2008.09.03
Random thoughts on ST:TNG, from a comment I made to Nick B writing about the closing of Star Trek: the Experience
I guess now I watch with a more critical eye than I used to... the treknobabble was stupefying, along with ... I dunno, there's a certain laziness to the writing maybe? People never deal with a mysterious situation by acting like people trying to suss out a problem do, instead they just hold up signposts to the final explanation. (And sometimes the explanations are so coincidental... oh, see, it was Geordi's VISOR that was doing some dumbass handwaving subspace thing triggering your quantum universe watchamacallit, and Data was able to scan that your RNA was resonating different than EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE but you're not exploding or anything)
Two of the episodes were of the "alternate timeline" varieties, which I tend to find the most compelling to watch as well as the most infuriating. One was "Parallels" -- the scene of a desperate, long bearded Riker on a wrecked bridge trying to sabotage attempts to return him to the universe where the Borg have nearly conquered is striking. The other was "Yesterday's Enterprise" with its cool design of the 1701-C, splitting the difference between the later movies and the new show. Both fudge timeline splits in different dumb ways... neither try to explain why what alternatives we're seeing are so close to the "real" reality. (Besides the dumbness of the "War torn" Enterprise-D having started with the same crew (sans children), it would've been cool if they had thrown in some more militaristic in its design...)
Anyway. I still enjoyed the shows, but it's funny not having thought about it that much for like a decade.
Science of the Moment
Slate's Jim Holt on The End of the Universe... he quotes Annie Hall where a psychiatrist consoles Alvy who's being neurotic about the expanding end of the universe "It won't be expanding for billions of years, Alvy, and we've got to enjoy ourselves while we're here, eh? Ha ha ha." The "Ha ha ha" makes it sound insipid, 'cause other than that it's pretty good advice.
seeing what's on the back of a scanned in paper, much easier to read the negative; evolution-wise, guess it's 'cause night vision is useful
I have zero urge to crossdress, but am suddenly curious about what the mechanics of walking on spikey highheels feel like.
Feels like fall. Not just the weather; the mood? The light?
katwinx yeah; the everywhere aspect of Twitter returns a spontaneity I had lost when I went from a palm pilot journal to a web-based blog