New Testingstan

man this movie is giving me a huge man-crush on Ricardo Montalban and his pecs

Now I'm watching Star Trek 4

stop saying WESSELS

star trek 4 is awesome and i'll hear no bad thing about it

yeah i know it's great

man that time travel sequence was weird

did they really throw a mannequin into a pool

is that the one with the whales and shit?

it's awesome

the guy is all "fuck this chemotherapy shit i've got this" or something

and spock on the bus is all "i'll fuck this music guy up"

that was so real

people got FUCKED UP in that movie

<3 Deforest Kelley

he was such a good guy

ST4 proved that Trek can be at it's best when it isn't taking itself too seriously.

LOL wessels.

Spock did a little too much LDS back in the '60s.

i'm watching nemesis

i think this whole movie can be summarized by the part where Patrick Stewart is grinning like a hillbilly in the Argo

also when picard and data escape the reman ship in the mini shuttle they totally burst through a huge glass window on the back of the ship

VF5SS wrote:i'm watching nemesis

i think this whole movie can be summarized by the part where Patrick Stewart is grinning like a hillbilly in the Argo

that's sounds like a much more entertaining movie than nemesis

I know I'm late to this party but my mother had reservations about me watching TMNT initially(she caved under the inertia of it at the time(1991), thank god.

By way of contrast my seven year old daughter is counting down until 9th November so we can play through Modern Warfare 3 together. I feel slightly guilty about this; but she has extended family members in the armed forces and I explain as we go that this is what some people in the army do(with the addendum that most of what happens in the military is Hurry-Up-And-Wait etc)

Am I robbing her of innocence?

And are we going to talk Trek?

Dude, my 10 year old is playing Gears with me right now. Just emphasize that most of what we do is not what's in games.

timmy wrote:I know I'm late to this party but my mother had reservations about me watching TMNT initially(she caved under the inertia of it at the time(1991), thank god.

By way of contrast my seven year old daughter is counting down until 9th November so we can play through Modern Warfare 3 together. I feel slightly guilty about this; but she has extended family members in the armed forces and I explain as we go that this is what some people in the army do(with the addendum that most of what happens in the military is Hurry-Up-And-Wait etc)

Am I robbing her of innocence?

And are we going to talk Trek?

Nobody should make their children play shitty games. I mean MW3? Ew.

yeah shit timmy

you should get bf3 and bring your daughter into the mix

I have a confession to make

She has sat next to me a few times when we've been playing BC2

Every time you use your usual epithets to describe the ethics of members of the opposing force she raises her eyebrows in silent scandal and mouths 'he said the naughtiest word!'

:o



:oops:

shit timmy

why you have to go and make me feel guilty now

Haha yeah because she's never hear words like that before; I understand schoolchildren these days are upstanding citizens and above taboo material.

well if i knew that the little lady was on the other end of the line i'd have maintained my composure y'dig

Well the deal was kind of 'if you're not going to go to bed then you can stay up for another half hour and watch me play BC2, but you're not allowed to talk above a stage whisper.'

Good thing your not playing with Dan, Zak, Brandon and I then.

So the Borg are Star Trek's commentary on democracy.

With all the individuals plugged into the collective, there is no leader, there are no representatives. All decisions are made by collective - direct democracy as perfect as it can be.

Yet the drones, with all this individual power making up the collective, were still totally subservient to the state - the tyranny of the majority.

adr wrote:So the Borg are Star Trek's commentary on democracy.

With all the individuals plugged into the collective, there is no leader, there are no representatives. All decisions are made by collective - direct democracy as perfect as it can be.

Yet the drones, with all this individual power making up the collective, were still totally subservient to the state - the tyranny of the majority.

except for the whole queen thing

OK, so the queen. The queen isn't literally an individual leading the Borg. She's a metaphor, a personification of the collective.

People find that strange because sometimes she gives verbal orders to the drones, contradicting their action. If they are the collective and so is she, shouldn't they already agree?

Maybe not.

See, for every decision made, somebody isn't going to like it. There might be a majority, but probably a different majority for each decision, and in the perfect direct democracy of the collective, every decision is made this way.

Thus, every person in it is oppressed to the will of the others - hence, drones - and drones who the majority of the time actually won't agree with what the Queen represents.

The majority of the collective didn't want to attack Data (or whatever that scene was), because it didn't affect them personally, see individual actors in a democracy are often fairly selfish, and we hope this balances out to the good of the whole. The drones in Engineering wanted to attack - it affected them - so they were going to... until the majority opinion, represented through the queen - shut them down.


Normally, the Borg would sort this out instantly, but the movie wanted the viewer to actually see the disagreement, so Frakes slowed it down and personified it to make a point.


The thing is, where you get the power isn't the problem... it's the power itself. Democracy doesn't magically mean freedom - tyranny is not only possible, but just as likely even with a perfect implementation like the Borg have. The will of the majority of individuals don't necessarily add up to what individuals really want.

(the Borg metaphor is also seen against capitalism and the free market. The free market is the same kind of thing, a democracy with deep flaws.)

eh, i always thought the borg were supposed to be a metaphor about communism