Tyrphanax

No hard feelings buddy; I just get annoyed when people aren't armed with the proper facts and I'm always happy to provide them.

Or maybe she's RZA, and Matthew Perry is just a distraction?

Sequel Trilogy, no.

Other EU stories/other films featuring a younger OT cast, all for it.

The articles 1990 linked really make me feel a lot better about a writer I know nothing about.

I wish I wasn't getting so excited about this considering all the past disappointments, but man I can't help it.

Bingowings said:

I hope they cast a big wobbly warty person as the romantic lead.

Lemmy?

When was the last time you reformatted (wiped the HD, reinstalled Windows) the thing?

I don't really feel like I have too much connection with stuff in my past; but that's not to say that I won't watch a cartoon or movie or something I remember from my childhood.

Basically, I was going to write what Mrebo did; the ability to find the knowledge or show or item you're looking for instantly can be a "trap" of sorts if you find yourself getting sucked into it, but it's also a huge boon if used correctly, I was thinking the other day how, even as close to now as the 90's, if you wanted to learn about something the only real option was to find a book about it, but now we can just type a word in and find a billion sources instantly.

I think it all comes down to how you use the tools around you that defines whether it has a positive impact or a negative one, because a hammer is just a hammer, a gun is just a gun, the internet is just the internet until a person comes along and gives it a purpose.

Mrebo said:

...I hope they don't choose a bunch of pretty people. I find the model look distracting...

...And no major stars, please...

...I could see someone like Emma Watson...

wut

Also: no.

theprequelsrule said:

I think Whedon and others of his ilk would be too hard pressed to not make a film that winks at the audience. Great Star Wars material has to be made completely unconscious of it's origins and influences. The proper director must take Star Wars as seriously as George Lucas took it's influences (Flash Gordon etc.)

Good points, I agree.

Thanks folks.

History has been a huge interest for me ever since I started playing Age of Empires II; there was a lot of history in the campaigns of the game that really made me want to learn more, and my mom took my brother and I to the library more than anywhere else when we were little, so we would check out tons of books on that stuff and just read for hours. More fascinating stuff happened in real life than happened in fiction for the most part.

georgec said:

DominicCobb said:

Speaking of being what ROTJ failed to be, I think EpIX should have an ambiguous ending. I would have loved to have seen Luke walking into the sunset, destination unclear. So have Luke's son do just that. I think it would be awesome.

So did Gary Kurtz. ;)

I need to make a "Kurtz 2015" shirt with something Star Warsy as a logo...

You already said it once so the world can live for now.

TV's Frink said:

Don't blame me, I voted for JuJudas.

I got a run of the bumper stickers all ready to ship.

Oh yeah. Duh.

Disregard what I wrote, it was definitely one of what Frink said.

Bingowings said:

Nope.

Never going to think about such an evil proposal.

New characters or the same actors.

Hear, hear.

I feel like making it take place many years after ROTJ makes just fine sense; they had a few decades of peace in the New Republic but now some new sinister evil threatens that peace and all the heroes of the New Republic are too old to deal with it, so bring on the next generation of hero.

It'll be a long enough time that the New Republic can be well-established and strong, the New Jedi Order can be established and training students (maybe just now getting to the maturation of the first class), and you can use all the original actors for secondary/cameo roles.

One of the biggest problems with the EU prior to ROTJ was that the New Republic was around for like ten minutes and it was already in another batch of huge wars and beginning to crumble and it devalued the conclusion of the OT. Give us some peace, make it seem like the Rebellion was a success; nothing interesting happens and everything is awesome for 20-30 years, then, suddenly, oh crap! Time to defend the Republic!

That just makes sense to me.

And if one more person blathers on about Nathan Fillion being perfect for Han Solo I swear I will burn the world.

Mrebo said:

Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3) is writing the screenplay...is this good?

Oh wow. Confirmed... here we go, I guess.

I've never seen any of his work, and his career has been short so far. But I have heard good things about the movies he's done.

I dunno. I guess I'm in the same boat as before where I can't really say if it's good or bad yet, haha. Not too excited about the meetings with Lucas so far, but we'll see.

JuJudas will at least have a rockin' Lady Gaga campaign song.

Or Phil Collins... Ju-ju-judio.

Mrebo said:

Question: did putting an end to slavery spur technological advancement in the South? Particularly in agriculture?

Question: was the issue of slavery, though important to the genesis of the Civil War and detestable to some segment of the population, resolved mostly because it was convenient to do so?

Disclaimer: While I am no Civil War scholar, I do know quite a bit and I'll answer these to the best of my knowledge.

I: Unfortunately it did not. The south's economy was utterly, entirely destroyed by the war (I can't stress that enough, it was just gone); due in part to being rendered bankrupt by attempting to support the southern military machine, Grant and Sherman's total war Scorched Earth strategies (which included loss of livestock, housing, cities, infrastructure, equipment, et cetera), the death of about a third of the south's white male population, the price of cotton taking a dive, massive debts with nothing to pay them with, and especially the freeing of the slaves and thus the loss of most of the entire workforce and the backbone of the southern economy. Basically all the south had left was the land.

What happened during the largely-failed Reconstruction Era was that the owners of the big plantations (who were now just as dirt poor as everybody else [to the point that they couldn't even pay the wages of the freed blacks]) had to divide them up and rent the land out to other, unlanded whites or freed slaves. Rebuilding the railroads with updated equipment was probably the biggest boost to the rebuilding of the south, and industrialization did start to slowly pick up, but basically the south was set way back by the war and was still mostly agricultural and focused on cotton (which was still mostly harvested by hand until the some time in the 1950's because it is easily damaged) until the 1940's.

II: Slavery was already gone or on its way out in most of America by the 1860's (just about every state north of the Mason-Dixon had either abolished it or was in the process of phasing it out between the late 1700's and early 1800's) largely due to the fact that it was already illegal in most other "civilized" western countries, and the United States, which was founded on the Enlightenment principles and the Bill of Rights realized it was an unjust and therefore an institution that was unsupportable in good conscience; slavery in most northern states was gone by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 (the slow phasing out in some northern states meant that slavery didn't end until 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment). This was obviously helped along by the Industrial Revolution which, in many cases, made slave labour obsolete, therefore it was no longer a "justifiable" and thus an uncomfortably-ignored "necessary evil".

However, because the south's fortune was based on cotton which was really only harvestable by hand due to its fragility, and because cotton was such a huge commodity in massive worldwide demand that made a lot of northerners rich in the 1800's, meant that slavery was still being ignored to a degree, though there was a huge amount of tension building over it, which eventually led to war.

So, to answer your question, slavery is just wrong and everyone knew it; it just made people money so they ignored that fact until it all boiled over.

1990osu said:

 

Look, it's quite simple:

The north had slave states.  There were riots in New York where northerners killed black people.  The only reason the north didn't have as big a slave industry was because of the weather.  The northerners would have rebelled if they thought that they were all dying to free the slaves.  No, they were fighting to "preserve the union".  And likewise, southerners were not fighting to keep their slaves.  As mentioned, the vast majority of them did not own slaves. 

The Emancipation Proclamation was a great publicity stunt by Lincoln to try to make the war about slavery.  Why?  Because he didn't want Europe to jump in on the southern side, which it was about to do. 

But what did the Emancipation Proclamation actually do?  Nothing!  If Lincoln had really wanted to free slaves why didn't he free the Northern slaves?  Why "free" the southern ones he had no control over? 

It was a great publicity stunt by Lincoln, and ever after it has made a good simplistic "white knight black knight" tale for the history books and public schools- but it just isn't correct. 

The war was not about slavery, but about economics...as most wars are.

 

As a history buff and someone who just last month did a ton of research on the Civil War, I have to put a stop to the misinformation going on here.

The north didn't have as big a slave industry because they had industry that was built upon the industrial revolution: far easier to mass produce with machines than people in any situation. Ergo less need for slavery.

The south had no such infrastructure, as their industry was still, by far and away, agricultural (plantations, slaves, et cetera) and they were having their economy threatened by the fact that slavery was a fast-dying institution due to industrialization, and the trend towards an anti-slavery mindset that was very rapidly growing in the north (and had already been accepted by Europe, further influencing American attitudes, especially considering America was built upon a supposedly-enlightened constitution in which all men are created equal [the issue of slavery up until machines were invented that did the work faster and without rest was conveniently and I would say uncomfortably ignored]); in fact, with the majority of the reasons the south went to war, if you follow them back far enough they lead to the issue of slavery. The south was fighting, in big part, to retain their "institution", that being slavery, plain and simple.

I don't know where you're getting your "facts" about Europe being about to support the CSA, but they are utterly false:

England wanted to remain staunchly neutral as it was also facing plenty of tension in Europe with Napoleon III being around, and not to mention the idea that supporting a rebellion like the CSA could give English holdings ideas about separation. The US was also doing a fine job of not legitimizing the rebellion.

It was also not because of the CSA's cotton production, either, as England was already getting plenty of cotton from Egypt and India at the time, however, England was receiving a large amount of far more vital food shipments from the Union states.

The only time England came close to intervening in the war was during Lee's push north, and then it was not to support the CSA, but to mediate an end to the war (though likely by giving the CSA what it wanted in order to end the war, it was by no means going to support their war effort, and certainly not because they supported the movement), and by the time they were discussing offering to mediate, the Union had defeated the CSA's armies at Antietam (which took place before the Emancipation Proclamation) and forced them back into the south, and at this point, the war was basically over for the CSA, as they just didn't have the manpower anymore to deal with such costly battles.

At the same time, France was officially neutral as well; though they were in the market for southern cotton, there was a lot of internal governmental disagreement about which side to support, and the fact that England was watching them made them no quicker to decide. Again, after Antietam (again, before the Emancipation Proclamation), any question about supporting the CSA was quashed.

I agree that the war was primarily fought by the Union in order to preserve that union, and that the Emancipation Proclamation was not only about freeing the slaves for the sake of freeing the slaves (turning the war into a moral war not only opened up black men for recruiting, but also revived shaky morale and support for the war, and did, indeed, keep outside powers from supporting the CSA, though this was hardly a reality anyway [if you want to know why Lincoln freed only the southern slaves, it was to further illegitimize the southern rebellion as well as to utterly and completely destroy their economy, he didn't have to free them in the north because slavery was already gone or on its way out]) but anybody downplaying slavery as a primary cause is just outright revisionism, and I will not stand for it.

xhonzi said:

39 replies and no:

"You're beginning to sound like a Separatist!"?

 

I am disappoint.

Now you're starting to sound like a Separatist.

Well this has gotten out of hand.

Combo breaker, et cetera.

TV's Frink said:

darth_ender said:

I hear they get even better in the first few months after birth.

Normally, but not always.  And they don't necessarily get all the way better.

Sometimes they get a lot worse.

Possibly most of the time.

Comedy is a group process in Australia.

lol @ Civil War not being about slavery

TV's Frink said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihd7ofrwQX0

 

I'm in love.

Dang. She owned him in the face so hard.

I'm voting for her.

I want to start listening to Christmas music, but I always force myself to hold off until after Thanksgiving.

I hope it's a good Christmas this year.