oromagi

I provided 4 cogent and synchronous definitions of the genre from 4 widely recognized masters of the genre, all of which effectively excluded Star Wars from Sci Fi (not science, not something that could happen, not a realistic future, and space adventure) then I gave coal the writer/director/creator  himself rejecting his work as a contribution to SciFi.  What coal dismisses as creative nonsense is in fact the makers of two brand names (Science Fiction & Star Wars) defining those brands.  Those brandmakers seek to make a clear distinction between possible fiction (however improbable) and impossible fiction (however cloaked in the trappings of SciFi).  The point of adhering to the possible lies in SciFi's capacity to warn or inspire readers by speculative forecasting of human problems, human solutions.  Star Wars is disinterested in any scientific question- it doesn't understand the distinction between robots and androids, it doesn't know what a parsec is, it doesn't know what lasers look like, it doesn't conform to basic principles of space flight, etc.  Lucas deliberately set his fantasy in the past to exclude association with SciFi.  What is the advantage of deliberately mislabeling either of these products?

"Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology."

-Asimov

"Science fiction is something that could happen—but you usually wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen—though you often only wish that it could."

-Clarke

"Realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.'

-Heinlein

"I will define science fiction, first, by saying what SF is not. It cannot be defined as “a story (or novel or play) set in the future,” since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not SF: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient."

-Dick

I knew from the beginning that I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale. I really thought I needed to establish from the start that this was a completely made up world so that I could do anything I wanted."

-Lucas

You may not know that Trinidad, Colorado was called the "sex change capital of the world" back in the 70s and 80s because Dr. Stanley Biber pioneered and performed thousands of sex re-assignment surgeries there.  He required applicants to live at least two years in their new roles, taking hormones before he would place them on the waiting list.  Downtown Denver, 200 miles away from Trinidad was the nearest safe place for most candidates to find a job and live life while making this adjustment.  Consequently, Downtown Denver has a particularly high population of transgendered people (which is nevertheless virtually undetectable) and that's where I have lived most of my life.  I think I can say with confidence that nobody is less disturbed or less likely to offer correction than an ordinary trans person, for whom such mistakes are commonplace.  Yes, there are activists working to change the status quo by bold confrontation and legislation.  Yes, there are attention seekers who quick to take offense at any social faux pas.  But it would be a mistake to characterize any community by its most outspoken members, particularly a community that depends on privacy for survival. 

Not only would I feel safe calling a trans woman "dude" in the middle of Posh night @ Tracks, I'd be surprised at any reaction at all.  The trans people I know are pretty much inoculated against any insult and are certainly some of the least PC people I know. 

Also, the word "dude" originated in my part of the world, derived from "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and applied to men who dressed for fashion (dandies) as opposed to men who dressed for outdoor work.  Funny, how transient and variable are the meanings of words over time and place: a word that once was used to offend straight men by implying effeminacy is now used to offend trans women by implying masculinity.

Still looking for some acknowledgement that you got two important facts wrong in your opening statement: (1) the law does not apply to "anyone" but only to caregivers in long-term care facilities, and (2) misgendering without accompanying threats of violence can never result in any potential jail time.  Please correct your previous misstatements.

That's important.  We're not discussing any people in California in any setting, we are talking about the rights of elderly and terminally ill people to protect their identity in the privacy of their own home.

Let's say you're walking down the street and you meet a stranger walking a dog down the street.  You say, "Cool dog, what breed is he?" and the stranger replies "Oh, she is a mutt." Wouldn't you effortlessly change pronouns out of common courtesy?  If you persisted in calling the dog he the stranger would assume you were suffering from some social deficit and move on quickly.  The sick and elderly wish to be extended the same common courtesy in their own bedrooms that any ordinary person would extend a dog in the street.  That's it.  They don't wish to know what you or Jesus or Rush Limbaugh or anyone really thinks about their identity, they just want you to do your job politely and professionally.

Imagine you lived your whole adult life as a man until you have an accident and live in a comatose state for 10 years, during which your healthcare providers decide that you are woman in their books and so they dress you in skirts and apply rouge and lipstick to your helpless body.  Wouldn't you consider that a humiliating violation?

Tyrrany is defined as a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power.  I would certainly apply that label to healthcare providers who use their position to taunt or harass the weak and disenfranchised.  I would not apply that label to California's relatively moderate effort to mitigate that harm.  

Read the law, it's not about speech.  It's about protecting LGBT folks in long-term care facilities, where discrimination has proved to be fairly commonplace.  Long-term care facilities have an advantage over many other types of service providers: once a client signs the combined impact of income liquidation and health deterioration make changing facilities a very unattractive option.  To find oneself trapped in a facility that is hostile to one's private identity seems to me like a terribly sad way to live life's final chapters.  A little legislation to set a base standard for human dignity is probably fine, although probably less than necessary in California as opposed to states with less LGBT protections generally.

Criminal charges would only follow if the harassment reached reached the point of physical harm to a senior citizen.  So at its most tyrannical, the state might use this provision to tack on up to a year to a conviction for violent crime vs. a senior citizen.

Now, this contradicts the NYT story from last Fri

Can you clarify if you are disputing the present reports?

I'm fairly convinced that Trump merits such a fate but the actual range of potential outcomes seems far broader to me.  What do you suppose are the National security consequences of a trial and conviction?  Do you foresee a sentence of death?  Will he be tried with co-conspirators?

IMDB lists Star Wars New Hope as the 20th Greatest Film of all time.  Sounds about right to me but I wouldn't call it a better movie than Empire Strikes Back and I wouldn't place Empire Strikes Back higher on the GOAT- rather I would lump all of Star Wars in as a single phenomenon in the 20th spot.

I like the method & the timeliness.  thx for info blamonkey

Thx, Tej- exactly what I was wondering.

sorry- how much time in advance are these topics determined, published, etc is what I'm asking.  I could research it myself I suppose but that might be boring.

Star Wars is not science fiction.  Knights, princesses, castles and magic are more properly devices of the fantasy genre.

Anybody know how far out these topics are determined (i.e. before or after Khashoggi)?

excellent post

I like FaustianJustice's use of Boecklin's "Self Portrait with Death as a Fiddler"

Is this you improving your topic to post ratio?

I would not lend too much credence to this quote.  The line was written for the play Lady Windemere's Fan and spoken by the titular character to her husband, who was falsely claiming that the woman with whom he was having an affair was only a friend. 

Let's remember that Victorian Age women were particularly idealized and marginalized.  An upper class man alone in a room with an unmarried woman meant scandal by default.  Even if the quote wasn't fiction, I'm not sure I'd consult the most famous gay man of a famously anti-feminine place and time for modern relationship insight.

We might also note that as a playwright famous for writing strong women characters, Wilde famously had many famous actress friends, including Ellen Terry, Lillie Langtry, and Sarah Bernhardt.

 jetblue

there's that moment

between the flapping

and the fall:

the old neanderthal

husk flutters up,

gripped by the mass

of matter's thrall.

once leveled off

and rothko we suspend

our worry on the width of wings:

all dark and heavy

things float soft above

the fluff struck dumb.

sunward pulling, trailing vapor,

wake and waking find

a thousand miles displaced:

a space more sensible

by the change of range,

mute chains of rain.

after the burn

but before the sinking

sets: inhaling indigo

in that moment,

then we go.

Is that given King Salman perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, we should only give him missiles if he promises to do better? Would you concede Saudi Arabia is hostile to US interests?

Recast the 9 members of the Fellowship of the Ring with characters from other novels? (i.e. Holden Caulfield as Golem)

Name 3 villains you've wished had won. 

Much thanks, I appreciate the detailed response.  I've never tried actual LD format but I have learned that using a current LD topic attracts more views.

I agree that last topic is about prioritization rather than one right's supercession.  I think I'd argue that application for public office inherently suppresses right to privacy (any employer has some responsibility for vetting potential employees) or limiting intrusion to strictly constitutional bounds and let the voters decide (that is, voters ought not vote for candidates who fail to prove their suitability via wide disclosure).

Interesting that the next topic is a subset of the present topic. I can think of good arguments for 3 positions but CON on Saudi Arms eludes me.  I certainly don't see how arms sales to Saudi Arabia advances any general American interest however rich a few Americans get off the sales.  Saudi Arabia is a major source of funding for the Taliban with whom we've been at war for 17 years.  We could end the war in a year if we just got our allies to stop financing our enemies, I expect.  Saudi money was the catalyst for ISIS's rapid expanision.  The Saudi Ambassador to the US financed at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. The surviving hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui has testified that the principle financier was then prince, now king Salman.  The same king who just murdered an American reporter and continues to deny an knowledge in the face of near universal scorn.  Saudi Arabia seems to me more like an active enemy: David throwing stones until Goliath sells him a pistol.

I never debated him and I never agreed with him much. But my impression was that there was a time in classic DDO when Latham was a bit of a mascot.  One thing everybody seemed to agree on was Roy's skill.  I was trying to think of a narrative hook that reflected the fortunes of DDO and thought aobut Roy.

Recommend three excellent ideas for my first debate on this site, pls.

You are gifted with the capacity to pronounce one curse and see that curse fulfilled.  What do you do?

Last time Roy Latham logged on was 11 months ago.  That's a pretty good marker.

Is there a tool that tracks historical website availability?

Was there a particularly memorable outage in 2017?  That might make a good marker.

But then, wouldn't anybody feel "when I left" was the moment it died for them.  What are some objective criteria for declaring a website dead?  Fewer than X visits per x time?  Mentions on social media? Priority on google?  There's probably somebody on here who knows that stuff for DDO and there's probably some industry standard we might find.

All politicians in any context? 

Just full on reign of terror all the time? 

Mandela said everybody is a politician in a democracy:

if true, oughtn't we shoot ourselves first?

Well, it depends on how the conqueror defines improvement, doesn't it?  The Borg would eliminate all discontent and loneliness in a single afternoon.  Education?  The Borg could download the collective knowledge of a thousand civilizations in a matter of seconds.

Look, if you're serious about such a proposal the first question you've got to answer is whether you intend to give Africans citizenship.  Africa has four times the US population.  If you give them the franchise- then Africans control the govt., the capitol moves to Cairo or Lagos and Africans will likely assert their lawful priority over US resources.  If you don't give them the vote, then you have effectively re-instituted African slavery on a three-thousand fold scale and reversed the American narrative since 1860.  Somehow, you don't forsee the scale of the war that might be waged to prevent such an outcome.  Like those fictional characters in Stark Trek, I would fight the enslavement of a continent,  I would die for that just cause. The world might end in such a war.  Somehow, you think the UN would be fine with one power absorbing 54 votes ( a full quarter of UN) by force, essentially coup d'etat if the UN were a state.  I think your plan is likely the fast road to global thermonuclear war.

You have the opportunity to live the life of any character in any book.  What character?

Hollywood calls, asks you to pitch a film in two minutes- what would you pitch?

why YYW? why coal? why the change?

cut & paste lyrics to a well-loved song.

My favorite part is where Mitt Romney reads Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger obsessively.

may i ask your nationality?

Tim Worstall's piece ran in Forbes Jul 20, 2017, months before the first wave of charges were filed against Manafort, 30 days before Manafort's 2016 emails to Deripaska were made public, offering Russia private briefings as Trump's campaign manager in exchange for debt forgiveness. Since then, Manafort's lieutenant and co-conspirator flipped, a jury found Manafort guilty of 8 counts of conspiracy and money laundering, Manafort himself has pled guilty to more counts and has picked up  a few new charges of lying under oath as well as contacting Russian intelligence from jail requesting the intimidation of several witnesses testifying against him.  Additionally, Deripaska has now made the loan documents public, showing that the NYTimes actually low-balled the number-  the loan was $18.9 million, not $17 million.

TIME's story is from Saturday, cognizant of all the facts established over the past 18 months that Worstall lacked when he made his argument.

Not that it's a good argument- essentially, crimes aren't crimes if commited in a corporate disguise.  Worstall seems like a reasonably honest British blogger.  I wonder how he feels about your dishonest use of his old arguments made in ignorance of current events as a seeming reply to present discoveries.

TIME's story correctly treats the loan as established fact.  TIME's scoop this weekend is that one of the Russian oligarchs involved publicly stated that he gave Manafort a lot of money and was leaning hard on him during the Trump campaign.  That is, a known Russian spy who was sanctioned by Trump as recently as Dec 19th for interferring with elections in Eastern Europe and passing out millions in Russian bribes is confirming that he frequently called and threatened Trump's campaign chairman during the election.

So both sides of these phone calls agree on the contents of those calls, agree that content was corrupt.  Imagine Trump was innocent of collusion for a moment and envisage that moment when Trump learned his top guy was tens of millions of dollar in hoc with the most powerful mobsters in the world and was offering to brief those mobsters on Trump's secret plans.  An innocent Trump would howl up the twitterverse.  An innocent Trump would call for capital punishment. But in fact, Trump's present position is that Manafort has been treated very unfairly and that he is seriously considering pardoning Manafort.  Therefore, we know Trump was not disturbed when his top campaign guy proved to be a Russian asset, as did his top intelligence guy.

I have not seen Solo.

my ranking:

Empire Strikes Back

Rogue One

New Hope

Last Jedi

Revenge of the Sith

Force Awakens

Attack of the Clones

Phantom Menace

Return of the Jedi, which y'know, I still love it, I'll definitely watch it again.

yeah, I've been checked out for some time but I did some debates and mafia stuff years back.

How bout the opening sequence in Apocalypse Now?

hey.  went over to DDO and saw 0 items of interest plus somebody ranting about bsh stealing DDO.  I thought that sounded like a good idea.

Not possible to answer honestly with only one movie, there are many movies I consider essential.  But to play the game I'll say Wender's Wings of Desire