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avortac4's Replies
Probably a combination of a synthesizer and a composer.
When I look at him sitting there next to that computer (that's being hacked through a modem and a telephone line), it reminds me of the old BBSes (yes, there was something before the internet), and brings the 1980s world to the viewer - when things were still pretty much 'good' in many ways they're not anymore, and when there was still optimistic hope for the future.. there's a specific, inspirational 'energy' of 'vibe' in that particular scene that I can't quite explain.
Now, the movie itself is no masterpiece, but it has nothing seriously wrong about it, either. It has good comedy, fun jokes, great performances (Jennifer Grey really looks and sounds angry, when her character is angry), it swims through surreal absurdity without going too deep, it shows us unexpected things that these teens choose to do (instead of the stupid things realistic teens would probably do), it shows many kinds of 'freedom', and it dares bare the truth about women and relationships in general.
Great music, likable characters, interesting story and plot that you don't know where it's going to go next (and even if you do, you enjoy it so easily), and the absolutely ridiculous principal that is stubborn enough to try the impossible (and even breaks the law in his mad obsession that deepends as the movie goes on).
There's so much to like about this movie, and not that much to hate.
It even dares ask important philosophical questions about family dynamics and being uptight. It dares go against the convention by questioning 'school mentality' that always praises the fact that people are locked into these mental prisons at an age, when they should be outside, enjoying and exploring the world, not sitting in a boring room with little stimuli with raging hormones and bored out of their minds.
Anyone that thinks this movie is bad or 'pathetic', is really missing a lot. Their loss.
Anyone can have any opinion about anything. But would you trust a monkey's opinion about a 1961 Ferrari, after you see it defecate in it?
From my viewpoint, this is not a perfect movie, and I can understand if some people see it as something too silly.
I didn't even see this until way into mid-2000s the first time.
However, having lived in the 1980s and 'tasted' the energy/atmosphere/feel/magic/whatever anyone wants to call it - I can assure anyone, that this movie 'radiates' that special feel of that magical era. There definitely is -something- about this movie, atmosphere-wise, that is very powerful, and it adds its own charm on top of that, making it an unique blend of 1980s 'energy-atmosphere' and the charm of the moviemakers.
I also think the musics are pretty good and well done and chosen, and the locations are interesting and visually stimulating (provoking to think and remember beauty of the nature and Universe in general, as well as art).
There's also a subtle feeling of 'possibilities' within the atmosphere and also the premise of the movie. Taking a day off means you can do anything, instead of having to sit in a boring institutional building like a slave robot, trying to memorise irrelevant and soon-to-be-obsolete- 'facts' and lies so you can do well in a 'test', so you can eventually become a good corporate wage slave..
When Ferris opens the curtains and asks how he's supposed to handle school on a 'day like this', you can imagine your own 'perfect day' to do things, and you get the feeling that on a day like this, anything is possible.
It's an exciting thought; to be able to have an adventure in a big city and suburbia, to find new locations and places to explore, to have all kinds of unforeseen fun with friends, the possibilities seem endless.
Another scene that has a weirdly similar feel about 'all kinds of fun things are possible', is Rooney's office (for some reason).
Cameron's level of 'trouble' has nothing to do with the level of damage to the car.
The whole point of the scene was not the car or its damage, but Cameron's overcoming his fear of his parents. Instead of always cowering like a gutless bunny, Cameron grew a spine and learned to confront his fears, he found strenght from inside of himself, and regardless of what ACTUALLY HAPPENS (although this whole thing being fiction, there's nothing definite that does), the important stuff already happened;
Cameron became better-equipped for life, and that will benefit him for the rest of his incarnation, even IF his father gave him a beating.
In my opinion, a father that's used to bossing his coward son around easily, isn't prepared or equipped to suddenly handle a confident son that talks back to him after wrecking his car.
This whole thing could lead to a chain reaction, that, although shocking at first, will FORCE everyone in Cameron's family to re-evaluate their priorities (that are 'out of whack', even according to Ferris), and perhaps his father will, due to reflection on his priorities and chasing the material over the more important, realize the depth of his mistakes, and change course.
I have experienced many a similar thing in life, where at first, something shocking has happened, but later I have realized due to reflection and insights, just how big a blessing that something shocking was.
At least this is the scenario I like to imagine, and in my opinion, this is the direction the movie hints this is going. Regardless of how things actually 'go' with his father, Cameron is still better off having a spine and confronting his fears, and this might actually really shake his father into a completely better way of thinking about things - and all this might as well affect the cleanliness-freak-of-a-mother, that will realize her child's happiness is more important than whether the floors sparkle a certain shade of gold.
Why is 'Beyonder' not on the list? He's the most Omnipotent Being I have ever seen in comics, Q is actually just 'partially omnipotent', as he's part of a continuum with OTHER 'Q's.
Beyonder can basically do 'anything' (except read people's minds, or understand things, especially explanations, predict future or see what his actions will cause, create happiness in himself or understand his own feelings, etc. etc..), Q has limitations (especially imposed by other 'Q's or the continuum).
Other entities can take Q's power away, but not even Eternity itself can take Beyonder's power away. Heck, Beyonder even eliminated DEATH completely! (So even Q couldn't kill anyone)
God is not a character, it's more like a religion-tainted word referring to the Great Spirit, and thus has nothing to do with comics, TV shows or other fiction, and should be excluded. However, as the only truly Omipotent Being, He is BEYOND (no pun intended) any need / urge to WIN anything, as conflict would not exist - unless it was His will.
Could you stop with the "/"s and start using actual english words, please?
"If you want to write a story you get to make your Dyson Sphere as big or as small as you want.
I my story, the Enterprise unknowingly obliterates 700 billion inhabitants of the sphere in my story because it is smaller than the head of a pin. "
What kind of pin is it? Don't you have enough imagination to make a pin really big?
Are you imposing pin size limitations in your story? Why don't you get to make them as big as you want?
"There's no light in space right?"
Where do you think that bright ball in the sky is? Outside space?
..and it wouldn't need all these silly 'is a bunch of molecules arrange to look like you the same thing as you'?
And OF COURSE there would be a way to know if someone is a clone or not (no one is really a clone, everyone is a soul, regardless of whether they exist in a physical body or not, or what that body may or may not look like), and personality would be instantly different and memories would vary completely, if a different soul incarnated instead of the intended soul, and if there's NO soul whatsoever, then the differences would be even easier and quicker to detect.
I don't get the thinking where people can somehow reconcile the stupidity of 'it looks like me, so it must be me' with 'a human being is only a bunch of molecules'. Where's the soul? Why doesn't anyone talk about what happens to YOU, instead of what happens to the BODY?
YOU are not your BODY, everyone knows this basic fact about life, RIGHT?
- The transported individual suffers _NO_ ill effects from the procedure, although they should AT LEAST be groggy, like you would be after just waking up from a deep sleep. When the soul leaves the body and then comes back (especially into a completely new, freshly-created body it's not familiar with - the energy would be a bit different even if the molecular composition is exactly the same), it takes awhile to adjust. And yet these people have a pose, and arrive in that same pose and can keep going as if nothing happened.
- They often transport 'dangerous' things, like unauthorized weapons and such - so it's possible for a diplomat to smuggle poison into a spaceship, etc. Transporter would make illness, old age, and any smuggling of anything completely 100% impossible (at least if someone thought it through)
We also need to realize that someone living in a body that looks like you is NOT you. A clone is not you. A clone can never be you. You are your soul, regardless of what kind of body you live in, or what the body looks like, you are your own, individual self. Each identical twin is their own selves, they are not each other.
What kind of primitive world is this, when people's thinking doesn't even rise above the petty "if it looks like someone, then it must BE that someone"? Come on, stop to think about things once in awhile, please.
The way a transporter like that would work in REAL life, would not actually disassemble anything - it would just raise the frequency of the energy field around the body, OR the body itself (somewhat more dangerous), OR have a capsule of sorts (a small UFOship, if you will), that can rise to a higher plane of existence by manipulating its shell's surface energy field's vibration frequency, and then travel at super fast speeds in that higher plane, and then lower the frequency back to the physical level after arriving at the destination.
It would be just as fast, if not faster technique..
"Technically that's exactly what happens."
No, it isn't.
I know that from the typically nihilistic, physical worldview, any biological mass is just as good as another, and individualism is defined by molecules alone. So you can be destroyed, disintegrated, taken apart, disassembled, and then re-integrated, re-assembled, put together, re-integrated and composited back together by molecules alone.
However, not even identical twins are identical, and clone ONLY has to do with the physical body. So even if your physical body was copied 100% exactly, it would just be dead organic mass ('science' hasn't been able to revive a dead body even 1 second after the 'silver cord' is cut, and the soul leaves the body permanently - so, YOU, and thus, LIFE, needs more than the body to exist as a living entity), and in any case, not you.
But even if someone COULD be cloned into a living entity, it would have someone else's soul. Or it would not actually be living, it would be like organic robot, kept artificially 'alive' (or at least 'animated', because it would not be alive without a soul) by some kind of energy flows (just like a mechanic robot would).
What happens in transporters (not that THAT kind of transport would ever work as intended - another kind of transporting technology would be required to teleport living beings successfully), is that your body is disassembled and then re-assembled in another place, and your soul is connected to this bunch of molecules, because the silver cord doesn't get cut - so you basically reincarnate into this newly-created body right after the body has been transported (you can move at the speed of thought in the astral plane, so distance and speed are not problems).
The unrealistic bits are:
- Why reassemble people's bodies EXACTLY as they were, with sicknesses, old age, wrinkles, and all damages and injuries, if you don't have to? Every transport trip would basically create a PERFECT VERSION of the body..
"yeh how do they pay for space whores? "
Holodeck can provide anything and everything you need for free.
However, if they need to create a bartering system (for other-planetarians that use money etc.), replicator can create anything you need. Where is there any kind of problem?
Just replicator-create some Yamaha synthesizer for a musician on another planet, they'll pay you in their local currency, which you can then use to pay for any local goods or services, even the 'space whores'.
(Why specify 'space whores' anyway, and what makes them so SPACE? Aren't they just regular ones, or are you saying there are ones that float in space instead of living comfortably on planets? How about volunteer sexworkers that can't even be called 'whores'? (I know, on a capitalist-communist planet like this, that seems like a completely utopistic idea))
The problem with Q is similar than Borg.
One-dimensional, overly-powerful entity instead of something more 'normal'.
Borg is not cerebral, it's not the kind of 'cat 'n mouse' or 'bluffing' stuff that TOS was famous for, and it's not any 'deep cultural/philosophical revelation' that TNG brought us so many times.
As much as I love Q, as much as I like pondering 'omnipotence', the very existence of Q basically means the whole show could've just been Q's bad dream or something.
It basically means everything is irrelevant, because Q can always come and snap his fingers and nullify/reverse/change every and any event or outcome into anything. Q could basically RESET the whole show so that actually nothing happened, if he so wished. So anything happens in this show _ONLY_ because Q lets it.
Q is always somewhere in the background, with the power to nullify anything anyone does or says, so nothing has any meaning.
"It depends on what they mean by "explored." If it means just looking at stars and such through telescopes, the figure might be more."
Um.. if that's what 'explored' means, then it's ALREADY more right now on Terra.
Looking at a star from light years away is not really EXPLORING that star and its planet systems, now is it?
We already know a lot about this galaxy and its stars, and we know of other galaxies, and look at Hubble Deep Space photos to realize just how many there are (if it could zoom deeper, we'd see there are even more).
So based on YOUR theory of 'exploration', we have explored a million galaxies or more.
It's pretty pathetic that an advanced space vessel like the Enterprise, that can surpass the speed of light by assumedly enormous magnitude, has to be limited to one galaxy. It's like confining a modern lawyer to only operate inside one specific, small sandbox instead of being able to travel between the metropolies of the world and making evil deals in Tōkyō Sky Tree as well as in the expensive New York hotels.
A world, where people love each other and work for each other's wellbeing, is the happiest possible world. The more people work for each other, the more other people will also work for each other, so it's a beneficial cycle.
If the Enterprise was built in a world like this, and populated by people from this kind of a world, I would friggin' clean the nastiest toilets every day with a big, happy grin on my face, it would be that euphoric to even just exist in the same spaceship with people like that.
Also, people would appreciate my work, and I would feel it, which would make me want to work even harder, if possible.
Of course with that kind of future tech, and this kind of people, there would be enough wisdom and intelligence to arrange EVERYTHING to as good level as possible; toilets would indeed be auto-cleaning (has anyone seen japanese toilets, by the way?), as would everything else. Everything would be designed to be 'easily-autocleanable', and the spaceship would have enough awareness to know when and how to clean everything.
There would of course be enough 'humanlike droids' that also do ALL menial work, so people are FREE to cultivate their spirits, advance their social sciences, and help their civilization to grow happier and better for everyone, until they reach the optimal level in everything.
But sure, the idea of a moneyless world is SOO STOOPID, isn't it?
"There's no money and we all live in this utopian 24th century paradise" is a stupid one."
It's NOT a stupid one.
It's the only logical one - advanced beings do not need money as some kind of core for all life and existence, it's a temporary measure for primitive phase of any given civilization (that has been forcefully implemented on Terra as something permanent).
Money is supposed to be a tool for exchange, not an accumulative treasure that makes you 'rich'.
If money was used logically and as a simple, not-that-important-but-somewhat-useful tool that can be helpful to life, instead of greed-motivated
wage slave chain and accumulated measure of 'wealth and success', like it's used on Terra, then you'd have a bit of a point.
There are plenty of planets that do not use money. When you think about it, does money ever really do any work? Is money the ONLY way to make good people motivated to do something?
People that have never experienced, or have long ago lost, the 'joy of work', can't seem to imagine working without getting a SELFISH reward for the work.
How about UNSELFISH rewards? There are volunteer workers even on THIS, wretched planet. How is it so difficult to imagine there would be such workers in a future, where people are better and technology is more advanced?
The problem with this thing is, TNG was trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. Uncivilized, spiritually primitive, hostile, apelike half-animals that people on this planet are, can't be fit to live in a good world. Moneyless world works like a charm in a world (or spaceship, or culture, etc.), where people's motivations do not come from EGO and GREED, but for ALTRUISM and GOODNESS.
When you have a planetful of people that have, for generations, been raised to be good people, and to get unselfish rewards from being good, their altruism level is so high, they will find doing a job that benefits other people more reward than any monetary reward could ever be.
"I kind of had in my mind a ship roughly the size of the Enterprise-A, but perhaps a bit more streamlined and certainly with smaller but more powerful engines (due to advancements in technology)."
So your version of 'advancing' is 'keeping the same things, but making them smaller'?
How about a completely DIFFERENT propulsion philosophy and architecture? Of course not, because the only way to advance technology is to use the SAME, old architecture and philosophy, just making things physically SMALLER, right?
Sheesh. Think outside the box, consider the UFO phenomenon and their completely different propulsion and advanced movement capabilities, abilitity to shift between different dimensions (actually basically just adjusting the vibration frequency of the surrounding energy field)...
But no. Just 'same old, but smaller'. Is this how limited people's thinking is, EVEN when we're talking about imaginary futuristic science fiction space vessels? How about completely different spaceship shape that's necessitated by the more advanced energy propulsion architecture and philosophy? Instead of using 'crystals' as 'fuel' and have lots of protrusions, a smooth-surface energyfield-based propulsion that has nothing to do with 'fuel'?
"..are trying to teach children how to speak, write and most importantly, think."
Me and Bruce Lee know the truth is the opposite of what you are saying here.
"Our parents, the society, authorities always teach us WHAT to think, but not HOW to think." (I am paraphrasing)
Holodeck would basically be the ultimate drug that most people could never give up for 'mundane, everyday life with actual people'.
Of course the counter-point is, that once you get your dreams 100% fulfilled, you are more balanced entity that can better interact with others and be more tolerant of other people and their failures, and perhaps, out of curiosity, you would sometimes get out and compare the 'dreamlife' to 'mundane life', to appreciate the holo-life even more.
If this kind of technology will ever exist on the physical level in a given world before that world's people have reached a certain level of spiritual cultivation, it will inevitably destroy all culture and all aspirations of most people - it will make the world collapse (which will probably remove the ability to use holodecks), and force the people to start over.
The sad thing is, that although Holdeck would make learning and research a lot more intense, interesting and effective, it would also destroy the point of learning and knowing anything, because you can have basically -everything- imaginable (that's possible on the physical level) handed to you on a silver platter without any effort on your part for as long as your body lives. Even 'intimacy', 'friendship' and 'human contact' - because the holodeck chars are completely convincing and have any abilities you wish them to have, from acting skills, personalities and looks to 'service skills' of ALL types.. you would have a huge group of beautiful people (that look any way you wish, even as 'alien' as you want) dressed in any way you wish, serving you anything you wish them to serve, all waking hours (and even guarding you while you sleep if you so wish). They can wake you up in any way you wish..
Holodeck would destroy all motivation for research, exploration and work - how could anyone do any even relatively 'menial' work, like programming a spaceship's computers, maintenance and fixing of plumbing (or anything, really)..?
I think the question is invalid. Holodeck is not a transport device, it's more like a 'recreational dream-fulfiller' (though in the episodes, it's used in a really strange way, considering all this), that can also be used for research, training, educational purposes and such.
So you can't really 'GO' anywhere by the usage of holodeck - you can just create an environment and activity around you.
It of course depends on your life situation and goals, so you could learn Martial Arts or Yoga, you could just create a relaxing environment for meditation or just sitting around and doing nothing, or you could fulfill fantasies of experiencing relatively realistic simulations of things you would never be able to normally do (like flying an airplane very fast at low altitude inside a city), or places where you would never be able to actually go (like ancient Japan), but it will have limitations even when used this way.
For example, you could never simulate the astral world, or a future world.
I think any entity, if being given enough holodeck time (and it would be booked 24h for all eternity, unless there were enough of them so that everyone can use them), would fulfill whatever they can't fulfill in their 'actual life'.
In fact, if using holodeck was completely free, and everyone could have one, most people wouldn't want to leave holodeck for any reason, because nothing in 'real life' would ever be as intense or as fulfilling as their customized 'heaven' would be, whether it comes to social life, environments, culinary life, sensual life, creativity, discussions (would you rather talk with Troi or a perfect replica of Plato (that has been modified to speak your language), when you want philosophical stimulation?), lifestyle, audience, and so on and so forth..
Holodeck would even be more exciting and fulfilling every single second spent there, than even Enterprise's mission of seeking new life and new civilizations could be (on the physical level).