heehee Maxim Faget heehee
I admit, I had to look it up to be sure 
Of course, being in all the episodes doesn’t mean he did much in any of them. I remembered Childhood’s End as being the only Ford-centered episode of the first season, but when I rewatched it for the frak party, he had a lot less to do than I remembered.
Poor guy. He was a main cast member and had so little to do he may as well have been the guy that dials the gate. He got much more interesting as an antagonist.
Hey, first time listening to the podcast and your comments on A.I.'s interested me. Well at least A.I.'s and sentience and Ghost in the Shell.
Honestly, what I think makes GitS’s A.I. scary is what makes it unique. It seems a lot of Western fiction seems to revolve around the idea that there isn’t anything special about humanity. Basically, if it acts like a human, thinks like a human and feels like a human then it’s a human. This is relatively the same across the board. The difference is GitS basically says there is something innate to being a human that a machine can’t replicate, and conversely no matter how non-human someone becomes (through cybernetics) they’ll still be human. So it requires a man-machine interface for the A.I. to evolve past its electronic roots.
But that’s just me.
I’m caught up! I’ve listened to 50 episodes in about 3 months and now I can finally stop thinking 4th dimensionally (which is good because I have a problem with that).
Is Dune the MacBeth of cinema? I didn’t see the Dune film until well after I played the Dune II game for many years. I was puzzled by there being no mention of House Ordos but I enjoyed it. There was not enough Sci-Fi in those days for me to hate anything even remotely good.
If I were going to the meetup (I’m only barely on Earth here on the edge of Pookabarra land, let alone the American continents) I’d be taking $15 and a dress for Chuck.
I’d really like to see a race to Mars between Coke and Pepsi. The first one there gets to keep 1/3rd of the planet to do with what they like. Either that or Google/Apple/Microsoft. It’d be great.
2001 was and is a great movie but I agree that it’s not one you want to watch repeatedly. It’s also one of those that everyone seems to know more about than is actually in the film which is odd. Is there an audio commentary or something or the DVD? How do people learn this stuff? Is it just from the books? Also, has anyone mentioned that old thing where H+1 = I, A+1 = B, L+1 = M, so HAL->IBM?
So…um…when’s the next one due? Looking forward to it. Keep up the good work folks.
Hello iniksbane!
My mind is blown with noodle-baking thots as well!
Holy Cow, Wolfbyte!
That’s a lot of listening!
Welcome to you both!
And a camera.
Despite the fact I’m terribly behind, I had to throw in my thoughts on Ghost in the Shell and AI. I had a class in college where we looked at science fiction and religion, and in my final paper I did a rambling discourse on the questions of robots and souls. Pulling some of the quotes that I thought were relevant from the anime:
“Memory cannot be defined, but it defines mankind”
“It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself. Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system. So man is an individual only because of his intangible memory…The advent of computers, and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought, parallel to your own.”
"What if a cyber brain could possibly generate its own ghost, create a soul all by itself? And if it did, just what would be the importance of being human then? "
Take these together, and it does deal a lot with the question of just what exactly makes us living, sentient creatures (to which I avoid the stigma of human). Makes it a very interesting movie, and definately the subject of a future podcast (if they haven’t done it already).
Aside from GitS, I also talked about Naomi Armitage from Amitage III: Poly Matrix and also about the droids from Star Wars, but that’s a whole 'nother topic.
And I just have to throw out the firestarter, I, Robot, the movie, really hurt me as an Asimov fan. Yes it was fun, and yes it did manage to do lip service to Asimov’s Three Laws, but if you try to put it with the continuity of Asimov’s works, it clearly doesn’t fit in.
What college did you go to that let you get away with submitting a paper on anime? And, do they offer online programs?
Small liberal arts college where I paid way too much to have small classes. I’d also helped him TA a course on a similar topic the semester before where I’d given a presentation to the freshmen as an example for their projects. Topic there was how Yoda was a Zen Buddhist Master. We also watched The Day the Earth Stood Still (1950s version) in class.
Unfortunately they didn’t do any online classes, but one of the other final papers in that class was on Cthulu.
Wow. Man I wish I could have gone to that school.
I’m really behind on podcasts! Just listened to 205 today and the talk about Hal made me think about GERTY from Moon. Now there was a computer that made all the right choices.