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Except the Navy, in both SST and the RW isn't a logistical command. A lot of the MI's attitudes toward the Navy and the Merchant Marines in the book is tongue in cheek, considering that Heinlein was a naval officer himself. And I don't see how your use of ambiguous and potentially offensive statements is somehow rectified by your associates Naval service. Just own it, and move on. Nobodies panties are twisted, you just called out on something by someone who has been in the navy long enough to know about the worst idea ever is pissing off a cook. I'm not mad, hell, I'm not even offended, but in the future, I would exercise more caution when your discussing something like that. The CS rating is notoriously belligerent.

 

Which version of Trek? The TOS where American ideals were espoused and Soviet ones denounced?

TNG/Voyager/Ds9/Enterprise one which were politically correct propaganda for socialism and communism or at worst far left agenda's? ( all resources owned by the government and doled out according to ability/need, lack of individuality, etc etc).

TNG started in the late 80s; communism wasn't dead yet. Indeed, it provided a basis for the Borg (yes, Iknow a lot of people would prefer if they were corporate evil). DS9 had some lovely capitalism/economy stuff (how does the economy change, in light of cheap/free matter replication?), as well as competing imperialistic interests.

And so Voyager was...what now?

Posted By malfred on 04/26/2007 8:27 AM
And so Voyager was...what now?

Bad until Jerry Ryan showed up?


And really, even then...

Wait, that was the same show?

Yup DS9 and Voyager are racist and sexist compared to the orginal series. In TOS and TNG White male captains get the big new ships. In DS9 the black captain gets a run down second hand station in the ghetto part of the galaxy, in Voyager the female captain gets a second rate ship and gets lost in the first episode implying women can't drive.

Women can drive? When did this happen?

He also gets the best war scenes in any sci-fi show ever.

Adama in BSG and Sheridan in B5 would dispute that. They would be right.

Posted By fellblade on 04/25/2007 4:36 PM

 Kind of the way Heinlein was satirizing the modern American army (or as he may have seen it, the bloated military-industrial complex), with its huge logistical tail presided over by remfs and hobbits.

I could have swore Heinlein spent an awful lot of text *female dog*ing out the overbloated military command (massively huge problem today) and completely unqualified personnal becoming officers cause they went to a school and have zero on the job experiance.

Irony is the there wasn't too much of a problem with the quote "military-industrial complex" until Eisenhower stated they're the enemy. After that the companies were forced to close or merge until the remainder indeed became the bloated "military-industrial complex" everyone is worry about.

>>Women can drive? When did this happen?

They can't in Saudi Arabia.

Posted By Mannahnin on 04/21/2007 11:14 AM

Go read the article I linked Bloatie. He's already answered this one too.

It's also shown in the book that guys who physically can't hack it but refuse to quit are given alternate jobs.  One guy shown winds up a cook on a troop transport.

Didn't it had couple of examples [in the book] of extremely disabled people able to find jobs in the service because they're willing to serve?

BSG doesn't have anything like the scale of some of the Dominion war. B5 was a neat show, but I didn't like their last-generation computer graphics so much.

MI who can't drop anymore because of injuries often end up as instructors (because if you're able-bodied, you're doing drops, not teaching classes).

Posted By Janthkin on 04/26/2007 3:04 PM

Didn't it had couple of examples [in the book] of extremely disabled people able to find jobs in the service because they're willing to serve?

MI who can't drop anymore because of injuries often end up as instructors (because if you're able-bodied, you're doing drops, not teaching classes).

I was talking about disabled civilians with no prior service.

Disabled is not a politically correct term anymore, but impaired is still fine in DC (Washington that is).

- Greenie

Posted By Rubberanvil on 04/26/2007 2:28 PM

Posted By Mannahnin on 04/21/2007 11:14 AM

Go read the article I linked Bloatie. He's already answered this one too.

It's also shown in the book that guys who physically can't hack it but refuse to quit are given alternate jobs.  One guy shown winds up a cook on a troop transport.

Didn't it had couple of examples [in the book] of extremely disabled people able to find jobs in the service because they're willing to serve?

The recruiter says they'll find a difficult and unpleasant job for anyone who wants to serve and is able to understand the service oath.  If you were blind and unable to walk, they might give you a job counting the hairs on caterpillars by touch, for example.

This is one of the big things that makes it so clearly not a fascist system.  The right to serve and earn your vote is guaranteed to every citizen capable of understanding the oath and going two years of tough service without quitting.  There's no political litmus test or party requirement.  Disagreement with the system is perfectly tolerated- Ted Hendricks, the guy who winds up getting a field court martial for hitting his drill instructor, was described as being a guy who talked about wanting to run for office when he got out, specifically because he was interested in changing the system and changing the way politics work.  He was a character who disagreed with the status quo but was granted the same right as anyone else to serve and earn his vote.  Another thing that doesn't happen in a fascist government.

With the exception of Mannahin...

Do any of you think before you post? Or read aloud to yourself what you just typed before you hit the "submit" button?

Bananas are yellow.

True. I see the word "fascist" tossed around so much, that I actually went to an encyclopedia and looked it up.

Ironically enough, when you read the actual history and meaning of the word, it is actually only the association with Nazi Germany in WWII that gives it the negative connotage, and ironically enough, Nazi Germany was ridiculously extreme.

Anyway, what I pretty much learned is that when the majority of people say "fascist," they are just showing that they don't know what the meaning of the word is.

If you read further (I'm fairly sure I tossed the wikipedia link in earlier), you'll discover that there IS no agreed-upon meaning of the word. At best, there are some generally agreed-upon attributes of a fascist system.

Regardless, it isn't necessary or useful to descend into the "I know what words mean, and the rest of you don't" debate. We were having a productive thread here; let's abstain from semi-flames and demi-trolls.

Posted By whitedragon on 04/27/2007 1:58 PM
With the exception of Manly hands....

Do any of you think? Or read yourself?

Fixed

(apologies for the butchering of Mannahin's handle...)

@Killkrazy: 'cept for the Bedouin. They even get to wear brightly coloured burkhas instead of the usual black or navy. (there, that proves I read this thread )

I can't say much about the minis game as every time the fellow at our club has run it, I have not been able to bother myself to play it. Some of the large bug models look very good, however, and the baseless stackable design for the Warriors is very clever.

When I saw the preview for the film with my little brother, our first thoughts were, "oh, a movie about cadians and tyranids. We've played that scenario before." My problem with the movie - which I suspect it came by honestly due to the source material - was that I couldn't give a rat's ass about the troopers. Perhaps I am biased due to my gaming preferences in 40k, but the whole thing sort of felt like a House of Wax remake where they don't kill off Paris Hilton. The plot obnoxiously ignores the audience's desire to see the bug-eyed Aryan wunderkid as portrayed by Caspar van Diem ignominously eviscerated by a mindless mass of chitin.

This was a similar problem I had with Heinlein's books - I've tried to read Stranger, Starship Troopers and The Puppet Masters; but was stopped each time by his feeble characterization; and my prior exposure to the concepts that must have been, prior to the book's publication, quite compelling. I'd rate him as "important but not particularly good." Frankly, I have use for cookie-cutter Ken and Barbies only when they are being shredded by inhuman horrors. IMHO the film's makers would have done well to take a page from the zombie film tradition and had the expectation of a substantial body count of bipedal meatbags eliminated in ever more spectacularly stomach-turning sequences. Again, perhaps I am biased - us Canadians are notorious for demanding sympathetic characters in our popular literature, Dick-and-Jane sentences had all ready been done earlier and better by Hemingway, and I would consider having my chest exploded by an extrastellar parasite a better way to go than cancer or household accident - but I've never been able to muster any enthusiasm for the whole SST IP since watching the first movie years ago, nor for many of Heinleins less-perverted works since trying hack my way through them. To be fair, I have also lost interest in scifi outside of a gaming environment for several years now.

Posted By wight_widow on 04/28/2007 11:42 AM
The plot obnoxiously ignores the audience's desire to see the bug-eyed Aryan wunderkid as portrayed by Caspar van Diem ignominously eviscerated by a mindless mass of chitin.

But that's the point.  The human characters are not meant to be sympathetic.  Verhoeven wants to give you a choice: do you root for the fascists or the bugs?

To be honest, I don't know why everyone loves Stranger in a Strange Land so much. Jubal Harshaw is awesome , but aside from that, I just didn't enjoy the book that much. Oh, and Mike's powers were pretty cool. But I'd take Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in a heartbeat over Stranger.

I must have been in a strange place when I read Stranger in a Strange
Land. I could not "grok" it. Maybe I was put off by the cult stuff at the
end. Another novel about "a stranger in a strange land" is the Dispossessed
by Ursula LeGuin, and I had the same reaction to the ending of her book
as I did to Stranger, so I don't think it's the writing that brought me down
about the book necessarily. I just could not find myself sympathetic to
conclusions both authors draw for their protagonists.

Posted By whitedragon on 04/27/2007 1:58 PM
With the exception of Mannahin...

Do any of you think before you post? Or read aloud to yourself what you just typed before you hit the "submit" button?

I like to shred paper.

Posted By Dice Monkey on 04/26/2007 9:24 AM
Yup DS9 and Voyager are racist and sexist compared to the orginal series. In TOS and TNG White male captains get the big new ships. In DS9 the black captain gets a run down second hand station in the ghetto part of the galaxy, in Voyager the female captain gets a second rate ship and gets lost in the first episode implying women can't drive.

Woah, hold on there feller. I don't know about the driving part, but Voyager, a second rate ship? Sorry, no real Trek fan will agree to that! Sure, it ain't a Galaxy-class ship, but it is a terrific ship technologically..

Posted By John on 04/30/2007 9:22 AM

Posted By Dice Monkey on 04/26/2007 9:24 AM
Yup DS9 and Voyager are racist and sexist compared to the orginal series. In TOS and TNG White male captains get the big new ships. In DS9 the black captain gets a run down second hand station in the ghetto part of the galaxy, in Voyager the female captain gets a second rate ship and gets lost in the first episode implying women can't drive.

Woah, hold on there feller. I don't know about the driving part, but Voyager, a second rate ship? Sorry, no real Trek fan will agree to that! Sure, it ain't a Galaxy-class ship, but it is a terrific ship technologically..

The Defiant was the first ship of her type and class.  "She's overpowered and overgunned. But she has teeth and i intend to use her."

Janeway's ship was an advanced type itself.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Intrepid_class