2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Arthur Clarke - On Religion. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

>> ^bookface:

I agree with Chomsky that it's highly improbable the GW Bush administration engineered the entire thing from head to toe, and it was never leaked. If there was any conspiracy happening it was more likely that GWB and friends simply left the back door and looked the other way in terms of security. Why go through the trouble of orchestrating a highly elaborate international black op when you can just ignore guys like Richard Clark, and count the days until something goes down? Perhaps what W was thinking while sitting in that school house on 9/11 was, "Heck, I didn't think they'd make SUCH a ruckus." Of course I'm speculating but I suppose I'm making Chomsky's point, too.


This. (thanks @bookface)

Think of the Iran-Contra scandal. Was Reagan involved? "I Don't recall."

"funds for the Contras, or any affair, the President (or in this case the administration) could carry on by seeking alternative means of funding such as private entities and foreign governments.[47] Funding from one foreign country, Brunei, was botched when North's secretary, Fawn Hall, transposed the numbers of North's Swiss bank account number. A Swiss businessman, suddenly $10 million richer, alerted the authorities of the mistake. The money was eventually returned to the Sultan of Brunei, with interest.[48]<-wikipedia

I agree with Chomsky that it's highly improbable the GW Bush administration engineered the entire thing from head to toe, and it was never leaked. If there was any conspiracy happening it was more likely that GWB and friends simply left the back door and looked the other way in terms of security. Why go through the trouble of orchestrating a highly elaborate international black op when you can just ignore guys like Richard Clark, and count the days until something goes down? Perhaps what W was thinking while sitting in that school house on 9/11 was, "Heck, I didn't think they'd make SUCH a ruckus." Of course I'm speculating but I suppose I'm making Chomsky's point, too.

Beautiful.

More of his project here: http://www.joe-clarke.com/index.php?/ongoing/tchaikovsky/

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video How Clark Griswold really feels about his boss: N at all SFW. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

>> ^marbles:

@cheerleaders for Western colonialism and imperialism
This is what you support:
http://videosift.com/video/Make-No-Mistake-NATO-committed-War-Cri
mes-in-Libya
Get ready for the occupation force in Libya, the advance on Syria, and maybe even a confrontation with Iran.
http://videosift.com/video/Military-Sources-Reveal-Ground-For
ce-Invasion-of-Libya
http://videosift.com/video/World-War-III-Defined-Wider-War-
Unfolding-in-Middle-East
This has been planned out for at least 10 years.
Gareth Porter: General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.


And meanwhile you lament the loss of monsters like Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad. Well done.

@cheerleaders for Western colonialism and imperialism

This is what you support:

http://videosift.com/video/Make-No-Mistake-NATO-committed-War-Crimes-in-Libya

Get ready for the occupation force in Libya, the advance on Syria, and maybe even a confrontation with Iran.
http://videosift.com/video/Military-Sources-Reveal-Ground-Force-Invasion-of-Libya
http://videosift.com/video/World-War-III-Defined-Wider-War-Unfolding-in-Middle-East

This has been planned out for at least 10 years.
Gareth Porter: General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.

I just don't get why those other people are there. The only person I want to see is Peter Dinklage the rest there's no point unless it's Emilia Clarke and she doesn't need a microphone.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

But to care about SF, it has to be about how it relates to human beings. In some sense we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who are experiencing the wonder. Otherwise it's dry and boring.

When I think about SF movies without good character, I think of Transformers. Style over substance.

Contact on the other hand had a great central character that let you feel the wonder of what she was experiencing through her eyes. That's vital.

>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^dag:
Hmmm. Examples? I guess Dave Bowman was pretty flat, but HAL as a character definitely wasn't. Deckard in Bladerunner was not flat, very tortured nuanced performance by Harrison Ford. I think I'd have to disagree with you gorillaman. The best SF, like all stories, is character driven.
Well there's Rama, where Clarke correctly focuses on the ship. I feel like people who complain about the humans' characterisation just aren't reading the book right. I read Schild's Ladder recently - the characters have intellectual disagreements but not much else, to the point of lacking differentiated sexes, and it still paints a compelling portrait of future civilisation. I hesitate to mention Ayn Rand's Anthem, but she understood if you detail your protagonist too explicitly then you lose your universality of meaning.
It's not often an author can write SF in its purest form and still get published, so it's easier to find examples where too much emphasis on the human elements detracts from the work. Like Asimov's Foundation, one of my favorites. The characters in that book are downright intrusive on what's otherwise an exploration of events on a galactic scale. After the reader gets his introduction to the wonderful concept of psychohistory, the characters start to drive the plot and everything falls apart. The rest of the book and the subsequent books in the series become just Some Stuff That Happens. Well stuff happens every day, I don't need to read about stuff. Just like Rama's sequels, no good can come from watering down high literature with narratological cliches.
Good SF communicates to the reader a single idea as clearly and elegantly as possible then ends. Characterisation, even plot, are distractions.
It's an educational experience. How would you feel if your maths textbook gave the number two a quirky personality, and the equals sign a terrible secret to hide? That's fine if you just want to be entertained, but not if you want to learn something. I use SF as a kind of zen meditation, projecting my consciousness into a construction of a future I won't visit in person, in order to become enlightened.

>> ^dag:
Hmmm. Examples? I guess Dave Bowman was pretty flat, but HAL as a character definitely wasn't. Deckard in Bladerunner was not flat, very tortured nuanced performance by Harrison Ford. I think I'd have to disagree with you gorillaman. The best SF, like all stories, is character driven.

Well there's Rama, where Clarke correctly focuses on the ship. I feel like people who complain about the humans' characterisation just aren't reading the book right. I read Schild's Ladder recently - the characters have intellectual disagreements but not much else, to the point of lacking differentiated sexes, and it still paints a compelling portrait of future civilisation. I hesitate to mention Ayn Rand's Anthem, but she understood if you detail your protagonist too explicitly then you lose your universality of meaning.

It's not often an author can write SF in its purest form and still get published, so it's easier to find examples where too much emphasis on the human elements detracts from the work. Like Asimov's Foundation, one of my favorites. The characters in that book are downright intrusive on what's otherwise an exploration of events on a galactic scale. After the reader gets his introduction to the wonderful concept of psychohistory, the characters start to drive the plot and everything falls apart. The rest of the book and the subsequent books in the series become just Some Stuff That Happens. Well stuff happens every day, I don't need to read about stuff. Just like Rama's sequels, no good can come from watering down high literature with narratological cliches.

Good SF communicates to the reader a single idea as clearly and elegantly as possible then ends. Characterisation, even plot, are distractions.

It's an educational experience. How would you feel if your maths textbook gave the number two a quirky personality, and the equals sign a terrible secret to hide? That's fine if you just want to be entertained, but not if you want to learn something. I use SF as a kind of zen meditation, projecting my consciousness into a construction of a future I won't visit in person, in order to become enlightened.

>> ^dag:

For Rama, I'd stick with the original. I'm not a fan of the sequels, especially after Gentry Lee got involved in Clarke's dotage.
Speaking of SF remakes, I'd love John Varley's Titan series to be done on the big screen. I think CGI would now make it more than possible.

Maybe it's just me, but I honestly can't remember any events of significance happening in the original book. It's like almost all Clarke books, it's got a great idea as a set piece, but the characters are flat as pancakes, and the plot doesn't really go anywhere either.

I tended to like Clarke's collaborative books better, because they usually had better characters and plot, but were still wrapped around an awesome Clarke idea.

I haven't read the Titan series, but again, that's a Hugo-award winning sci fi novel post-1970. It's also annoying because if you go and check, some major movie house already owns the movie rights on all these novels. Clearly someone has the foresight to go and acquire it, but it never percolates up to the bigwigs to green light an actual film.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

For Rama, I'd stick with the original. I'm not a fan of the sequels, especially after Gentry Lee got involved in Clarke's dotage.

Speaking of SF remakes, I'd love John Varley's Titan series to be done on the big screen. I think CGI would now make it more than possible.


>> ^NetRunner:

@dag supposedly Ender's Game is too, but it's been a few years away for about a decade now.
I'm sorta iffy on how they can make a movie based on Rendezvous interesting. I think they almost have to transplant the events & characters of Rama 2 into Rama's first visit to make it a decent film.
Even then, to make it true to the series, they'll have to instill a deep interest in solving the mystery of who the Ramans are, why they sent the ship, why there's so much weird stuff in the ship, and then pointedly provide zero answers, and zero hints.
Then after 4 books give you a completely stupid answer to all those questions that almost makes you sorry you read the books in the first place.

"starting construction on the biggest federal building project in the Washington area since the Pentagon...The project will bring together more than 15,000 employees now scattered in 35 offices"

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-09-09/politics/homeland.security.headquarters_1_homeland-security-historic-buildings-consolidation?_s=PM:POLITICS>
> ^bmacs27:

>> ^marbles:
disgusting lying pricks. both of them.

33 new buildings eh?

<tin foil hat>

One of VBS.TV's correspondents, who is of Pakistani decent went around the neighborhood and spoke to a bunch of people who lived there and had access to the "compound". A lot of them wished that Bin Laden had been living there because they sounded like they would have been intrigued yet fearful. It was admitted that Bin Laden never lived in that compound. It's an interesting video. The one prior was also interesting as the correspondent had access to places in Pakistan that we could never imagine without him having gone there where blind, tongueless, warriors make machine guns by hand.

I think maybe the reason for this is, Bin Laden had been killed prior - by who? Who knows. But American intelligence knew and I think since Obama was probably fresh in office, the event would highlight "The War on Terror" so Obama and his administration held onto the information for a "better" time.

Anyway, I trust Vice more than our mainstream news, especially when you have a guy on the ground getting information from the source, which VBS.TV has done quite well in their own sort of way in Libya, North Korea and elsewhere.

I also trust Bill Maher but I understand that he is unable to get into tinfoil subjects that make the left look "conspiratorial"... even though our government is absolutely corrupt enough to look the other way as the Twin Towers were bombarded or lie about Osama Bin Laden's death for political gain.


And Haha the last comment Clark makes about "pathological liars".
</tinfoil hat>