Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
Thanks to your generosity, we were able to upgrade our service plan. Hopefully this will help us address some of our performance issues.
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024Currently we are facing the liberal society paradox where a liberal society faces threats so great t…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
on From The Wall Street Journal: How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in ChargeHave you spent much time in blue cities? Growing up near Detroit, I can say the Dems talk a great ga…
on Youngsters Make Merry at Evanston Country Club Christmas PartyHester Walrath (1898-1971) went on to attend Northwestern University, marry a businessman, and have…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024So the "CR" of 1500 pages, given to members 24 hours before the vote, and which did all kinds of thi…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024Do you not understand the irony of speaking positively about banning political parties in the same b…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024I suppose we could blame the townspeople for not showing up the umpteenth time the shepherd boy crie… on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024A small backlash? If the election were held today they would be the 2nd biggest party in the Bundest…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024I have no idea why pointing out that Na.zis were elected legitimately is relevant to this discussion… on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024No, I'm pointing out that you find 'Trump is Hitler' more absurd than 'These people are Na.zis', so…
Youngsters Make Merry at Evanston Country Club Christmas Party
December 21, 2024
December 20, 2024
December 19, 2024
December 18, 2024
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024 on A Note from Em
on A Note from Em on A Note from Em on A Note from Em on A Note from Em on A Note from Em on A Note from Em on A Note from Em
on From The Wall Street Journal: How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024
on A Note from Em on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024
They have an entirely different crew this time and Lucas seems to have finally backed off so I’m extremely optimistic.
I have a flight in about 20 minutes. I have Snow Piercer downloaded on my tablet. We’ll see if it’s good as was claimed when recommended to me.Report
Well, think about it this way: do you think JJ Abrams did a good job with Star Trek? I for one have been well entertained by his Star Trek movies, notwithstanding Cumberbatch’s too-icy Khan. But many have found the Abrams Star Trek movies wanting. Why should he be any different with the (admittedly more visually-driven) Star Wars product?Report
I think they’ll be pretty fantastic and get ripped to shreds by purists and critics anyway.
I think not a few people would be kind of annoyed if a guy who seems to lead a commercially charmed professional existence like Abrams made great movies out of a franchise as popular as Star Wars.Report
I have complete faith that it’ll be better than episodes I or II or the Star Wars Christmas Special. Also that it will be so chock-full of special effects that few will care if the dialog is awful, the characters wooden, or the plot idiotic.Report
I really liked the first JJA Star Trek. I need to give the second one another watch. I remember thinking it was a little clunky. I trust him with Star Wars as much as I can trust anyone with something I hold so dear. But Abrahams is a special effects guy and maybe I’ll want more, though I must say the clip of the X-Wings flying just above the water nearly made me cry.Report
I enjoyed his first Star Trek film for his take on the characters. But “Red Matter”? Really? And why, if there’s time travel, didn’t they just go back and fix everything?Report
I haven’t seen the second yet, but the first one was a fab sci fi movie that Wasn’t Trek.Report
Weirdly, “Red Matter” is a traditional Abrams plot device, going back to Alias.
That doesn’t make its use in ST good though.Report
And why, if there’s time travel, didn’t they just go back and fix everything?
There are no good answers to the question, “If you went back in time and killed your grandfather before he met your grandmother, what happens?” Assorted authors have tried everything from “You didn’t, so you can’t,” to all kinds of variations on “It just splits off another parallel universe that’s different from that point forward.” In the latter, you may disappear, or you may be stuck in the past, or you may be able to go forward to the new future (where grandpa did die).
I’ve always been fond of “the continuum is stubborn” scenarios. I recall some short story where the character has gone back in time to stop someone (call them X for convenience) from committing suicide by shooting themselves in the head with a .38. As I recall, X kept getting a gun by wilder and wilder coincidences, but when X is finally kept from getting a gun, X wanders out on the balcony of the hotel and gets hit in the head by a meteorite that’s precisely the size and shape of a .38 slug. Now that’s a stubborn continuum.Report
That was Fritz Leiber’s Try and Change the Past.Report
But my question isn’t a wholly general one. If I recall the plot correctly, the bad guy was mad that his planet was blown up, and used time travel to punish the people he considered responsible. He doesn’t seem to have considered using it to, you know, save the planet.Report
The collective memory of the people on this site for old science fiction is too large. Just sayin’.Report
Michael, that is not possible. There is never to much knowledge of old sci fi.Report
I admit to not being much of a Star Trek fan, so I might be missing a nuance, but my understanding of the plot of the 2009 film was that the time travel was unintentional, and when it occurred, the primary objective of the Romulans was to kill the person who destroyed their planet with the red matter, Spock. Presumaly the idea was that killing Spock would prevent him from destroying the planet in the future. So, they were actually trying to prevent the future tragedy from happening.Report
@chris
You’re probably right. Now, if I’d seen it when I was 12, I’d remember it perfectly.Report
It’s not like it’s an obscure story. It’s part of the Change War series, probably Leiber’s most famous work after Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.Report
Time travel — I always enjoyed Stross (I think) short “Palimpsest”. Time agents not only killed their own grandfather, but actually killed themselves. Quite deliberately.
It left time agents completely unconnected to the time-stream, having no attachments (they were never born, their past never existed, even if they remember it), and basically absolutely free agents.
History was written and rewritten every time the agent acted, but he stayed.Report
I’ve only seen the first one twice, but the second one (Into Darkness) is on Netflix, and my son’s little brother loves it, so I have seen it with different levels of attention several times.
The little bugger calls Into Darkness “Space Explosions,” because for him, every non-cartoon movie that he likes has explosions, and is therefore named “____ Explosions.” So, for example, he watched Olympus Has Fallen with his brother, and that became “Normal Explosions,” because all other movies were compared to it. Then he watched World War Z, which became “Zombie Explosions.” Then the second G.I. Joe movie (I forget what it’s called, A Second Awful G.I. Joe Movie, I imagine), which he then called “Better Explosions,” because it’s better than “Normal Explosions.” Then he watched Pompeii, which is “Vesuvius Explosions,” and one of the Hercules movies, which, though it doesn’t have many (any?) explosions, became “Time of Vesuvius Explosions” because someone told him that Hercules and Vesuvius were around the same time (not me, I’m too pedantic for that). Finally, and this is my favorite, he watched an episode of Royal Pains in which there was an explosion, so that show became “Doctor Explosions.”Report
When I was in college, I had gotten some new piece of A/V equipment (a better TV or a stereo VCR or a different receiver or something) and to test it out, I was watching my VHS copy of Aliens at a silly volume.
My roommate heard this, and came in to inquire if I was watching a movie called Tanks and Explosions.Report
He is a remarkably astute observer of contemporary film, for a 6-year old.
His commentary, which is constant (he does play-by-play and color), is often hilarious. We watched “Vesuvius Volcano” last week for about the 6th time, and he explained the entire movie to me during the opening scenes, finishing with, “And then I’m going to want to cry, but I’m not going to.” I find this stuff endlessly amusing. My son sees it with teenage eyes, however, and therefore finds it insufferably annoying. Which makes me think it’s even more amusing.Report
“normal explosions” is a great band name.Report
@morat20
Sounds like Stress got the idea from Bester’s The Men Who Murdered Mohammed
“We each travel into our own past, and no other person’s. There is no universal continuum, Henry. There are only billions of individuals, each with his own continuum; and one continuum cannot affect the other. We’re like millions of strands of spaghetti in the same pot. No time traveler can ever meet another time traveler in the past or future. Each of us must travel up and down his own strand alone.”
“But we’re meeting each other now.”
“We’re no longer time travelers, Henry. We’ve become the spaghetti sauce.”
Also short, and, as you’d expect from Bester, brilliant, original, and funny.Report
In Star Trek Spock was trying to save Romulus with the red matter but wss too late. When he deployed it he and Nero were sucked through the black hole and went back into the past. Nero got there 25 years or so before Spock and basically just acted like an asshole until Spock showed up, at which time he captured him and made him watch while he destroyed Vulcan.
The messed up thing is that it seems like Nero could have just found young Spock and said hey, how about you show up a week earlier and save Romulus? Or better yet, explain to the people on Romulus that you probably can’t stop a supernova with a black hole so how about we jump on our enormous space ships and find a new planet?
Crap… Now I realize the plot of Episode 7 coukd totally suck with JJA at the helm.Report
“Nero got there 25 years or so before Spock and basically just acted like an asshole”
“The Time-Traveling Assholes” is also a good bandname.Report
I can’t wait to see the “Time Traveling Assholes” t-shirts.Report
Star Wars. Man. Right there with ya, honey.
I’ve been watching Justified Season 4 (finally finished Lost Girl, wish there was more Lost Girl) and not enough Person of Interest. Readingwise I’m in the middle of 800 (well, really about 20) things. Will report back next week.Report