character just tried to steal from.
Ok, now what is it that I'm missing that everyone else liked so much and found so mind bending and discussion inspiring? Is this a Big Lebowski where a second viewing magically transforms the film? Or did other scifi fans have the same, ho hum, reaction that I did? Have years of Philip K Dick inspired stories caused an immunity to the trippiness of dream and reality questioning tales?
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
TV
First Chuck: Chuck producers, the woman we've all be waiting to see isn't Chuck's mom, it's Summer Glau. And here's how her episode should go. First a mysterious, large box should show up at castle. There should be some commotion over opening it then Chuck should kick it open and Summer should jump out naked (in a surprisingly non-sexual way). Then there should be a mission where Summer has to act as a ballerina and shows off some dance moves. Something strange should happen during the mission causing her to beat up Casey in a series of very fluid motions. Afterwards Morgan should laugh about Casey being beat up by a 90 pound girl. After that Summer should act more cold and distant and take on a stiffer fighting style where she acts almost like she is indestructible. During that time she should run into Chuck's mom and make a comment about how Chuck's mom looks different than she remembers. To make sure the joke lands, Chuck's mom should make a comment about expecting a body builder instead of a little girl. During one of these fights something should land on Summer's arm forcing her to wear a cast. Then she should meet up with Morgan and flirt with him in a weird, nerdy way. While Morgan is busy flirting with Summer, there should be an important phone call to the Buy More and Lester should cover for Morgan by doing a dead on impression of him. Throughout the episode Summer should make slightly off comments. The episode should be written and directed by Joss Whedon. It would also be nice if they could fit in some references to some of Summer's previous roles.
Second SGU: Anyone else think that while a few SGU episodes are about progressing the plot (mostly stacked at the start and end of a season) and a decent number are about building the characters (all thousand of them), that they set aside several of the mid season episodes to be more about how the story is told? I do think it is cool that they play with the format a bit. But in some of those episodes every character acts exactly as you'd expect and so does nothing to build the characters and the plots are so obvious you know the ending 15 minutes in. Which I guess is fine if it is all about how the story is told rather than the story itself, but does seem like making those stories a bit stronger would do a lot to improve the episode. I also don't think they have fully adapted to the idea that the crew is isolated so making it look like someone (especially someone we've seen more than once or twice) is going to die is extra unbelievable.
Third Caprica: I'm so disappointed Caprica is being canceled. Partially because I like the show, but even more so because I feel like I put in a season of watching them build up the world in order to get the payoff in later seasons and now it turns out those seasons won't be made.
Second SGU: Anyone else think that while a few SGU episodes are about progressing the plot (mostly stacked at the start and end of a season) and a decent number are about building the characters (all thousand of them), that they set aside several of the mid season episodes to be more about how the story is told? I do think it is cool that they play with the format a bit. But in some of those episodes every character acts exactly as you'd expect and so does nothing to build the characters and the plots are so obvious you know the ending 15 minutes in. Which I guess is fine if it is all about how the story is told rather than the story itself, but does seem like making those stories a bit stronger would do a lot to improve the episode. I also don't think they have fully adapted to the idea that the crew is isolated so making it look like someone (especially someone we've seen more than once or twice) is going to die is extra unbelievable.
Third Caprica: I'm so disappointed Caprica is being canceled. Partially because I like the show, but even more so because I feel like I put in a season of watching them build up the world in order to get the payoff in later seasons and now it turns out those seasons won't be made.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Time Travel
There's a particular view of time travel that seems to be preferred by tv and movies. This view is that someone can travel back in time and change something which alters the future. Let's say the character lives till 2010 then travels back to 1980 and changes stuff then travels back to 2010. In the show his time line is continuous from 1980 to 2010 then jumps to 1980 then jumps to 2010. The "first" time he is in 2010 in the past there is only one of him in 1980, the time traveling him hasn't visited that time. The "second" time he's in 2010 in the new history of the world there were two of him in 1980, one the normal and one the time traveler.
Ok, before we go further we have to allow physics to be broken in order to time travel, and even bigger we have to allow causality to be broken. It is difficult to proceed with a logical argument once we're allowing causality to be broken, but logic minus causality is one more thing we'll have to allow for this post to proceed.
It's always seemed to me that if someone time travels from 2010 to 1980, then in 1980 there are two of him and all of the resulting consequences, no matter if it is the "first" time he gets to 2010 or the "second" time, since there aren't two 1980s. (Sometimes shows touch on the idea of switching to a different universe when the time traveling occurs - that would solve the problem, but then the person is both time and universe traveling, not just time traveling*). So that's not a new idea. But what finally occurred to me is why the two different 1980s view of time travel is so natural for TV - you are following the character who time travels and time is progressing based on his view of time so it is possible to see each moment in time more than once as soon as he starts time traveling. Even in a story with many characters, the story will take the view point of only the time traveler for that part of the story. (Heros may be an exception to that rule, but Heroes' time travel rules were really wacky, remember the crazy mesh of strings they called a timeline?)
If a TV show had to draw a time line (based on the reference of a third party - or a non-time traveling character) they would be hard pressed to make it work with this view of time travel. It would be equally difficult to make this work if they also showed events from the perspective of a non-time traveling character. Especially since the time traveler's friend's memory contains one set of events during the "first" 2010 and a different set of events during the "second" 2010.
So I blame the linearity of story telling and the tendency to perceive the story through the view point of a single character for this persistent view of time travel.
Although since we've dropped causality maybe I blame this persistent view of time travel for the linearity of story telling.
(*The universe hopping version of time travel is also somewhat less satisfying since if the character goes back in time to save someone they're not actually saving the person in the original universe, but rather just choosing to live in a universe in which the person survives - that seems to make the story much more shallow. Although I guess if they're not sure how time travel works they could still be well intentioned...)
Ok, before we go further we have to allow physics to be broken in order to time travel, and even bigger we have to allow causality to be broken. It is difficult to proceed with a logical argument once we're allowing causality to be broken, but logic minus causality is one more thing we'll have to allow for this post to proceed.
It's always seemed to me that if someone time travels from 2010 to 1980, then in 1980 there are two of him and all of the resulting consequences, no matter if it is the "first" time he gets to 2010 or the "second" time, since there aren't two 1980s. (Sometimes shows touch on the idea of switching to a different universe when the time traveling occurs - that would solve the problem, but then the person is both time and universe traveling, not just time traveling*). So that's not a new idea. But what finally occurred to me is why the two different 1980s view of time travel is so natural for TV - you are following the character who time travels and time is progressing based on his view of time so it is possible to see each moment in time more than once as soon as he starts time traveling. Even in a story with many characters, the story will take the view point of only the time traveler for that part of the story. (Heros may be an exception to that rule, but Heroes' time travel rules were really wacky, remember the crazy mesh of strings they called a timeline?)
If a TV show had to draw a time line (based on the reference of a third party - or a non-time traveling character) they would be hard pressed to make it work with this view of time travel. It would be equally difficult to make this work if they also showed events from the perspective of a non-time traveling character. Especially since the time traveler's friend's memory contains one set of events during the "first" 2010 and a different set of events during the "second" 2010.
So I blame the linearity of story telling and the tendency to perceive the story through the view point of a single character for this persistent view of time travel.
Although since we've dropped causality maybe I blame this persistent view of time travel for the linearity of story telling.
(*The universe hopping version of time travel is also somewhat less satisfying since if the character goes back in time to save someone they're not actually saving the person in the original universe, but rather just choosing to live in a universe in which the person survives - that seems to make the story much more shallow. Although I guess if they're not sure how time travel works they could still be well intentioned...)
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Dragon Reborn
I recently finished The Dragon Reborn which is part of the wheel of time series. It now strikes me that the title is a bit odd, since this book is almost entirely about everyone but the dragon. Weird, anyway, good book although I'd claim not as good as the previous two.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Quick Avatar/Dollhouse
I've been meaning to blog about actual life events, like thanksgiving and skiing and new years and... but just haven't been in the writing mood lately.
But two quick items:
(Minor Avatar spoiler): When Jake is getting onto the back of the giant dragon thing, hiss thought is that it is the biggest thing in the sky and doesn't get attacked so it probably doesn't bother looking up. I really think that I've heard almost the exact same thing before, but can't seem to remember from where. Does anyone know what I'm thinking of?
(Minor Dollhouse spoiler): I'm 95% certain that the company I work for made an appearance in the last episode of Dollhouse. When Victor hands Tommy a piece of circuit board to burn, the main chip on that board has a big M on it, I'm pretty sure it's the logo of the company I work for (pausing on hulu is a bit too fuzzy for 100% certainty). My guess is that it was from a hard drive they had broken apart.
But two quick items:
(Minor Avatar spoiler): When Jake is getting onto the back of the giant dragon thing, hiss thought is that it is the biggest thing in the sky and doesn't get attacked so it probably doesn't bother looking up. I really think that I've heard almost the exact same thing before, but can't seem to remember from where. Does anyone know what I'm thinking of?
(Minor Dollhouse spoiler): I'm 95% certain that the company I work for made an appearance in the last episode of Dollhouse. When Victor hands Tommy a piece of circuit board to burn, the main chip on that board has a big M on it, I'm pretty sure it's the logo of the company I work for (pausing on hulu is a bit too fuzzy for 100% certainty). My guess is that it was from a hard drive they had broken apart.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Dollhouse
Semi-spoiler alert.
So my understanding was that Whedon had a 5 season plan for dollhouse. They made it 1.5 seasons in before Fox decided to cancel the show. That left 9 hours of dollhouse. I really think they are covering the whole 5 year plan which means each episode is about 0.4 seasons and it does feel like each episode is covering a half season story arc. As the guy in the attic said - that's ahead of all projected schedules. I'm getting extra mad at fox because the last few episodes haven't been as enjoyable since the plot is so rushed, but they do seem like they would be awesome multi-episode plots. But with the speed they are going through the story I'm barely caught up with the idea that Echo has gone from slave to super hero. At least we got to see Victor being Topher.
So my understanding was that Whedon had a 5 season plan for dollhouse. They made it 1.5 seasons in before Fox decided to cancel the show. That left 9 hours of dollhouse. I really think they are covering the whole 5 year plan which means each episode is about 0.4 seasons and it does feel like each episode is covering a half season story arc. As the guy in the attic said - that's ahead of all projected schedules. I'm getting extra mad at fox because the last few episodes haven't been as enjoyable since the plot is so rushed, but they do seem like they would be awesome multi-episode plots. But with the speed they are going through the story I'm barely caught up with the idea that Echo has gone from slave to super hero. At least we got to see Victor being Topher.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Stuff and Things
2nd patent application has been submitted. But because of how it was filed it won't show up on the uspto site till it is approved.
Dollhouse has been canceled :'(. I guess not showing any episodes during sweeps was a bit of a sign (not to mention airing it on Friday night). At least we get a few more episodes. It's kind of odd that I'm more upset about them canceling firefly even though I didn't even know the show existed when they canceled it.
Day man
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
You’re a master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Uhh ahhahh
Champion of the sun
Uhh ahhahh
Master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
That one is for the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans. It's strange, when I watch that show I alternate between not laughing, but thinking, oh that's a funny concept and laughing like crazy. Actually I think it is just a matter of how much Charlie ranting time the episode has. I also think it shares the aqua teen hunger force effect - the later at night it is the funnier the show is. (Hm, that paragraph isn't a strong endorsement for the show, but I actually think it is really funny).
On Castle Mal squared off against the bad guy from the second to last episode of firefly. It was way better when it happened in firefly.
I do actually have more going on in my life right now than TV, really, there's other stuff and even things.
Dollhouse has been canceled :'(. I guess not showing any episodes during sweeps was a bit of a sign (not to mention airing it on Friday night). At least we get a few more episodes. It's kind of odd that I'm more upset about them canceling firefly even though I didn't even know the show existed when they canceled it.
Day man
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
You’re a master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Uhh ahhahh
Champion of the sun
Uhh ahhahh
Master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
That one is for the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans. It's strange, when I watch that show I alternate between not laughing, but thinking, oh that's a funny concept and laughing like crazy. Actually I think it is just a matter of how much Charlie ranting time the episode has. I also think it shares the aqua teen hunger force effect - the later at night it is the funnier the show is. (Hm, that paragraph isn't a strong endorsement for the show, but I actually think it is really funny).
On Castle Mal squared off against the bad guy from the second to last episode of firefly. It was way better when it happened in firefly.
I do actually have more going on in my life right now than TV, really, there's other stuff and even things.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Repeated Dilemmas
On TV there's a reasonably common scenario in which a decision has to be made about trading off risk to an individual vs a group (in fact if you leave on the Syfy channel you'll probably see this multiple times a day). Often there will be two characters who disagree, the one who takes up the "greater good" argument is typically a scientist or other logic driven character and the one who pushes "leave no man behind" or "this is the morally correct way to go" or "how could we live with ourselves" is typically a member of the military or some other hero type character. The scientist argument can sometimes be a mask for "do whatever is least risky for me" which is typically the jerk scientist, but I'll ignore this side of the argument for this post.
I imagine that just about everyone sides with the character who supports saving the individual and so do I (I always side with Helo and almost never side with Baltar).
First I'd like to defend the scientist a little. While I overall disagree, I will say that often "leave no man behind" will pose significant risk to the entire group, and if TV shows didn't care about keeping main characters or audiences then we'd probably see a more balanced set of outcomes which may call the hero choice into question. I think that more movies like The Watchmen would do a lot of good for all other stories since the audience would believe something bad could actually happen (of course that thought is part of the justification for Wash's death so maybe I'll take that back).
However, I would claim that simplistic logic leads to the "greater good" argument and that the scientist character should be far too smart for it. The major downfall of the greater good argument is that on these shows it is almost never a one time event that is being dealt with. But rather something that happens about once a week (ok in the course of the show it may be less often, but is still a repeating occurrence). So they are not in a single game, but a repeated game. (If you're getting bored, just think prisoner's dilemma vs repeated prisoner's dilemma and you've basically got my point).
Yes, in a truly isolated incident maybe it does make sense to loosen your morals for a moment and let one guy die to save the group. However, if this decision is going to be faced repeatedly there are several consequences. For one thing the person out doing something dangerous is probably the person who would do other dangerous things in the future. If an important marine/viper pilot/away team member dies every time there is a threat to the group they're going to have a shortage of these important people. In addition after this happens once or twice that could do some serious damage to moral and reduce the risks team members are willing to take on. Both of these concerns are especially significant if they are a group on say one or more space ships and have no connection with other humans or there are no other humans. Also in situations involving the military it is always going to be a repeated dilemma since at some point the military will face another dangerous situation and its policies and reputation from past decisions will matter.
I think that this logic is somewhat built into human emotions and societal norms/morality. This is why the hero type will know the right answer from a gut feel or moral standpoint. However, writers seem to think that the scientist is applying logic to only the single situation. Seems like they think the scientist showed up for the psychology or economics lecture where the prisoners dilemma was covered, but skipped the next week when the repeated version was discussed.
I think I just took down Spock using logic! Which makes me wonder if Spock and Kurk had the opposite positions would the situation also be reversed in all the scifi shows since then.
I imagine that just about everyone sides with the character who supports saving the individual and so do I (I always side with Helo and almost never side with Baltar).
First I'd like to defend the scientist a little. While I overall disagree, I will say that often "leave no man behind" will pose significant risk to the entire group, and if TV shows didn't care about keeping main characters or audiences then we'd probably see a more balanced set of outcomes which may call the hero choice into question. I think that more movies like The Watchmen would do a lot of good for all other stories since the audience would believe something bad could actually happen (of course that thought is part of the justification for Wash's death so maybe I'll take that back).
However, I would claim that simplistic logic leads to the "greater good" argument and that the scientist character should be far too smart for it. The major downfall of the greater good argument is that on these shows it is almost never a one time event that is being dealt with. But rather something that happens about once a week (ok in the course of the show it may be less often, but is still a repeating occurrence). So they are not in a single game, but a repeated game. (If you're getting bored, just think prisoner's dilemma vs repeated prisoner's dilemma and you've basically got my point).
Yes, in a truly isolated incident maybe it does make sense to loosen your morals for a moment and let one guy die to save the group. However, if this decision is going to be faced repeatedly there are several consequences. For one thing the person out doing something dangerous is probably the person who would do other dangerous things in the future. If an important marine/viper pilot/away team member dies every time there is a threat to the group they're going to have a shortage of these important people. In addition after this happens once or twice that could do some serious damage to moral and reduce the risks team members are willing to take on. Both of these concerns are especially significant if they are a group on say one or more space ships and have no connection with other humans or there are no other humans. Also in situations involving the military it is always going to be a repeated dilemma since at some point the military will face another dangerous situation and its policies and reputation from past decisions will matter.
I think that this logic is somewhat built into human emotions and societal norms/morality. This is why the hero type will know the right answer from a gut feel or moral standpoint. However, writers seem to think that the scientist is applying logic to only the single situation. Seems like they think the scientist showed up for the psychology or economics lecture where the prisoners dilemma was covered, but skipped the next week when the repeated version was discussed.
I think I just took down Spock using logic! Which makes me wonder if Spock and Kurk had the opposite positions would the situation also be reversed in all the scifi shows since then.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Future of VOIP
Sending voice over the internet is a bit tricky since what you care about is latency (how long from the time a sound is made to when the other person hears it) rather than throughput (how much data you can send over an extended period of time). The internet is largely designed for throughput so people go off and do all sorts of fancy things to improve latency for VOIP (voice over internet protocol).
So if the computer could see a little into the future (like the elevators in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, or Daniel in the Avatar episode of stargate), over the course of the conversation it would be sending the same amount of data in the same time, but it could deal with short delays. Of course the universe has decided to be causal which ruins so many time travel stories. But the world is increasingly pointing out that human speech really is quite predictable. Type into an iphone and it becomes clear that after just a few letters it often knows what you are going to say. Even more disturbing is the google search box in safari and firefox that will complete what you thought was such a unique search phrase.
So VOIP could see into the future. Obviously it would sometimes be wrong and often would just have a list of possibilities, but it could send across a list of several possibilities (make use of the excess throughput) and then once it knows for sure, just send a short message saying which one it turned out to be. And in the cases where it was wrong then it just sends the voice data as usual. (Has some similarity to pipelining in processors.) You might point out that it doesn't just need to know what word to send, but needs to actually send the sound of your voice, but that just means it has to train over the course of several conversations.
If I was Scott Adams 100 people would now tell me about how this is already being done and another 100 would tell me why it is a stupid idea. Being me, the comment box will sit empty while my friends question if they can delete this RSS feed.
So if the computer could see a little into the future (like the elevators in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, or Daniel in the Avatar episode of stargate), over the course of the conversation it would be sending the same amount of data in the same time, but it could deal with short delays. Of course the universe has decided to be causal which ruins so many time travel stories. But the world is increasingly pointing out that human speech really is quite predictable. Type into an iphone and it becomes clear that after just a few letters it often knows what you are going to say. Even more disturbing is the google search box in safari and firefox that will complete what you thought was such a unique search phrase.
So VOIP could see into the future. Obviously it would sometimes be wrong and often would just have a list of possibilities, but it could send across a list of several possibilities (make use of the excess throughput) and then once it knows for sure, just send a short message saying which one it turned out to be. And in the cases where it was wrong then it just sends the voice data as usual. (Has some similarity to pipelining in processors.) You might point out that it doesn't just need to know what word to send, but needs to actually send the sound of your voice, but that just means it has to train over the course of several conversations.
If I was Scott Adams 100 people would now tell me about how this is already being done and another 100 would tell me why it is a stupid idea. Being me, the comment box will sit empty while my friends question if they can delete this RSS feed.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Stargate
A while ago I was asking about scifi with multiple governments. Martian Time-Slip had elements of what I was thinking of, but that was just part of the background.
But there's one scifi story that seems to exactly fit what I was talking about, well except now it is syfy, but I won't hold that against it. And the winner is: Stargate SG-1. While the stargate program is really run by the US government at various points they cover interactions between earth governments, alien governments, different branches of the us government and combinations of each.
I'm sure that everyone is excited that the search no one but me cares about has ended! And yes I did just link to my own blog twice in a single post.
But there's one scifi story that seems to exactly fit what I was talking about, well except now it is syfy, but I won't hold that against it. And the winner is: Stargate SG-1. While the stargate program is really run by the US government at various points they cover interactions between earth governments, alien governments, different branches of the us government and combinations of each.
I'm sure that everyone is excited that the search no one but me cares about has ended! And yes I did just link to my own blog twice in a single post.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Dollhouse
At some point early in season 1 I came up with a metaphor for dollhouse and in celebration of the start of season 2 I'll share it with all of you (aren't you lucky... or something).
The actives are people who normally are completely blank, live in a really nice place where people take care of them. They spend their downtime exercising and caring for their looks. Many of their assignments involve sex and/or violence. -Actors and actresses.
Tofer is the one who designs personalities for the actives (and he's the funny one). He likes his job for when he gets to do good, but often his boss has him do work he isn't proud of. -Joss Whedon.
Adelle is the boss telling Tofer what to do and picks assignments based on what will make money. She takes better care of the active that she slept with. -Network executive. (Hm, I used to like Adelle, but now I'm mad at her for canceling firefly.)
Handlers look after actives. They go on assignments to watch over them and make sure everything is going ok for them. -Agents/managers.
Paul Ballard is tortured by always making the correct moral choice. -Helo.
Dr Saunders is a doctor. -Doctors (ok, I don't have one for her, especially now that we know more about her)
If I wanted to stretch this way too far I could stick in something about Echo's awareness being related to Eliza becoming a producer in addition to actress.
The actives are people who normally are completely blank, live in a really nice place where people take care of them. They spend their downtime exercising and caring for their looks. Many of their assignments involve sex and/or violence. -Actors and actresses.
Tofer is the one who designs personalities for the actives (and he's the funny one). He likes his job for when he gets to do good, but often his boss has him do work he isn't proud of. -Joss Whedon.
Adelle is the boss telling Tofer what to do and picks assignments based on what will make money. She takes better care of the active that she slept with. -Network executive. (Hm, I used to like Adelle, but now I'm mad at her for canceling firefly.)
Handlers look after actives. They go on assignments to watch over them and make sure everything is going ok for them. -Agents/managers.
Paul Ballard is tortured by always making the correct moral choice. -Helo.
Dr Saunders is a doctor. -Doctors (ok, I don't have one for her, especially now that we know more about her)
If I wanted to stretch this way too far I could stick in something about Echo's awareness being related to Eliza becoming a producer in addition to actress.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Crippled Angel
Last week I finished The Crippled Angel the last book in The Crucible Series which includes The Wounded Hawk and The Nameless Day.
Semi-spoilers ahead.
I really enjoyed the series. It takes place around 1380. Although based on a quick look through wikipedia I think that some the "real" parts of the story are a bit off and shifted in time. Since I don't know anything about the time period I don't actually know, but it seems like she makes it feel like you are in the 1370s.
The part that makes it far more interesting is the religion/magic mix which gets more and more hilariously anti-religion. She does a good job of changing things up through out the story. Which is extra nice since so many fantasy stories take the LOTR approach - Froto you have to destroy the ring then a whole bunch of pages later he destroys the ring. Actually there is some similarity to part of LOTR - Froto finds out he is going to take away the power of the Elf queen and that Elven town would be destroyed. This series kind of takes that idea and runs with it. Plus add in some Harry Potter where the main character is interlinked with the bad guy (except by then who's bad and good has gotten mixed around). I'm trying to be somewhat vague because of the number of twists.
Overall good stuff - I'd recommend it to any fantasy fans out there. I would say that the series really reads as a single book so approach it that way. The first one is good, but is really the background and build up. The action, humor and more interesting stuff (such as explanations for what the heck is going on) is really in the next two books.
One thing I did pick up from this book is being king really wasn't such a great deal in a feudal society. I'd really rather be king at a later point when kings had more direct control rather than just trying to get the support of the lords who have the real military power and money. In general I always figured I'd rather be the King's cousin than the King - nice life style without all the responsibility and people trying to kill you. But in a feudal society that just meant being a lord so there was still responsibility and assassination attempts. So the take away is if you are going to become European royalty at some point in history think more 1600s than 1300s.
Semi-spoilers ahead.
I really enjoyed the series. It takes place around 1380. Although based on a quick look through wikipedia I think that some the "real" parts of the story are a bit off and shifted in time. Since I don't know anything about the time period I don't actually know, but it seems like she makes it feel like you are in the 1370s.
The part that makes it far more interesting is the religion/magic mix which gets more and more hilariously anti-religion. She does a good job of changing things up through out the story. Which is extra nice since so many fantasy stories take the LOTR approach - Froto you have to destroy the ring then a whole bunch of pages later he destroys the ring. Actually there is some similarity to part of LOTR - Froto finds out he is going to take away the power of the Elf queen and that Elven town would be destroyed. This series kind of takes that idea and runs with it. Plus add in some Harry Potter where the main character is interlinked with the bad guy (except by then who's bad and good has gotten mixed around). I'm trying to be somewhat vague because of the number of twists.
Overall good stuff - I'd recommend it to any fantasy fans out there. I would say that the series really reads as a single book so approach it that way. The first one is good, but is really the background and build up. The action, humor and more interesting stuff (such as explanations for what the heck is going on) is really in the next two books.
One thing I did pick up from this book is being king really wasn't such a great deal in a feudal society. I'd really rather be king at a later point when kings had more direct control rather than just trying to get the support of the lords who have the real military power and money. In general I always figured I'd rather be the King's cousin than the King - nice life style without all the responsibility and people trying to kill you. But in a feudal society that just meant being a lord so there was still responsibility and assassination attempts. So the take away is if you are going to become European royalty at some point in history think more 1600s than 1300s.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
The Wounded Hawk
Finished up The Wounded Hawk a couple days ago. This is the second book in the same series as The Nameless Day.
Still going to wait to finish the whole series before saying much. But this book definitely kicks up the action and the heresy a notch.
Thanks again to Julie for letting me borrow the series.
Still going to wait to finish the whole series before saying much. But this book definitely kicks up the action and the heresy a notch.
Thanks again to Julie for letting me borrow the series.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Nameless Day
Julie let me borrow The Crucible Series by Sara Douglass. I read the first book The Nameless Day. I liked the book and I'm enjoying the story. But at this point there's a lot that still isn't clear so I'm going to hold off on writing more till I finish the series (I think it would be like talking about The Fellowship of the Ring before reading the other two, except in this case it is not even clear that Frodo should destroy the ring). I will say she does a good job of putting you in the world (Europe in the 1300s), and does a good job with the main character's transition. And unlike some authors who write long books with lots of characters (Neal I'm looking at you) she's nice enough to sometimes remind you who they are and what happened that you should remember.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Martian Time-Slip
I actually got a response to my search for scifi with multiple governments. Of course the one response I got was from the one time I asked someone in person, hm. Anyway, while it wasn't exactly what I was thinking of, Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick does fit the criteria.
The book is actually mostly about mental illness and crazy shifting through time stuff (as you might guess from the title). While the story does have some good what is reality stuff, a lot of it seems out dated. The book involves some mix of what was accepted views of schizophrenia and autism and Dick's crazy ideas about them. But not knowing what the state of psychology was in the 60s it's hard to tell where that line is.
I'd read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Ubik before I'd read Martian Time-Slip. Both of those seem less dated.
The book is actually mostly about mental illness and crazy shifting through time stuff (as you might guess from the title). While the story does have some good what is reality stuff, a lot of it seems out dated. The book involves some mix of what was accepted views of schizophrenia and autism and Dick's crazy ideas about them. But not knowing what the state of psychology was in the 60s it's hard to tell where that line is.
I'd read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or Ubik before I'd read Martian Time-Slip. Both of those seem less dated.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Anathem
Last night I finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Normally by time I finish a book I have a reasonably good idea what I want to say about it on my blog, but for some reason I'm struggling to review this one. It's not that I didn't like it, because I did like the book and as I was reading it I often found myself thinking thank goodness I'm back to reading scifi (or speculative fiction as Stephenson likes to call this one). I think the struggle to summarize comes from two things. One there is just a lot of stuff in the book (which is partially because it is long). The other is that in typical Stephenson style it would take a while just to describe the starting point and from there it just gets crazier and crazier. Well, time to stop making excuses and say something about the book.
The story is set up in such a way that he can have several characters go off on a discussion of science, math, philosophy, or religion at just about any point, which he takes advantage of often. Because so much time is spent on exploring philosophy and science I think some of the other aspects suffer a bit. Normally at the end of a book like that I really care about the characters, but in this one I didn't have the same attachment. There were a couple of huge adventures in the book which were cool, but Stephenson does action/adventure/humor better in his other books. But the technical description of the last adventure is very cool and I think the religion that seeks salvation through recursion is hilarious.
He does pick out some very interesting areas of science and philosophy to discuss and takes them to some very cool conclusions. In addition the structure of society in the book is an interesting take on the interaction between scientists and society. While I didn't know much of the philosophy, I did know pretty much all of the science which on one hand may have made it less interesting since I didn't need his science explanations (I definitely needed the philosophy ones), but on the other hand was nice because it made it easier to separate the fact from fiction and speculation. The book is nothing like the Da Vinci Code, except that it does use a combination of fact, fiction and hypothesis without telling you which is which. But at the end of the book it does give a website where he helps sort it out and gives a bibliography.
One immediately apparent aspect of the book is that it uses a lot of made up words, as Randall mentions. It does have a glossary in the back so he doesn't force you to figure it all out on your own. But I think that it doesn't take too long to get a feel for the words and mostly stop noticing them. I think they get in the way a lot less than the ones in A Clockwork Orange. I sort of see how the made up words fit into the story, but I'm not totally convinced it was necessary. What I did enjoy about them is he renamed all of the science he was talking about so it was fun to identify the correct names.
In most of Neal Stephenson's other books he tells the story from a variety of different perspectives and of course they all come together in some way throughout the book. But this one is told from the perspective of a single character. I really like the effect he can produce by telling the story through the eyes of multiple characters, but given where this story goes I think it is clear that it had to be written from a single point of view.
I guess I came up with some stuff to say. As I think through it I really would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in philosophy and metaphysics. If you already think you might read the book STOP HERE (seriously I think a lot of the fun of the book is seeing him build up and stretch some ideas so it is best not to know where he is going with it). Otherwise here are a few SPOILERS (although if you're not going to read the book not sure why you would care, oh well).
A lot of the science/philosophy/scifi in the book is about the multiple universes view of quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics things occupy multiple states at once, until they are observed then they settle into a single state. The multiple universes view is that each time an observation is made multiple universes branch off and in each one a different one of the possibilities happens. What you observe just depends on which of the tracks you are now in (hence the need to tell the story from a single perspective). Up to here is a combination of fact and speculation from respected scientists. Where Stephenson takes it is what if someone came up with a way to occupy multiple tracks at once.
Another recurring theme is the idea that certain fundamentals of math are true independent of the human mind, or even our universe (prime numbers were prime long before humans came along) and so maybe they occupy a universe of their own that only contains things like fundamental theorems and proofs. And if that's true is there somehow a way our brain pulls information from that universe? Sounds crazy, but up to here is actually from Godel. Then if that's true could there be a whole hierarchy (or other linked list type structure) of universes goes from the theoretical perfect on down and ideas leak universe to universe down the hierarchy? Then after that is where Stephenson really makes it extra weird - what if you could travel up the hierarchy.
In addition to the philosophy and science the end of the book involves several characters going into space and getting into an alien spaceship. The technology they use to get up there undetected is very cool and partially based on some real research. The alien spaceship also has an interesting design that he describes. And for the more traditional adventure several characters have to make their way across the north pole (partially by foot) to get to the other side of the world.
He also broaches the subject of what's after Diamond Age (nanotechnology) - altering the nucleus of atoms by changing some of the fundamental, but seemly arbitrary, constants of physics. The idea of altering the constants is pretty crazy. But while there are some constants that seem to have a certain value for a reason, there are others that seem like they could just as easily have other values. Lots of those values would cause the universe to just fall apart, but there should be others that make a different, but stable universe.
Well, that's a few paragraphs - as you could imagine with 900 pages there's a lot more he discusses and he has a lot more room for better explanations.
The story is set up in such a way that he can have several characters go off on a discussion of science, math, philosophy, or religion at just about any point, which he takes advantage of often. Because so much time is spent on exploring philosophy and science I think some of the other aspects suffer a bit. Normally at the end of a book like that I really care about the characters, but in this one I didn't have the same attachment. There were a couple of huge adventures in the book which were cool, but Stephenson does action/adventure/humor better in his other books. But the technical description of the last adventure is very cool and I think the religion that seeks salvation through recursion is hilarious.
He does pick out some very interesting areas of science and philosophy to discuss and takes them to some very cool conclusions. In addition the structure of society in the book is an interesting take on the interaction between scientists and society. While I didn't know much of the philosophy, I did know pretty much all of the science which on one hand may have made it less interesting since I didn't need his science explanations (I definitely needed the philosophy ones), but on the other hand was nice because it made it easier to separate the fact from fiction and speculation. The book is nothing like the Da Vinci Code, except that it does use a combination of fact, fiction and hypothesis without telling you which is which. But at the end of the book it does give a website where he helps sort it out and gives a bibliography.
One immediately apparent aspect of the book is that it uses a lot of made up words, as Randall mentions. It does have a glossary in the back so he doesn't force you to figure it all out on your own. But I think that it doesn't take too long to get a feel for the words and mostly stop noticing them. I think they get in the way a lot less than the ones in A Clockwork Orange. I sort of see how the made up words fit into the story, but I'm not totally convinced it was necessary. What I did enjoy about them is he renamed all of the science he was talking about so it was fun to identify the correct names.
In most of Neal Stephenson's other books he tells the story from a variety of different perspectives and of course they all come together in some way throughout the book. But this one is told from the perspective of a single character. I really like the effect he can produce by telling the story through the eyes of multiple characters, but given where this story goes I think it is clear that it had to be written from a single point of view.
I guess I came up with some stuff to say. As I think through it I really would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in philosophy and metaphysics. If you already think you might read the book STOP HERE (seriously I think a lot of the fun of the book is seeing him build up and stretch some ideas so it is best not to know where he is going with it). Otherwise here are a few SPOILERS (although if you're not going to read the book not sure why you would care, oh well).
A lot of the science/philosophy/scifi in the book is about the multiple universes view of quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics things occupy multiple states at once, until they are observed then they settle into a single state. The multiple universes view is that each time an observation is made multiple universes branch off and in each one a different one of the possibilities happens. What you observe just depends on which of the tracks you are now in (hence the need to tell the story from a single perspective). Up to here is a combination of fact and speculation from respected scientists. Where Stephenson takes it is what if someone came up with a way to occupy multiple tracks at once.
Another recurring theme is the idea that certain fundamentals of math are true independent of the human mind, or even our universe (prime numbers were prime long before humans came along) and so maybe they occupy a universe of their own that only contains things like fundamental theorems and proofs. And if that's true is there somehow a way our brain pulls information from that universe? Sounds crazy, but up to here is actually from Godel. Then if that's true could there be a whole hierarchy (or other linked list type structure) of universes goes from the theoretical perfect on down and ideas leak universe to universe down the hierarchy? Then after that is where Stephenson really makes it extra weird - what if you could travel up the hierarchy.
In addition to the philosophy and science the end of the book involves several characters going into space and getting into an alien spaceship. The technology they use to get up there undetected is very cool and partially based on some real research. The alien spaceship also has an interesting design that he describes. And for the more traditional adventure several characters have to make their way across the north pole (partially by foot) to get to the other side of the world.
He also broaches the subject of what's after Diamond Age (nanotechnology) - altering the nucleus of atoms by changing some of the fundamental, but seemly arbitrary, constants of physics. The idea of altering the constants is pretty crazy. But while there are some constants that seem to have a certain value for a reason, there are others that seem like they could just as easily have other values. Lots of those values would cause the universe to just fall apart, but there should be others that make a different, but stable universe.
Well, that's a few paragraphs - as you could imagine with 900 pages there's a lot more he discusses and he has a lot more room for better explanations.
Monday, March 23, 2009
BSG
BSG alert - both that there are spoilers and that it will be boring for non-BSG fans.
I've been a bit slow to post about the final episode of BSG partially because I was actually social this weekend, and partially because my thoughts about it haven't quite settled yet. It's kind of funny I was glad to hear it was 2 hours since I think the first hour was awesome and wasn't such a fan of the second hour, although I'm glad it didn't just abruptly end after the the first hour.
One of, if the not the, best moments was when Baltar and 6 see angel Baltar and 6. Especially since just before that Julie had said she was hoping for almost exactly that scene. I think the biggest downer is Starbuck just disappearing - they could have given us a little more than that. Either I thought of this before and forgot, or it only now occurred to me that Starbuck is Jesus, hm.
Doesn't it seem like the whole story line with Loeben just got dropped? I know he realized something when he saw Starbuck's dead body, but it's like he just disappeared after that. Seems like he could have done something.
And what's with calling Starbuck the harbinger of death all those times?
While I've liked how they incorporated All Along the Watchtower, it's a little weird it turned out to be the coordinates of "new Earth". it's fits with Starbuck's story (well given the lack of explanation, anything could fit with her story), but what did it have to do with the final five? Oh, I just read Moore's answer - eh, I guess it can be something that lives on through human/cylon consciousness, but still doesn't quite seem to fit.
I think the last half of season 4 in someway actually returned to the original BSG. Near the end of the original BSG they find a planet that seems an awful lot like earth and the two super powers on the planet are about to launch nukes at each other and somehow the BSG crew helps stop them. But something about it turns out not to be Earth. Also the original BSG had angels that were obviously angels that helped out a couple times, at one point they even fought the devil. And the last scene of the last episode was them picking up an image of a rover on the moon, but no one on the ship sees it. So not a strong relation, but seems like something.
What the heck was with the whole God's not what he likes to be called? The silly part of me says it's Jimmy Hendrix which was playing when that was said (kind of funny they picked to play Hendrix's version instead of Bob Dylan's version). The cynical part of me thinks they meant Ronald Moore since they had just shown him, although I don't believe that either. I guess they are really just trying to claim some eternal force without specifying it as God. Between the God stuff and the be worried about technology stuff it felt a bit preachy near the end.
Well, I'll probably watch the series again at some point, although more to see season 1 and the start of season 3 than because I think I'll view things terribly differently now that I've seen the end.
Did anyone else see some racism (or at least some racial awkwardness) when they landed on the planet? The group of whites plus a few asians land on the planet with technology and civilization and look out at the tribal black people. Seems like they could have at least made the groups of people landing a little more diverse to water down the image. And while it's nice and all that modern people descended from Hera, it says something a little weird about what happened to the tribes that were already there.
Oh and take that Baltar - go back to farming - ha! That was a good punishment, although he does get to live with Caprica 6 which I guess balances things out.
Hm, they never really covered what happens when a cylon (other than the final 5) gets old. Will they live until some accident finally kills them?
And as usual - Helo is awesome and always right. Oh, if only there was a scene of him confronting Roslin and calling her out on all the crap she's done to him.
I've been a bit slow to post about the final episode of BSG partially because I was actually social this weekend, and partially because my thoughts about it haven't quite settled yet. It's kind of funny I was glad to hear it was 2 hours since I think the first hour was awesome and wasn't such a fan of the second hour, although I'm glad it didn't just abruptly end after the the first hour.
One of, if the not the, best moments was when Baltar and 6 see angel Baltar and 6. Especially since just before that Julie had said she was hoping for almost exactly that scene. I think the biggest downer is Starbuck just disappearing - they could have given us a little more than that. Either I thought of this before and forgot, or it only now occurred to me that Starbuck is Jesus, hm.
Doesn't it seem like the whole story line with Loeben just got dropped? I know he realized something when he saw Starbuck's dead body, but it's like he just disappeared after that. Seems like he could have done something.
And what's with calling Starbuck the harbinger of death all those times?
While I've liked how they incorporated All Along the Watchtower, it's a little weird it turned out to be the coordinates of "new Earth". it's fits with Starbuck's story (well given the lack of explanation, anything could fit with her story), but what did it have to do with the final five? Oh, I just read Moore's answer - eh, I guess it can be something that lives on through human/cylon consciousness, but still doesn't quite seem to fit.
I think the last half of season 4 in someway actually returned to the original BSG. Near the end of the original BSG they find a planet that seems an awful lot like earth and the two super powers on the planet are about to launch nukes at each other and somehow the BSG crew helps stop them. But something about it turns out not to be Earth. Also the original BSG had angels that were obviously angels that helped out a couple times, at one point they even fought the devil. And the last scene of the last episode was them picking up an image of a rover on the moon, but no one on the ship sees it. So not a strong relation, but seems like something.
What the heck was with the whole God's not what he likes to be called? The silly part of me says it's Jimmy Hendrix which was playing when that was said (kind of funny they picked to play Hendrix's version instead of Bob Dylan's version). The cynical part of me thinks they meant Ronald Moore since they had just shown him, although I don't believe that either. I guess they are really just trying to claim some eternal force without specifying it as God. Between the God stuff and the be worried about technology stuff it felt a bit preachy near the end.
Well, I'll probably watch the series again at some point, although more to see season 1 and the start of season 3 than because I think I'll view things terribly differently now that I've seen the end.
Did anyone else see some racism (or at least some racial awkwardness) when they landed on the planet? The group of whites plus a few asians land on the planet with technology and civilization and look out at the tribal black people. Seems like they could have at least made the groups of people landing a little more diverse to water down the image. And while it's nice and all that modern people descended from Hera, it says something a little weird about what happened to the tribes that were already there.
Oh and take that Baltar - go back to farming - ha! That was a good punishment, although he does get to live with Caprica 6 which I guess balances things out.
Hm, they never really covered what happens when a cylon (other than the final 5) gets old. Will they live until some accident finally kills them?
And as usual - Helo is awesome and always right. Oh, if only there was a scene of him confronting Roslin and calling her out on all the crap she's done to him.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
What's With The Unified Government?
Star Trek - one semi-utopian human government. Firefly/Serenity - one over reaching government that has varying levels of influence on different planets. Battlestar Galactica - one human government both before and after the attack. Dune - one government, although a much looser structure than the other cases - will come back to that. The Foundation Series - one government. Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - only one human. Star Wars - one government (not counting the rebels as a government), in 1-3 arguably still one government, although a bit more UN like. Futurama is the perfect example - in 2000, pre-serious space exploration, there is the current set of countries, in 3000 when there is lots of space travel there is one Earth/human government. There are a bunch where government doesn't really play a role and the basic assumption is there is only one exploring space: Rendezvous with Rama, Alien, Dark Star, Red Dwarf, 2001 A Space Odessey, Ender's Game, Total Recall, iRobot (the book).
There's plenty of science fiction not involving space that involves multiple governments and some that involve their interaction (ex: most Neal Stephenson books). There's plenty of science fiction where aliens come to Earth and there are multiple governments (War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, Transformers), although I'm having trouble thinking of any where it really matters that there are multiple governments. There's some science fiction with multiple governments while there has been some movement into space, but the story is almost entirely about Earth (ex: Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). So why can't I think of any stories where humans have multiple governments exploring space? Do they exist and I just can't think of them? Is there some assumption that if people are going into space either everyone has unified or there is a single space bound country? Is it just avoiding the complexity that would be added to stories? Am I just not going back far enough - did people get it out of their system during the space race?
I think that we will get to serious space travel/colonization before the world will unify under one government. There is the UN, but I think it is far weaker than any of the governments listed above (if we found aliens would it really be the UN that would negotiate with them?). Plus it seems like it would open a lot of possible stories if instead of the humans trying to deal with say the Romulans, the US was trying to create a treaty while the EU was at war with them and at the same time China and the US were at war (BSG is sort of touching on this right now, but they split the cylons instead of splitting the humans). Or even if there are no aliens, just something a bit more complex than one big oppressive government and one small rebel group. Of all the examples I listed, Dune has the least centralized government and some of the story comes from the maneuvering of the groups that make up the government and how the main character plays them off each other. That further makes me think there is potential there.
Also science fiction can be helpful when it predicts something and works through some of the issues ahead of time (such as iRobot and some of the old images of space ships). Since there's an increasing number of countries capable of space exploration it seems like a topic worth exploring.
Ok, I should really stop writing now since it is quite likely someone will have a list of a bunch of stories I'm just not thinking of.
There's plenty of science fiction not involving space that involves multiple governments and some that involve their interaction (ex: most Neal Stephenson books). There's plenty of science fiction where aliens come to Earth and there are multiple governments (War of the Worlds, Independence Day, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, Transformers), although I'm having trouble thinking of any where it really matters that there are multiple governments. There's some science fiction with multiple governments while there has been some movement into space, but the story is almost entirely about Earth (ex: Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). So why can't I think of any stories where humans have multiple governments exploring space? Do they exist and I just can't think of them? Is there some assumption that if people are going into space either everyone has unified or there is a single space bound country? Is it just avoiding the complexity that would be added to stories? Am I just not going back far enough - did people get it out of their system during the space race?
I think that we will get to serious space travel/colonization before the world will unify under one government. There is the UN, but I think it is far weaker than any of the governments listed above (if we found aliens would it really be the UN that would negotiate with them?). Plus it seems like it would open a lot of possible stories if instead of the humans trying to deal with say the Romulans, the US was trying to create a treaty while the EU was at war with them and at the same time China and the US were at war (BSG is sort of touching on this right now, but they split the cylons instead of splitting the humans). Or even if there are no aliens, just something a bit more complex than one big oppressive government and one small rebel group. Of all the examples I listed, Dune has the least centralized government and some of the story comes from the maneuvering of the groups that make up the government and how the main character plays them off each other. That further makes me think there is potential there.
Also science fiction can be helpful when it predicts something and works through some of the issues ahead of time (such as iRobot and some of the old images of space ships). Since there's an increasing number of countries capable of space exploration it seems like a topic worth exploring.
Ok, I should really stop writing now since it is quite likely someone will have a list of a bunch of stories I'm just not thinking of.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Dollhouse
Overall I agree with what Julie had to say about Dollhouse (especially the point her friend made). Although I'm less unhappy with Eliza Duku as the lead, cause, well you can figure it out. I think my biggest issue with the show is it doesn't seem to have a goofy/funny element to it.
I will add that the bit of dialogue where Echo claims she will put the kidnappers at ease and the father disagrees seemed very familiar to me (20.5 minutes in). I started to think that Whedon had copied a sequence in another show. Then I finally realized it was The Shepherd's explanation for why the alliance was so willing to give him medical help in the Firefly episode "Safe" (38 minutes in). I guess Whedon will forgive Whedon.
I will add that the bit of dialogue where Echo claims she will put the kidnappers at ease and the father disagrees seemed very familiar to me (20.5 minutes in). I started to think that Whedon had copied a sequence in another show. Then I finally realized it was The Shepherd's explanation for why the alliance was so willing to give him medical help in the Firefly episode "Safe" (38 minutes in). I guess Whedon will forgive Whedon.
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