DShomshak

I loathe The Omega Glory for the same reason I loathe Bread and Circuses and Miri. Alternate history is fun, but the idea that there's an actual other Earth out in space, or a planet whose inhabitants replicated Earth history to the point of precisely copying the Roman Empire or the exact wording of the U. S. Constitution, makes me go, "No, that's ridiculous." Exact other-humans is enough of a stretch; I will grant the effort to explain it away through hints that aliens transplanted human colonies to other worlds. At least Nazi World and Chicago Mobster World had defined points of recent interference. Whatever worth Omega Glory has as a story, for me that revelation at the ending turns it all to crap. Dean Shomshak

2001 is a great movie. A milestone in cinema. Whether it's a good movie is a more complex question. And what makes it great might also be what doesn't make it good. Mostly, that Kubrick sets out to show humanity encountering something incomprehensible, and so leaves the audience in pretty much the same position as the characters. He set out to make a movie that leaves you wondering what the hell just happened, and boy howdy, he succeeded. It was difficult for me to appreciate this on first viewing because (like Cancer) I'd already read A. C. Clarke's book, which explains everything. But Kubrick followed the rule my junior high English teacher gave for writing: Show me, don't tell me. So nobody stops to explain zero-g, or how to use centrifugal force to simulate gravity. You are supposed to figure it out for yourself. We never really know any of the characters. HAL gets more backstory than any of the humans, and that's a matter of seconds. We know some characters have families, but how did they end up doing what they do? We get nothing. Because real people rarely go around delivering exposition on their life stories. The monolith does something to start the early hominids using tools, but what or how? Dunno, it just does. When the monolith at Jupiter opens, nobody says, "It's a hyperspacial wormhole!" Actually, after enduring 7 seasons of Star Trek: the Next Generation, I find the absence of technobabble pseudo-explanations quite appealing. So, the opacity is deliberate. But it's not the usual idea of fun movie-watching. I don't blame anyone who finds it difficult to watch and impossible to enjoy. Dean Shomshak

Re: Badger: I must add that this is merely a suggestion I have heard, and an implication I find plausible. I neither endorse nor condemn the interpretation. DS

Re: Badger: I must add that this is merely a suggestion I have heard, and an implication I find plausible. I neither endorse nor condemn the interpretation. DS

Re: Badger: I must add that this is merely a suggestion I have heard, and an implication I find plausible. I neither endorse nor condemn the interpretation. DS

The Trouble with Tribbles wasn't just good farce. It also had some of the series' best ensemble writing. Scotty, Uhura and Chekov got to do more than usual, interacting with each other and with the main characters. An excellent bar fight, too. Dean Shomshak

"Rock salt" would have been more visually accurate. At first I also thought you were referring to "By Any Other Name" until I remembered the Exeter crew's fate. And while the Kelvans turned the Enterprise crew into crystalline shapes (cuboctahedra to be precise), the blocks were apparently made of Styrofoam. Dean Shomshak

The Cherokee reporter who discussed the decision on ATC was simply gobsmacked that a US court had said, "The treaty says what it says, and that makes it the law, so follow it," instead of, "Meh, the treaty has become inconvenient, so ignore it." Dean Shomshak

The Cherokee reporter who discussed the decision on ATC was simply gobsmacked that a US court had said, "The treaty says what it says, and that makes it the law, so follow it," instead of, "Meh, the treaty has become inconvenient, so ignore it." Dean Shomshak

For what it's worth, self-proclaimed SCOTUS experts I've heard say Roberts is motivated to protect the Supreme Court by keeping it out of fights between parties and branches of government. The Trump tax rulings are typical: Don't give presidents unlimited immunity from investigation, but punt the disputes back to lower levels where they won't be resolved before the election, thus seeking to avoid any perception the Court is affecting the election with its rulings. From this POV, I can imagine Roberts pulling Gorsuch and Kavanaugh aside and telling them they have got to side with the four liberals on some rulings that poke Trump in the eye, even if they don't really harm him. Because there's a chance that Dems take the House, Senate and Oval Office in November, and if the Court seems to be Trump's lackey there will be extremely strong pressure for Dems to pack the Court and abandon any pretense that it is anything but a political tool. For the moment, they must at least pretend to have judicial principles, which might operate in Dems' favor. Of course, I am no mind reader. It's just what Dinesh D'Souza calls "an ideological hypothesis" (fancy talk for "a story without evidence, but it explains things the way I want.") Dean Shomshak

Correction: I checked, and it's The Trump Prophecy, not The Trump Gospel. And apparently more than one person thought Donald Trump was God's prophet. Uff da. ☹️ Dean Shomshak

Falls under "True Believer." Dean Shomshak

David Gerrold (writer of The Trouble with Tribbles) set out this bit of clarity: Action-adventure is, "Kirk must overcome a problem." Drama is, "Kirk must make a decision." Like in City on the Edge of Forever: Save the woman he loves, or save the future? Or The Immunity Syndrome: Which of his friends, Spock or McCoy, does he send on a suicide mission? (Into the giant space amoeba, if you don't remember that one.) The Trouble with Tribbles is the first ST episode I say, which made me a Trekkie when I was young and led to my interest in SF, so it holds a special place in my heart. I still have the tribble I made when I was, hm, 10? I'll nominate The Corbomite Maneuver as the best version of the "Super-alien tests humanity" story the show did several times. Not just because Balok was so menacing, and Kirk so clever in response, and Balok so surprising when his true(?) form is revealed. First, Balok wasn't so annoyingly preachy, like the Metrons or Organians. MOre than a little trickster here! Second, we had drama in showing Kirk dealing with other crew members, not just with the threat of Balok. And third -- something I only realized when I re-watched the episode recently -- Kirk never fooled Balok for a second. He played Kirk brilliantly, without making Kirk look stupid, changing strategies to maneuver Kirk intoa situation that would reveal true character. Dean Shomshak

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/08/888906337/unholy-examines-the-alliance-between-white-evangelicals-and-trump Heard July 8 on Fresh Air: Interview with journalist Sarah Posner on her new book, Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. Short answer: He doesn't speak Evangelical Christian, but boy howdy, he sure knows how to speak White Grievance. And White Evangelicals have cultural and political grievances oceans deep. And Posner insists her calling their attitude 'worship' is not hyperbolic: Her subjects believe, as a new tenet of faith, that Donald Trump is the anointed servant of God, no matter how unlikely he appears. (Personal additon: I have seen The Trump Gospel, whose author claims Jesus appeared to him and revealed Trump's divine role in returning America to Christian purity. I cannot guess whether the author is a true believer, a cynical grifter exploiting of the faithful and gullible, or a sincere grifter who thinks he's telling a noble lie to further the cause. All three are horrible in their way.) Dean Shomshak

Heard him on the radio. He's still claiming persecution. Hoax, Witch Hunt, no president has ever had to endure this but he's always won, the usual. He even brought up the Mueller investigation. The man speaks in macros. I've seen more creative language from an ELIZA program. But apparently his base thinks in macros, too. Dean Shomshak