Eratosthenes

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Posts posted by Eratosthenes


  1. Who called him a celebrity? He was a good man that died too early.

    Everyone here is calling him a celebrity..........

    As for good men that die too early? The obituaries are full of them every day except they don't get major media coverage.

    Right. We all know that. But by that same 'celebrity' ticket I, at age 20, didn't really know who Ed McMahon was or what he actually did until after his death last week. Although he had been retired for 17 years and was best-known for his role as Johnny Carson's sidekick, people were still sad to see him go as he contributed positively to the entire nation's society through the TV medium. He wasn't a celebrity for me but he was in the hearts of others.

     

    You're correct about how everyone is treating him as a celebrity. What I meant is that no one had used that specific word for him in this thread. While Ed McMahon was a celebrity to others but not myself, Billy Mays was a celebrity to me and not others.


  2. His death really caught me off guard and saddened me. I just saw him like two nights ago on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" and his big new reality competition TV show just kicked off a few weeks ago. He started with little and had made so much for himself and was just coming into probably the best part of his life when it suddenly and needlessly ended. Very sad.


  3. Wow such a heated thread.

     

     

    When I heard of his death I was completely unmoved. My entire life (20-year-old late Generation Y person, here) I had only heard negativity expressed towards him. Never a positive thing aside from the fact that he used to be an amazing entertainer.

     

    I am extremely EXTREMELY protective of children. My biggest fear is death (especially since I'm atheist), but I would lay down my life for any child. A few weeks ago my stepfather grabbed my 6-year-old sister by the neck hard enough to leave a mark. He has a short temper because of a blood pressure problem that causes him to anger easily, but this was a new level for him. Although I heard of it after the fact I still very nearly murdered him in a rage of proportions I had never in my life felt.

     

    THAT BEING SAID, I've read Jackson's life history in light of recent events and now that I know his history and the circumstances surrounding his controversy, I do not find him to be at fault. Did he have issues? Of course. Was he a pedophile that molested children? I seriously doubt it. The psychologist's report was that Jackson was a regressed 10-year-old and that Jackson didn't fit the profile for a child molester. He was abused severely by his father at that age and as he became older and more independent his mind reverted him to the age he was never able to positively experience because of his father.

     

    All in all, take away the abuse he received that caused him to make odd choices later on and nix out the transition from black to white skin as a result of his vitiligo, and all you have left is an extremely successful celebrity that went a bit overkill on the plastic surgery...which sounds very familiar.

     

    Knowing what I do now about his life and death, I do feel more empathy towards him than I previously had.


  4. Allow me to clarify why I like each one so much...

     

    TMP: a Great re-introduction to the crew, the ship, and a nice update on what's been happening over a decade.

     

    TWOK: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN!!!!

     

    TSFS: I liked seeing how far the crew would go to save Spock. To borrow a phrase from Stargate, "We never leave a man behind."

     

    TVH: Made ABSOLUTELY no sense, but made up for it with hilarity! :laugh:

     

    TFF: .....

     

    TUC: I really love how dynamic everything feels in the movie. Also the production values were excellent (best of all of the TOS movies I think) and it gave a nice segway into the Klingon-friendly next generation of explorers.

     

    GEN: Data was hilarious (maybe sometimes creepy), I loved the TOS tie-in, I loved the villain, the crashing sequence was cool...I liked it a lot more than I disliked it.

     

    FC: The Borg colflict was excellent. I get chills at the beginning every time. Seeing the circumstances surrounding Zephram Cochrane's maiden flight was really cool.

     

    INS: I think that of all of the movies, this one's most in-keeping with Star Trek's message. It puts the Prime Directive center-stage and really sticks to some of Starfleet's core values.

     

    NEM: I have to say, the opening title sequence was corny, BUT beyond that it just kept getting better and better. The death at the end was both touching and believable, regardless of how much I like the character.

     

    ST: Well what can I say? It's awesome! I've seen it 5 times. :elephant:


  5. The turrets were fairly in-keeping with canon. They were similar to the phasers of Enterprise and they pulsed in a manner similar to the phasers of the ship in TOS.

     

    The girl that was blown out into space was blown out simply because the hull was ruptured and the corridor she was in was exposed to the vacuum of space...there's no mystery. If you want proof that no one was actually in any of the turrets, recall that Captain [George] Kirk was the ONLY person left on the ship once he ordered the evacuation and everyone piled out in the shuttles. He was controlling all weapons from the bridge both manually and via automation to keep Nero's attack from destroying the shuttles.


  6. Looks like it's performed better already than the success some of you guys were willing to see in it. Only FIVE weeks in at $226,428,402 total domestic ($338,388,626 total worldwide) it's made more than any recent franchise reboot (The Incredible Hulk, Superman Returns, Casino Royale, and Batman Begins...some of these were in theaters for 19 weeks, mind you) and has already surpassed The Wrath of Khan as adjusted for inflation. This puts it, adjusted for inflation, in second place just behind The Motion Picture...which it's expected to soon overtake.

     

    Among nationwide holdovers, Star Trek saw the smallest slide, down 34 percent to $8.3 million. Logging $222.7 million in 31 days ($21.2 million of which from IMAX runs), it flew past Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to become the second-biggest movie of the Star Trek franchise adjusted for ticket price inflation, and it has set a course for the top spot currently held by the first movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
    http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2594&p=.htm

  7. I just recently watched the special features disc for season 4 and in it there was mention that there were plans to make Shran a member of the Enterprise crew in season 5.

     

    Knowing that just pisses me off at the cancellation all over again. Seasons 5, 6 and 7 would have been a total blast setting the franchise up for movies covering the Romulan War and the foundation of the Federation.

    Oh wow, seriously? Man that does sting...Shran rapidly became one of my favorite Trek characters upon his introduction. I would really have loved to see him as a regular as well.


  8. Welcome back! And hahaha, I love how it says you've been online 1 second total. :roflmao:

     

    Hmm I hope that goes up after this post.

    Yep! 37 seconds! :jaw:

    At least it was a productive 37 seconds because he has 1677 posts.

    Quite productive! I've only managed 681 posts in 12 and a half DAYS! :elephant:


  9. That's a good question. Here's an even better one:

     

    If all the aliens are speaking their own languages and being translated by a chip in your brain, why do their lip movements match the English speech?

     

    :roflmao:

    Hehe, yeah the extra time that would have taken to have the actors move their lips one way on camera then dub themselves over off-camera would not only increase costs (financially and temporally) but it would have also made the dialogues a lot less fluid and believable as some people would be talking on-set and the others just moving their lips.

     

    Thanks you two for liking my explanation!


  10. Well I haven't actually researched it (which I should..I even own some of the books that would facilitate my research...like "Computers of Star Trek" and "The Klingon Dictionary" and "The Physics of Star Trek"), but in one episode of DS9 Quark's universal Translator breaks and he has to have it fixed on the spot. His brother has to actually pull it out from deep inside his ear to work on it, then re-implant it. This [proximity to the brain and placement within the ear canal] signals to me that it the translators might be able to communicate with one another and signal what the speaker intends for the listener to hear...so if the Klingon means to insult someone in his native tongue, the translators will purposefully not translate what he said.

     

    I also recall that there were a lot of non-humans that just decided to learn English from the get-go, and were thus bilingual (if not more), and in that case it might be more simple as far as what the translators do and don't translate.