Tag Archives: star wars

Why can’t I have nice things?

When my dad was a young man, he had Star Trek. His generation grew up, got jobs, got wealth, power. The entertainment industry said, “We would like some of your wealth, your power. In exchange, we shall give you Star Trek: The Next Generation and a pretty decent JJ Abrams reboot.”

When I was a young man, I had Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Knight Rider. My generation grew up, got jobs, got wealth, power. The entertainment industry said, “We would like some of your wealth, your power. Because we know it is about the franchise name, not quality, we shall, in exchange, give you The Phantom Menace, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Ford Mustang advertisement masquerading as a new Knight Rider series.”
It is true. For the first time in decades, we have a generation that is worse off than their parents.
Let’s finish ruining my childhood memories and reboot Airwolf (#rebootAirwolf). Pretty please?

Luke says, “Of course, Han shot first”

So says Mark Hamill. I was a huge fan of the original Star Wars trilogy (The Empire Strikes Back, thanks for asking). I am not a huge fan of the prequel trilogy* nor have I been happy with any of the tweaks George Lucas has made to the original films**. Neither is Mark Hamill. Continue reading

On embarassment

This is my lunchbox. It is original and awesome. It gets a lot of attention at work – all positive.

Yet, even that positive attention occasionally makes me feel uncomfortable. Why would this be the case? Continue reading

The Ewok Line

Frankly, Neil Patrick Harris‘s lecture on Ewoks sounds like the kind of thing I would do. Therefore, I love it. And you should too.

Decancelliation

I imagine that very few species would consider not having to worry about leopard attacks a bad thing. The enthusiasm for any story claiming that human beings continue to being driven upwards and onwards by natural selection suggests that we pine for those halcyon days of yore when being eaten alive by jungle cats was a major source of morbidity[1]. We worry about a lack of selection for things like good eye-sight and gobble up cheap, pop evolutionary psychology[2] stories of adaptive behavior.

We really want to know are human beings still evolving and how can reclaim the benefits of natural selection without feeding our offspring to leopards?

Continue reading