It was dry, dark humor, but Mal was hilarious at times...to me.

When I was yea high 'til I was three
I suffered from petit mal epilepsy
Any excitement gave me a fit
But there were drugs to cure me of it

Weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Whenever Krishna sneezes
I get weird diseases

So at the least sign of emotion
I got a tranquilizing potion
Thus from the time I was a young boy
I could feel neither anger nor joy

Weird diseases
Random weird diseases
Once from eating recalled cheeses
I got weird diseases

Nearly fatal renal cysts
Maybe Asperger's if that exists
Pityriasis rosea
Two separate times giardia

Weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Wafting on the toxic breezes
I get weird diseases

Debilitating spider bites
Hiccups for three days and nights
A thousand earaches, one deformed eardrum
Hyperacusis, what's that from?

It's from weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Whenever baby Jesus pleases
He gives me weird diseases

Chronic fatigue
COPD
Petit mal epilepsy
Two big holes inside my brain
Migraine aura sans migraine

Weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Weird diseases
I get weird diseases

I loved Firefly, truly I did. Sure, The Wire and I had longer together but with Firefly...Firefly always felt like we left something unfinished. But, you know, I'm beginning to feel like I can let Firefly go now. I've accepted that in this life some truly beautiful things will be cut short - and that stings like a mother, but its _O.K_ because we were privileged to share those fleeting moments, and we still have our memories and the DVD box set.

ps. True Story, my current employer revealed to me that I became his first choice for the job after I correctly identified an idly muttered Firefly quotation. (two by two, hands of blue).

pps. Did anybody else watch Castle purely because it was easy to imagine Castle was Mal in an alternate universe. Well, maybe not purely - Stana Katic is very easy on the eye, but it was like, maybe 75% of the reason.

ya, he pronounces it like 'mal' from malicious, not mol like molify. Is this a UK vs US thing?

Yeah, the total "lockup" of the muscles (even after she hit that patch of rocks too), absolutely rigid, is pretty odd. It was almost akin to a grand mal or other types of seizure that cause the same thing. Maybe this was a life-long issue and they happened to see the very end. I'm guessing that quite possibly that outcropping of rocks was the real "killer" (hit in the head or spinal cord injury; we already know it was strong enough to break the jaw, perhaps it did more than just that).

The part that is a bit more odd is that the rigidity "appeared" to still be there when they got to her. I don't know if a seizure, plus something killing you, can lock you up like that. If not, then like others said it wasn't a very normal death, with something she ate as the most probable issue.

Just guessing though...

I don't think your experience is the norm, that people abuse the system to get 2 years paid time off then leave the job/career that just paid them. They would certainly not get a glowing review from the ex-employer, and the new employer would have to hire them also knowing they've been on leave for 2 years (so would have no idea what advancements had been made in that time)...which seems unlikely, especially in todays employment environment where decent paying jobs are hard to find.

Like I said to bob, in a perfect world where people think ahead, are responsible, and plan financially and sexually, I would agree with you. Since we don't live in that world, your idea only creates more mal-adjusted, unsupervised children that we pay for later with high crime, therapy, lost productivity, etc. It's way cheaper to pay for a good outcome than it is to pay more later for the bad outcome....and you get a good outcome. No brainer to me.

Uh huh. Have an excruciatingly painful grand mal seizure a few times, where you lose consciousness(thankfully) from lack of oxygen because you literally cannot draw breath, waking up not knowing who you are for an hour, then tell me you won't change your behavior and bucket list to avoid it (oh, and the death) in the future. Easy to say, harder to do.

He totally screwed up the part were River gained or had her "powers" naturally (she was only naturally/gifted mentally, that is, she was a genius or prodigy). That came from the experimenting FROM the Alliance... Same with her fighting abilities, that was also an Alliance "gift" (to use her as a "psychic weapon"). But I think Joss already made the point IN the show that Mal was indeed a very shady person, if you didn't get that you are an idiot!

You were supposed to know that the Alliance brought a lot of great things with them, but they also stole your freedom...essentially (in exchange for a world with lots of rules).

But, what the Alliance was up to "behind the scenes" is what was really everyone's main concern--which they covered in Serenity a bit... In Serenity we found out that they had been up to a LOT more terrible things than just taking individuals like River--they were in the business of thinking they knew how to make all people "better" people...and one day they would try to institute it in force, en masse...

It seemed like the show was more a story about the civil war had the wrong side won--to some degree; I think you could make an argument for both. But it was obvious from watching that "Mal's side" was the "Confederacy", but they didn't stand for the same things, it was just that the history of things were playing out the same in many ways...and that was the point.

If The Union had been lying about a huge amount of things and started to institute policies that you went into action then they'd seem so very much like the Alliance in the show (BUT, some actions are exactly like what The Union did to Confederate "states" after the war; which DID leave them in states of welfare were citizens were left to fend for the most basic of necessities on their own--the Wild Wild West didn't just appear from comic books... Even the citizens had to fight off Indian attacks here and there and most of these attacks were born from the legacy of military campaigns and other actions via The Union (or before the States went to war--but, it's easy to see what the "Reavers" were based on, at least I assume that is what he had in mind).

Ironically, right now in our government it's doing the things that Mal was so concerned over that many that HAD lived in the Alliance regions hadn't been as worried about: slowly eroding our civil liberties, our regular freedoms are being taken away or one-by-one being hamstrung, and regulation is being destroyed allowing the corrupt to make this circle all that much worse (of course one day this cycle will just feedback on itself and create a revolution--as it always has). That is what The Alliance was doing, especially to the planets that didn't join immediately...so it does have a lot in common with our history. As The Union did do some pretty annoying and considering all of the people that needed help and were not getting anything, they actually directly killed a large amount of completely innocent people...just to punish some wealthy land owners and other people that had something to do with the Civil War. They should have taken the matter directly into their hands, but there is a lot on that as well (just like the show...why the Alliance never intervenes in the outer planets...).

God how I miss that show. I can only imagine what Joss could have accomplished in 7 or 8 seasons (maybe more). He could have made a show that could easily be written about in a college setting, about the civil war and the topics related to it. How grand the adventure could have been, except for one dickhead producer at Fox...

(*I take no responsibility for the parts of my comment I messed up on...* )


*nerd rant*

What Neil deGrasse Tyson and some of the other scientists/doctors (myself include) have are saying is that the IDEA of GMO's is a great one. The fact that we can engineer our foods to get the traits we want or add additional beneficial traits is an incredibly useful tool. We've already engineered rice that is able to produce vitamin A, which has been a huge help for places with vitamin A deficiencies and we can engineer potatoes to absorb less fats and oils when we fry them, there is also a professor at SUNY-ESF who is using GMO's to try and save the American Chestnut tree from extinction.

GMing is simply another tool in humanity's struggle to survive. First it was finding which foods were safe to eat, then it was breeding organisms within species to make inbred organisms that had the traits we wanted (think cattle, dogs, cats, corn, banana's; some of these things are more inbred than the Hapsburgs), then we starting creating our own hybrids across different species, and now we have GMO's.

However, what I object to is the current corporate use of GMO's to exploit farmers over patents, and breed for traits that people do necessarily need. NdT I'm sure is not advocating for that, but is advocating for the use of transgenic organisms/GMO's to solve some of the world's most pressing issues.

GMO's are probably the most powerful tool we have to curb world hunger, and mal-nutrition, and it could also be the thing that allows humans to venture beyond the solar system. What the Sift seems to be objecting to, and the rest of the "developed" world is the use of GMO's by greedy corporations who care more about turning a profit than solving world problems (there isn't very much money in feeding the needy and hungry). They are the one's making what appear to me more or less useless and potentially dangerous GMO's. Turn your anger away from GMO's specifically and narrow it to the ill use of GMO's by greedy corporations.

Lastly, the argument that "we don't know what they'll do" is for the most part unfounded, there are a decent amount of studies (find them yourself sorry) which show that GMO's in general won't cause harm (though it really depends on what you're trying to make). The same argument was made about the LHC "We don't know what will happen when we turn it on!" but everyone was fine.

I just saw that you can cut and past the automatic German transcript on the video info now, and maybe you even could before, it looks like it might be easier to correct this than to start from scratch? Actually you can get the gist of it from this, so maybe I was a bit hard on it earlier:

0:07 wieder sind Hunderttausende auf dem Nürburgring zusammengeströmt ob Zeugen
0:11 des Kampfes um die ersten großen Preis von Großbritannien zu werden
0:19 zehn Rennen waren stehen am Start
0:21 Mercedes Benz auto-union
0:23 Alfa Romeo Maserati und de La Red auch das deutsche Luftschiff «Graf
0:28 Zeppelin» mit seinen 4 Mercedes steckt Motoren
0:32 jetzt zu Besuch gekommen
0:34 da wiegt schon Aspekt in die Südkurve
0:36 SES Schlacht hat begonnen
0:46 die Kinder spielen sollte der Kredit in Japan in den Rennwagen aus der PROGEN
0:50 Schau
0:52 die Fahrer sind 500 Kilometer
0:54 auf dieser schwieriges den Rennstrecke der Welt alles andere als ein
0:58 Kinderspiel
0:59 mehr als tausend mal müssen die Kuppel schalten bremsen
1:04 der kleinste Fehler fair geblieben und 7
1:08 reiht sich an Trubel scharfe Steigungen Wechsel mit jenen Gefällen
1:13 und auch heuer Lich ist die Beanspruchung der Maschine
1:16 mehr als 7000 Touren müssen die Mietwohnung in der Minute drehen
1:20 und all das durch nahezu vier Stunden eine unerbittlich der Zerreißprobe der
1:26 Wagen und Fahrer
1:31 die Ausfälle sind groß
1:33 Caracciola dass ich in der dreizehnten Runde die Führung bei Rot hat trägt
1:38 die Hoffnungen der Kreuze Mercedes Benz Gemeinde
1:48 ich Weise niedergehen der Regenschauer Orban den Rink gefährlich
1:54 aber ruhig und sicher Streuer der erfahrene Meister ca Akio nach reinem
1:58 tragen dem Ziele zu
2:01 gespannt verfolgen die Oberin hingehöre Wagener und WAZ die Konstrukteure der
2:05 Mercedes Benz Rennwagen
2:07 die Regie in der Schlussphase des Kampfes
2:10 die letzte Runde unter dem Jubel der Zuschauer geht Aktion Adult Ziel

yeah is there a valid...purpose to spelling bees anymore other than to exploit the educational 1 percent of our youth?

does anyone from a public school ever win these or is it always socially mal-adjusted homeschooled kids?

what sort of useful skill do spelling bees teach our youth? is memorization a useful skill in the era where everyone has a pocket computer connected to the internet?

Wish I could invoke quality. It's only been a year or so ago that I was introduced to Mal Waldron, with this, which is amazing .

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

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by bjornenlinda.