Disarming Nuclear Bombs

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.

More TV

Better Off Ted: Apparently there were two unaired episodes of Better Off Ted at the end of season 2. They are on netflix streaming, but their order is flipped - what netflix calls episode 12 (swag the dog) is clearly supposed to be the last (13th) episode of the season.

I'm still amazed how badly they messed up the promoting of that show. I know I had no interest in watching the show after seeing the ads since they completely failed to play up the arrested development style humor or the pointed comments about corporations that so well match the post 2008 national attitude. I bet that if they had just used the Veridian ads as the better off ted ads the show would still be on the air. Oh well...

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.

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.

The Office and Counterpoint

I think that what The Office has been doing recently is kind of interesting. The show started off with the typical office humor point of view where there's a normal person or two, the boss is incompetent and each coworker has their own bit of insanity. Pretty much the Dilbert formula. I'm not saying there wasn't anything original about The Office (well, ok there was nothing original about the American version), but the perspective was pretty standard. Over the past couple of seasons as Jim has taken on more responsibilities we've seen hints about the transition to come. And now that Jim is a co-manager they've really flipped the situation around. We learn that while Michael is a weirdo and somewhat incompetent, some of the insanity is on purpose and Jim who is expected to know better is actually needing direction from Michael.

Nothing that extraordinary, but if office fans are the Dilbert crowd who go through their day convinced they know better than their boss then the show is in some way now making fun of their fans (or at least correcting them). Seems like a bit of a strange move. Luckily Michael still comes off insane so it is not a complete reversal of views.

This sentence is acting as a transition between topics.

When news and talk shows have Jenny McCarthy on to talk about vaccines I scream "WTF IS GOING ON? WHO'S BEEN HANDING OUT THE STUPID PILLS?". Oh, that's not where I was going with that. Let's try again. When news and talk shows have Jenny McCarthy on to talk about vaccines it might seem appropriate to have another guest who is a vaccine specialist at the CDC or some university explain why vaccines are actually good and talk about the extensive studies that show they don't cause autism.

However, that's not the counterpoint that should follow her appearance. The guest after Jenny McCarthy should be a vaccine specialist at the CDC or some university and should be wearing a sport coat with chalk dust on it over a t-shirt with Maxwell's equations, too loose pants and pure white tennis shoes, also acceptable is a free t-shirt from a career fair plus jeans that were purchased in the early 80s and birkenstocks with white socks, bonus points for taped glasses and extra bonus points for soldered glasses. The scientist should be there to provide a counterpoint to Jenny McCarthy's choice of outfit.

If McCarthy cries foul because she went to the "university of google", the scientist can explain that he went to the university library and read all the books on fashion he could find, most of which happen to be from previous centuries, but hey he read a bunch of stuff so he's just as qualified to discuss fashion as she is to discuss vaccines.

The weird thing is I don't even watch the shows that have McCarthy on, but it generates so much buzz that I hear about it on NPR and news websites. Hm, I just admitted that I'm complaining about interviews I've never even seen. Well I guess I should go ahead and dedicate this post to everyone attending the "university of google" where poorly informed rants like this post count as reading assignments. Remember that anytime a claim from this blog is cited it can be proceed by, "My source, who has a graduate degree from MIT, says...".

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ted and Bruno

First of all - I've been slow to recommend Better Off Ted because in some surface way it seems like it's not a great show. Maybe one of the ads just hit me wrong. Although I think there's more - one example is there are times when characters are supposed to be really mad, but they still seem like they are smiling. But the show is awesome! I'm laughing the whole time and they do a great job ripping into the questionable morals of corporations. And it has a bit of an Arrested Development feel (more than just because Portia is in the show).

Bruno SPOILERS coming up.

I saw Bruno recently. I was laughing the whole time. I can't recommend it since there may be stuff you just don't want to see. I've only heard/read a few reviews, but I really think they are missing something. Obviously a big part of it is that Bruno is an outdated gay stereotype and a certain portion of the movie is about how people react to him. That seems to grab most of the attention. Although I think the movie dedicates just as much if not more time to making fun of the search for celebrity.

What reviewers seem to miss is how self-referential the movie is. Fairly early on Bruno shows a TV pilot he made to a test audience. The test audience absolutely hates the pilot and can't imagine anyone watching it. First of all - when you watch the movie you see the pilot. Second it is a rough approximation of the rest of the movie (think Terrance and Philip in South Park). So right up front you're watching people tell you how bad the movie you are watching is. Later on one of the strongest comments on society is when Bruno asks parents what they would be willing to let their kids do in order to be included in a photo shoot. He then proceeds to do similar things with a baby. So now he's also making fun of the parents that let him use their baby in the movie. Now given those two scenes think about the fact that to make a movie that makes fun of what people will do to be famous Cohen goes off and does very crazy, dangerous, and disgusting stuff.

I'll admit I have a tendency to reach too far on these things, but I really think that buried in there is Cohen making fun of himself.

Ok, even if you don't buy all that, you have to admit that the wrestling scene and the scene with Paula Abdul were hilarious.

Hm - seems I posted a bit too soon. Dana Stevens's review makes a similar point.

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.

TV

Unless Michael is looking to get got, he needs to start being a lot nicer to Stringer Bell.

The final episode of BSG has already happened, but I'm watching it in about 12 hours. I'm excited and nervous. I am very glad to hear it is two hours long since they have a ton of stuff to explain and there better be some good action in there too. I'll spare you my increasingly drawn out worst case ending for the show, which basically boils down to not answering any of the questions and something really good happening to Baltar.

I like how Scrubs season 8 episode 11 dealt with JD and Eliot.

I sort of get why SciFi wants to change their name to SyFy. But it seems to depend on no one ever saying it out loud. And I think that as a station that mostly plays science fiction they should be a little more careful when stereotyping science fiction fans.

My heater

The heater in my apartment has always struck me as a bit odd. It is a gas flame in my living room with a big metal thing over it that acts as a radiator. Recently I noticed the same heater in two TV shows that are set in California. It made me feel better to see that my apartment building isn't the only one with that heating system. Except then I realized that in one show it is the heater in the dingy basement everyone in the show makes fun of. And in My Name is Earl it is the heater in Joy's mobile home. Well so much for that bit of comfort.

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.

Skin Jobs

For all the BSG fans - the term skin job is from Blade Runner.

TV, TV, TV, Rent, Eating, President, Violent Music

Seems like Scrubs has come part way back. I'm very glad to see them do some scenes outside the hospital. I claim that's the key to making the show good again. Other than maybe at the very beginning I think all the funny and key moments of the show have either been outside the hospital or set up by something outside the hospital. Although I do feel like this entire season of scrubs is that episode of arrested development where they make a last ditch effort to save the family/show. And what is with coffeebucks? They had the cafeteria which they were able to use as a large space or zoom in to a table to make it small space. But now they just have the small area that makes me feel claustrophobic.

I think Pysch as a show on its own is ok, but not quite good enough to watch. But the fact it is a constant mockery of psychics just puts it over the worth watching bar for me. Plus it is set in Santa Barbara so I get to keep going - oh, I used to live near there. Whoa - they just had a victim with an ICD that they used to identify him. The reasons to watch keep adding up.

I keep wondering when they are going to finally post tonight's episode of BSG online, but I guess I should at least wait till the episode has finished playing on TV before getting impatient. I'm increasingly thinking that the music (especially the drums during action scenes, but also other selections) does a lot to make the show. Which I guess was really brought out by the whole All Along the Watchtower thing.

I just found out if I renew my lease for a year my rent is going up less than 1%! Hopefully raises this year won't match apartment prices.

I finally got to the grocery store so no more having a spoonful of peanut butter for breakfast any more (don't worry it is not from that company with the recall).

George Bush isn't acting as president any more (I still maintain he never won to begin with)! That finally started to sink in today. Someone should keep an eye on Dick Cheney - I feel like he could be even more dangerous now that the world isn't watching him than he was before (maybe I've watched The Usual Suspects too many times). I like the theory that Cheney was in a wheel chair so he wouldn't have to stand when Obama was sworn in (ok, I don't believe it, but I like it). I know I'm not really qualified to answer this, but I feel rather confident in saying that having a black president does not mean racism is over or that we can all forget about slavery - now all those talk show hosts can stop asking.

Music needs to get more violent. I feel like when I was growing up rap and alternative rock gave old people something to worry about (ok, mostly just rap, but I like to think I was listening to something edgy). The worrying old people sounded out of it, and didn't get it, but at least you could sort of see how they would worry that violent music might cause violence. But now it seems like social networking has taken its place. It is one thing to go on the radio and talk about the evils of violent music, it is quite another to talk about how facebook/twitter/yelp are ruining society (or to quote Emerson and Walden to prove facebook is ruining universities - seriously, that was on NPR this morning). I think every conversation about it can be boiled down to - "I'm old and this is new so it must be bad. I've only used it for a little bit and have not yet figured out how to use it intelligently so everyone must be wasting their life on it." In order to save these people some dignity, music needs to get more violent so they have something semi-reasonable to worry about again. I'm not saying music isn't violent now, it is just that we have gotten used to it (almost makes you think we'll get used to facebook/twitter/yelp in a couple years and wonder what everyone was worrying about...), but it needs to quickly get a lot more violent so people take notice again.

Snap

I don't care how out of fashion it is now or how silly it was for me to use it to begin with, I'm bringing the word snap back. I'm not exactly a social trend setter and I mostly only use the word when watching Law & Order SVU by myself so I'm going to need some help getting this going, but I'm sure we can do it! I think the first time around the correct expression was "oh snap", but I'm pushing the shorter snappier (ba-bom-ching) version of just saying snap by itself. Oh, and feel free to actually snap while saying it, but it is not required.

I've actually been up to more than yelling snap at Law & Order.

Eric and Jess hosted a great Thanksgiving! I hope that one day when I'm older I'll be able to host people and put on events like that.

Thanks to Julie and Saeed for having an x-box and spending the $20 on Briad, which is the coolest game I've seen in a while.

Actually most of my social life lately has been going to other people's places and being fed. Maybe one day I'll clean my place and feed others, maybe (don't worry I won't cook).

I'm a little over a week away from seeing the last remaining ancient wonder of the world!

Someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later.

If they kill Mohinder does the absurd narration go away? Cause I'm totally willing to make that trade. Especially if the pseudo-science explanations stop too.

Isn't it weird that Marlo Stanfield shows less fear and is more of a bad ass than Knox?

And why is Cameron so much more attractive than River Tam? And why is the robot more interested in guys than the troubled teen?

Dear 2008 (a response to Dear 1970s)

Dear 2008,

Let us say this in a way you will understand - chillax.

So what do you consider a good sci fi movie? The Matirx? A movie that combines the fight against AI and philosophy/mysticism. Sounds familiar, oh, but we see, you've replaced classical music and inspirational visuals with rock music and fighting. Way to go - that's some progress you've got there.

And what do you consider good sci fi tv? Battlestar Galactica - gee we wonder where you came up with that idea. Only we see you've replaced goofy fun with a bleak vision of the future and more realistic violence. Sure our version had some silly looking robots and a really lame explanation for where they came from. But you just made the robots human - that's not even trying! And your explanation for how they came into their current form is - no one, including the robots, knows? How long did it take to come up with that idea? At least we can all agree on laughing at the 80s version!

Ok, Firefly and Serenity are cool ideas, but they're only half sci fi and barely anyone has even heard of them. Plus, a movie about the power of belief written by an atheist - no wonder people had to watch the commentary to get the message. You might think our movies spoon fed the point to the viewers, but at least we didn't encourage them to watch the movie a second time so we could describe scene by scene what is happening. And why is it you can't make it through five minutes of music, but you love listening to what each actor was feeling during every scene?

Yeah, our movies might be hard to get through if you're watching after your third trip to starbucks, but maybe you should put the caffeine down and enjoy the movie! If you insist on filling every single second put two TVs next to each other. On one play the 70s movie and on the other play a loop of people getting beat up. That way if you get tired of being inspired you have something to look at.

Sincerely,
The 1970s

PS We will admit your graphics are awesome.

Dear 1970s

Dear 1970s,

We get it, it is an emotional, grand moment, but the key word is moment. We don't need five minutes of classical music and what you consider impressive special effects every time you want to make a point. If you show a ship moving for 10 seconds we'll go ahead and extrapolate from there that it is continuing to move, you don't need to keep showing us.

We get that your vision of "advanced computers" and your ideas about racial interactions are a bit off, you're doing your best on special effects, and of course the fashion sense has become outdated. That's fine, we can get past all that. And you have some decent ideas so we can learn a lot by watching your movies. But we don't understand why you have to bury a half hour of good content in a two hour movie. And not just on occasion, but for every single movie. Of course it hasn't worked out too poorly for you since we tend to just remember the half hour where stuff actually happened. So there is still a lot of respect for your movies, but it doesn't seem right to do this to us when we want to see what is remembered so fondly.

Sincerely,
2008

PS Turns out AI is not that easy to create so you can stop being so paranoid and insecure about what will happen to humans when computers get smarter.