(who was the first to excavate Chichen Itza)
Every time I see that name, I misread it as Chicken Itza. Which would be a great name for a Mexican chicken chain, you have to admit. "What's that bird? Itza Chicken! Get a giant bucket of Special Mayan Recipe Chicken for just $9.95! This week only at Chicken Itza!"
There's a joke about never having heartburn again in there, too, but I'm too tired.
And Grate Britten we'll nave air bee the say 'em.
Abigail, I second Will on this. There's another trap on the other side, as usual. If your first Phillip K. Dick novel was The Zap Gun, chances are you'd never read another.
I seem to have a talent for reading an author's worst, or at any rate least accessible, work first. Joanna Russ? And Chaos Died. Samuel R. Delany? Dhalgren. (I enjoyed both, but didn't pick up any more Russ for years because it was so much work. I kept looking for more explicit sex in Delany (I was 16 when I first read Dhalgren), but didn't find any for a long time...
Well, I certainly think the wormhole treatment in Farscape is more scientific than in, say, DS9. The idea that mathematics is involved, and that physical effects occur as a result of wormhole travel, help that. The episode where John encounters a transtemporal being, while similar in some ways to the DS9 exploration of the same material, talks much more about the details of the fragility of time.
DS9 turned into a space war story, too. We're in space opera territory in both cases, but they're both science fiction.
Abigail, that was a fantasy episode. Are you prepared to claim that all the episodes were fantasy, or is the presence of a single fantasy episode sufficient to kick the entire series out of the SF genre?
Someone above (can't find the comment) mentioned the wormhole travel and liveship warfare. I'm not dismissing the vampire and the magic painting; what do you have to say about those?
(I am SO SICK of space-opera vampires! They're currently the Big Bad on Stargate: Atlantis, and I just hope they can fix that before it's too late.)
[sets phaser on "hurt a lot," shoots Larry]
[suppresses an urge to list 10 silly things QJM could stand for - as a joke already done elsewhere on this selfsame site]
I should think 'intarweb' would be a web that looks just like a real one, but is actually non-lethal. You can identify it by the little red glowing crystal on the bottom.
Naw, Tim, I already have a pincushion. Oh, wait, you didn't mean the J2P2 one...
CHip - Patrick's prerogatives were scurrying around the metaphoric floor like so many pre-Combat cockroaches; my most gingerly stepping did not allow me to avoid stepping on one or two. Ever try to clean metaphoric prerogative-guts off your metaphoric shoe? It's disgusting.
Metaphorically.
*"God," in these sentences, is used as convenient shorthand for every possible manner of god, gods, spiritual forces, banished thetans, unseen powers, collective unconsciouses, tentacled horrors, etc.; imagine it as such and save us all many long paragraphs of defining terms, splitting hairs, and re-inventing wheels. ;)
I use the term 'the Divine'. This may not cover all the ground, but it does provide a neutral court for practitioners of different religions to discuss their spiritual similarities. Sometimes.
'Illogical' has a negative connotation; it implies that the person or belief is attempting logic and failing. 'Irrational' carries a similar load. I use 'non-rational' when I'm talking about my reasons for believing something that doesn't stand up to the scrutiny of my scientific mind.
Reason is a good tool. However, it doesn't have to be the only tool in the toolbox. There's room for faith (whatever that means to you), intuition, and any number of other things including 'that funny feeling I get in my eyes with the slight auditory hallucination of scratchy humming' -- which I think means something, but I don't know what. I'm fine with that.
About stuff looking like nails? Yeah.
Science is based on a kind of consciously adopted objectivity which is, I think, akin to agnosticism. If a physicist wants to prove that the zingo quark is the second cousin twice removed of the bingo quark, s/he may devise an experiment to test this hypothesis. If the experiment proves that actually they're unrelated little buggers, a physicist of any integrity will publish those results -- or even results that are inconclusive.
Prior to any experiment, there will be physicists who believe in the relationship and physicists who don't, but these beliefs are rather loosely held until the experiment is done. This is why some agnostics say that atheism is unscientific, because they think that atheists are holding a belief too strongly where no verifying experiment has been (or can be) done.
But religious belief is not the same as scientific belief. Heat water and it boils; tell me that heating water makes it freeze and I'll just tell you "Wrong!" Tell me that Amaunet is the wife of Amon and the Goddess of the Night, and I'll tell you "That's interesting." Do I believe you? Well...whether the ancient Egyptians believed that is a matter of research, like with the quarks. Whether I worship Amaunet as the Goddess of Night is a matter of my personal choice - it's an "act-as-if."
Atheists can be anything from fanatical "there is no God" types to people who see no evidence and choose the "act-as-if" of not worshipping, not believing. I know people who don't really believe in the Christian teachings they were raised in as a factual matter, but who continue to "act-as-if" as Christians, because a life without faith is too bleak. Is that an irrational choice?
I don't think 'logical' and 'illogical' are terms that apply very well to matters of spiritual belief (or lack thereof). It's just not the right mode of discourse. Atheism is certainly a spiritual position (just as absolute zero is a place on the scale of temperature). Is it a religion? Bad question; unanswerable.
Tim, sorry, left out some words. I was referring to the Self-Righteous Religion-Bashing Leftie Atheists. This error on my part was unintentional but inexcusable - but I hope not unforgivable.
Oh, I dunno, I see Kali-Ma around...and I saw Shiva in my spaghetti one time.
I just don't think it's a miracle. Happens all the time.
Tim, that's great...though I wouldn't rank Riley quite so high, in fact I might swap him with Adams. But Adams has sort of left the fold as it were, so I don't know if he belongs in the rankings at all.
Janet, that's great. Do you know the reference, though?
Lois, Barrayar works because enough of the people in the government have enough honor enough of the time to make it work.
To get a description of the Bush Administration, simply substitute 'none', 'any', 'any' for the three instances of 'enough' above.
Not that a Barrayaran system would work here even with honor among the governing; fast-penta is kind of useless if there's a Fifth Amendment, for example...
My only criticism about your Spain comment is that the terrorists could have been trying to get Spain out of Iraq, robbing the "Coalition" of one more country's support. Plausible only in Spain, where the opposition had promised exactly that (later mealy-mouthed out of it). So even if they hate democracy as boar hates dog, they could still have a motivation to influence that election.
As in awe as everyone else. And I bet he didn't say "necromancy" in the first draft.
He tried to undermine the Constitution of the United States. His actions may not fit the legal definition of 'treason', but I think he's a traitor.
Wacky country we live in.
Jimcat, I agree with your overall statement. But I just heard some commentary on the radio that pointed out that what the Spanish PM-elect actually said was that they'd pull the troops out IF the UN didn't take a larger role AND if sovereignty wasn't transferred back promptly - and gave a deadline of June 30.
Since the Bush Admin is currently trying to woo the UN back to Iraq, and (officially, anyway) plans to hand back sovereignty on June 30, this amounts to a hill of beans. Unless the Bushies go back on their promises, which is, of course, unthinkable. <cough>
But you're quite right that the new Spanish government is not going to fetch sticks for the Bush Admin quite as much. (Though they will have to contend with avoiding the appearance of "caving in to terrorists.") And Juan Williams generated the second NPR correction in as many weeks when he called March 19, 2003 the "beginning of the War on Terror."
FMguru, while your analogy has merit, I'd take issue with "not as civilized." Though I've recently come to the conclusion that there is only one civilized country in the Western Hemisphere - Canada - I'm not sure Britain does better than the US.
More recently we could compare the US with Numenor...a once great country with corrupted leaders, (about to be) crushed by the gods.
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| 2004 | 114 |
| 2003 | 49 |
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