Episode IV, Now We're Really Screwed [Updated]

If you think about Star Wars episodes 1-3 (which I tried very hard not to do, because they were traumatic enough without me applying my brain) there are some serious inconsistencies between the back story alluded to in the original films and the same story revealed in the new ones.

Via Kottke, Keith Martin finds a way to reconcile the differences. And in his version, R2D2 and Chewbacca are master spies who are ready to assassinate either Luke or Leia without mercy if they show the slightest tendency towards sithiness.

On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has a twinkle in his eye and calls him "my little friend". Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, he blandly says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid." Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as "You keep quiet. I'm not about to tell him everything just yet." Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. He wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth. 

img via


UPDATE: Here's the link

Where be his quiddities now?

On one hand...

Everything I've heard is completely consistent with PN's report, though that does beg the question of how this goof got elected and reelected in the first place.

(ed.note: Please no emails telling me this is the incorrect use of the phrase 'beg the question', though I know you're right. I've decided that this misuse is too widespread, too serviceable and too lacking in an alternative not to simply persist in using it.) | Josh Marshall |

On the other hand...

While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous "modern" usage. This is why we fight. | BTQ |

On the gripping hand, Jason says:

The term "beg the question" suffers from being a terrible name for what it describes. Terms of art should ideally suggest to layfolk what they actually are on their face OR be sufficiently obscure that layfolk don't easily come up with another interpretation.

Linguists and Philosophers would do all of us a favor by adopting a different term, or just sticking with petitio principii.

Discuss.

Meta update: I think DRs suggestion is perfect, so I've updated the title accordingly. Feel free to continue to suggest titles, however. For the record, the old title was: It turns out that coming up with titles for blog posts is actually one of the hardest parts of blogging, so feel free to suggest a title for this post.

Friday Sir Mixalot moment

This is going around in email and chat. It seems to have come from here.

It's "Baby Got Back" translated into Latin, and then back into English:

Domina Mea Exstat a Tergo
Mixaloti Equitis

"By Hercules!
Rebecca, behold! Such large buttocks she has!
She appears to be a girlfriend of one of those rhythmic-oration people.
But, as you know, who can understand persons of this sort?
Verily, they converse with her for this reason only, namely, that she appears to be a complete whore.
Her buttocks, I say, are rather large!
Nor am I able to believe how round they are.
Lo! How they stand forth! Do they not disgust you?
Behold the black woman!"

Large buttocks are pleasing to me, nor am I able to lie concerning this matter.
For who, colleagues, would not admit,
whenever a girl comes by with a rather small middle part of the body
beneath which is an obvious spherical mass, that it inflames the spirits
so that you want to be conspicuous for manly virtue, noticing her breeches
have been deeply stuffed with buttock?
Alas! I am captured, nor am I able to desist from gazing.
My dear lady, I want to come together with you
and make a picture of you.
My companions were trying to warn me
but those buttocks of yours arouse lust in me.
O! skin wrinkled and smooth!
Did you say you wish to enter my vehicle?
I am entirely at your disposal
because you are not an average hanger-on.
I have seen her dancing.
Forget, therefore, about blandishments!
Such sweat! Such moisture!
I am borne along as if by a four-horse chariot!
I am tired of reading in the gazettes
that flat buttocks are judged more pleasing.
Ask any black men you wish: the answer will be
rather that they prefer fuller ones.

O colleagues (What is it?) O colleagues (What is it?)
Do your girlfriends have large buttocks? (They certainly have!)
Encourage them therefore to shake them! (To shake them!)
To shake them! (To shake them!)
To shake those healthy buttocks!
My mistress stands out behind!

In other news, this article neatly skewers my taste in hip hop: Stuff White People LIke: #116 Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore.

Sitting at stage six

The Comic Book Collector pH Scale

Meetings

Lately I've taken to watching a lot of the Community Television Network. Of the four channels CTN operates, my favorite is 16, which bills itself as, "The meeting place...where Ann Arbor watches its City government in action."

I haven't seen a full fledged city council meeting yet, but have seen all manner of commissions and the odd advisory board. If I had to pick a favorite, I'd go with the Commission on Disability Issues. It's broadcast live the third Wednesday of every month and then rebroadcast the following Thursday and Saturday.

Sometimes the subject matter of the meeting is itself interesting -- this is most often true of the zoning board of appeals, I think -- but even when not, I find myself taking an interest in various aspects of meeting dynamics. I remember one meeting in particular where the idea was to create a set of rules for an upcoming festival. One participant suggested that they base the rules on one or another set of widely accepted guidelines. Another launched the principled objection that no attempt to establish adequate guidelines can ever succeed, and kept insisting that no guidelines should be consulted even when it became clear that everyone else disagreed. The Chair deftly resolved the matter by creating a subcommittee.

Relatedly, there was a time when I thought of meetings as an impediment to getting things done. More and more, I tend to think of meetings as a very important kind of work in their own right, and that having good productive meetings is a key component in the success of just about any cooperative endeavor.

Friday wtf

(Sorry for the light posting... I'm so tired of the campaigns that I have had little to say. The best I can do for political junkies today is to help answer the question of whether Barack Obama can overcome his -2 to charisma to become our first half-orc president).

This is pretty messed up.

Del Toro’s moving to New Zealand for the next four years to work with Jackson and his Wingnut and Weta production teams. He’ll direct the two films back to back, with the sequel dealing with the 60-year period between “The Hobbit” and “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

A reporting error? Or is some hack sitting down to write The Similar-illion: The New Adventures of Bilbo Baggins?

What kind of fool takes dice to a knife fight?

I hereby declare this to be The Bellman blog's official Gary Gygax memorial thread.

3720 to 1

Speaking of teh nerdiness I took "The Hardest Star Wars Quiz Ever!" over on facebook and got this question right without even guessing:

What slag does the silver protocol droid give C3PO in Cloud City?
1. ootini
2. oona-wanda
3. degobah
4. ee-joodah
5. Robo-sexual!

Addendum: Lots of folks seem to be finding this post with Google. Possibly, they are trying to cheat on the-hardest-star-wars-quiz-evah. Should I reveal the answer?

There and back again

I have to say that I don't share Ross Douthat's skepticism about the upcoming Hobbit movie. It might be that from a sci-fi/fantasy lit perspective The Hobbit is "a tasty appetizer" while The Lord of the Rings is "a rich-beyond-belief main course." But so what? The link between literary merit and suitability for film is anything but direct. From where I sit, The Hobbit's comprehensible and contained narrative is a point in its favor on the book to film tip.

Also, all true geeks of a certain age know that what really needs to be worried over is whether Jackson's Hobbit will stand up to the animated masterpiece.

"Heroes" thread

Sorry for the geek out, but I'm missing my normal opportunities to chat about this while I am traveling, so here goes. As the kids say, SPOILERz ALERT:

ITEM: I totally saw the Kensei = Adam thing coming, the moment he swore eternal vengeance on Hiro. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, my next prediction is that Kensei turns out to be a hero after all. Why? Well, mostly because of bad writing. But also because, who else is going to cut out his own heart, which Kensei did in the story, except for some dude who can live forever?

ITEM: So, Kensei must be a Patrelli family ancestor, right? Cause Claire has the same ability...

ITEM: So, Peter took his new girlfriend to the future, and then traveled back to the present without her. That means, he can't change the future, because if he does, he erases the future in which she, uh, is. Am I right?

Action!

This is really cool. A whole series of pictures of statues at the moment they shatter:



Check out the series here

Workplace safety, a fun argument

Honestly, I heard this on NPR. Because I'm a philosonerd, I'll render the argument schematically.

1. No mine worker would willingly enter a mine unless it were operating safely.
   
2. The miners in Utah willingly entered the mine.
   
3. Hence, the Utah mine was operating safely.

It seems to me that figuring out where this argument goes wrong turns on the question of how best to understand the degree of freedom of the workers. If you think that the choices workers make about where to work and under what conditions are best described as being uncoerced and fully informed, then I think you have to say that the first premise is false. Which is to say that if you hold the view that becoming a coal miner is the sort of thing which might be freely chosen by someone who understands the risks, then you ought to acknowledge that people sometimes freely choose to do unsafe things. If, on the other hand, you tend to think that the choices made by workers are subject to coercion or are not made in full knowledge of the facts, then the second premise falls under suspicion.

OS X Dictionary bleg

I was playing around with OS X's dictionary app this morning and I noticed that it allows me to specify which dictionary the app uses. This, presumably, means that I should be able to download dictionaries other than the one provided. Which would be nice, both because the default dictionary isn't as robust^[1] as I would like and because I'm all about the multiple sources. But if there are other dictionaries available, I can't find them. Little help? And, yeah, I'd pay a fair amount for the chance to use the OED on my Mac, but...

-----------
1 Which, supposedly, is the Oxford American but which lacks the scope I've come to expect from Oxford branded reference works.

Reader participation Friday, video game handles

I know that Joe6Paq has, for at least the last 20 years, consistently used the initials W - A - R to commemorate his video game high scores. For myself, I switch it around these days but back when three letters was all you got I tended to use J - T - K. On Guitar Hero my band is named 'Mars Has No Bars'.

Feel free to leave your handle in comments. I'd also be interested to hear sociological or semiotic analyses of the phenomena.

Slow week at The Bellman

Mark promised us some Catholic humor, but I think he overdosed on Jesus last weekend, and is actually sick today. So, in the mean time, let me kill any momentum this blog had by asking.....

David Tennant: Is he a great Doctor, or the greatest Doctor?

Season 3 is halfway over in ol' England, and I've been 'renting it. At the end of Season 2, I woulda said that he's a "good Doctor," but now I've ratcheted my esteem all the way up to "the greatest Doctor." He's really got a bead on the character.


Also, his new chica is the cutest one in, let's say, 900 years of travel through time and space.

In other news, the new Sage Francis album is pretty good. I didn't know he was white, tho. Like da man says:

Knowing what, though still not why

Awhile ago I deleted all of the factory loaded quick notes from my phone and replaced them with the various magic 8 ball answers. A great idea, obviously, but with the slight drawback that magic 8 ball replies are only relevant when someone has asked you a yes or no question.

Anyway, while looking for something to use as my designated quick note thank you message I came across this. I think you'll agree that it's pretty creepy.