Posts by oregonensis 30 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2012
A heartwarming Christmas story now and again is alright, but the most recent one had no discernible plot line. Jolly, jolly, jolly. When can the Doctor be a grumpy old bastard and when can he have more of a mental workout by solving his problems some way other than with the sonic screwdriver. It just does screws! My theory as to why the Doctor has become so stupid is that the brain damage he suffered at the end of Planet of the Spiders never fully healed. As Baker the Greater it was a loveable goofiness but by the time Baker the Lesser rolled around it was horrible clowning around. Or is all the trouble with present day Who that Moffat is emotionally stunted and/or writing for 7-year-old audiences?
What would you call the Mars rovers' (or any probe's, for that matter) extended life cycles? Or salvaging Skylab from Apollo leftovers? Even before the budget body blow of the mid-70s, the plan was not to build new craft to go to Venus, but to reuse Apollo parts. They do a lot of good work on a lot less than most US agencies. Let's not forget that most people still see space exploration as a waste. Part of NASA's inefficiency stems from its being underfunded in the first place. If budget cuts force them to scrap the hugely expensive design work on Constellation, how is starting over going to help make things more efficient? Another huge blow to NASA is our changing military needs. Without the arms race, there could have been no space race, not least of all because of rocket tech's dependance on ICBM tech, but also because military contractors built the craft and because of nationalist feelings. If my nationalist drives are satiated by driving a big car with a flag hanging out the window, who cares about Mars? NASA engineers are quite creative about what to do with their limited resources, and if they had even enough money to follow through on those ideas, I think you would find it could do quite well for itself.
Here's one Linux fanboi (and free software purist) who has upvoted this post. These are exactly the sort of charges I level against friends' and neighbors' proprietary systems. My 5 year old laptop runs rings around their year old machines "with one core behind its back."
Yes, Siri shifts much of the work off your handheld and onto Apple, but let's not forget that even so the present Jesus mobe has a secondary processor just for cleaning up and compressing your voice and that Apple can't supply enough power on the server side to give you proper answers. So we're still going to need significant power in your eyeglasses.
This is interesting. Are the rumors of a coup substantial, or is this the eastern equivalent of "RIP [celebrity of the day]"? I know Bo Xilai was really shaking things up -- sometimes for the better, sometimes in ways frighteningly reminiscent of Mao's days -- and I also know that the outgoing Chinese premier made some cryptic pro-reform remarks after the closing of the congress earlier this year. Also, the I believe it was the vice-president (or someone equally high up) who replaced Mr Bo as Chongqing's mayor after he was sacked. Strange times.
Much as I would like it to be otherwise, the most optimistic estimates for the VASIMR engine's speed have a probe getting to the NEAREST star in something like 11,000 years. How are we going to send a probe out 30 ly in decades? And is your sci-fi probe sending its data back on subspace?
You're right that it isn't helpful in getting the job. It shouldn't be either. Some of the better actors on uber-fan series have come to the role without knowing much if anything about their larger fictional universes, and most of the Who geeks I know would make for horrible actors. My complaint isn't that she's wrong about who the best Doctor and companion are, it's that if she thinks the current series is just fine, she'll uncritically accept scripts as bad as the ones that are on now. To be clear, I've been OK with Matt Smith from the start. He fits the role quite well, but the stories and dialogue he has to work with generally are no good, and he likes the current state of things, so no one's saying, "are you serious?" to the showrunners.
Fine-- pick Liz or Sarah Jane or even another Doctor. That's not really what's at stake, even if my tastes are a bit trite. My point was just that she's picked easily one of the worst eras in Doctor Who. The most hopeful reading sees this as just sucking up to the boss, but I know there are plenty of people out there who genuinely like the current state of fandom-as-canon. I'm disappointed that someone can accept and even praise a decline from Holmes's intended audience of mature adolescents to the current emotionally-stunted [age of Moffat's kid] year-olds.
Ugh. After watching a YouTube interview with her, I have drawn the conclusion that Rebecca Black has been cast in this role. She did "excitement, excitement" ("we so excited") and also "fun" ("fun fun fun"). I question her judgment in saying that the current cast is her favorite as well -- obviously the best Doctor/companion duo was Pertwee with Jo Grant -- but more importantly, she *likes* the snivel fest that Moffat has dumped on us? At least Karen Gillan is my type, but really a good companion should hold an advanced degree in science and/or (believable) ass-kicking.
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