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"But those are very nice sunglasses she has on..."

"Why thank you...If I'm going to wear ANYTHING, it's going to be my OptiGuards, from Prismolantic---the Experts in Eye Protection!"

Those poor swat team members. I bet they weren't looking at her glasses.

darkmax wrote:You mean she ain't wearing anything below the eye?!

That -is- what the definition of 'nude' is....the hat doesn't count

As for the Ataran warrior women googles....I've always wondered if they actually had eyes(albeit nonfunctional) or just patches of skin...so the quality of eye protection doesn't matter much...but the serious sunglasses wearer is going to what some quality gear, and the markets of Center have a wide range...from the Atomomatic Flash-Bafflers that darken instantly in response to nearby plasma blasts, to the MatchFinder 4000 that uses biult-in scanners and a dataminer link to scan surrounding people to find those most romantically compatible with you(according to your input parameters), to the ultra-rare and ultra-expensive Forwatch eyeband that actually provides the wearer with a ghostly double-image, showing both the scene around the person as it is and how it WILL be in three seconds rtime(effectively counts as psionic Sixth Sense, but only if the danger is coming in at an angle that the person can see....).

darkmax wrote:I think the Atarans' sunglasses are meant for aesthetic purposes. Either that or some kind of sensory device..... May be even to reflect eye beams from Basilisk.

Could be...plus it throws people off balance, trying to make eye contact in conversation or trying to avoid being in their gaze(and giving away their position instead to the BWW's acute sense of hearing).

It certainly does! :::done imitating Groucho Marx.:::

Sometimes Style -IS-Everything....
Which is why we have advertizing companies...

Read Frederick Pohl's 'The Space Merchants' and its sequel "The Merchants' War", that have been packaged as 'Venus Inc.'...Pohl wrote cyberpunk long before Gibson and co. co-opted/coined the term 'cyberpunk' to describe their dark, gritty, self-interest-driven dystopias(but look at Pohl's earlier 'Gladiator-in-Law', and you see all the elements of later cyberpunk)...
ANYWAYS....Pohl has an entire overpopulated, polluted, thoroughly corrupted, global economy run by advertizing firms who do everthing to flimflam the peasant-like consumers, including setting up chains of mutually co-addictive products , pleasure-center-zapping automatic ads that bombard you with promo when you're writhing and vulnerable in the grip of a microwave-induced orgasm(Larry Niven's 'tasps' comes to mind), and cradle-to-grave media assault. All to cover the fact that most products are shoddy low-end make, the ecology is a wreck, and politics are now run by the international megacorps through buy-outs and market-share...

I'm sure SOMEBODY at Madison Avenue is reading Pohl and getting ideas...

darkmax wrote:hmmm... I'm not reading anything, but then again, I'm not at Madison Avenue.

Read Pohl anyway...for me, he -IS- the definitive over-the-top future model of advertizing culture...

I agree about Pohl!

darkmax wrote:Looks like I need to do some reading and research.

What can I say? We're a literate bunch around here...

I almost got a chance to meet Fredrick Pohl this summer at a scifi con. But he cancelled out and didn't attend. He must have been worried about dying a month after he attended. That happened to Roger Zalazney (I know I spelled his name wrong. He was the author of AMber. He attended the same con only a few years earlier and died a few weeks after he attended. I hope our con isn't cursed.

No as far as I know he is still very much alive. I think he heard about Zelazney who passed away a few years ago. Pohl was worried about passing away after coming to this convention.

That is what I suspect.

darkmax wrote:read more... improve your vocab..... pictures are meant for lurid stuff....

And you IMAGINE so much luridly with a good vocabulary!

"Recite Klingon LOVE poetry to me..."

Read more of anything and everything. That is what I support! Become more literate!

Aramanthus wrote:Read more of anything and everything. That is what I support! Become more literate!

(Reading label of food package and wishing he had taken more chemistry courses in high school)...Though sometimes Literary Ignorance IS Bliss...

Opps... Sorry I was being hopeful for society!

darkmax wrote:You are optimistic.... I have long believe the society is morally dead and will soon end on itself.

Nope. I believe us to be ethically dead, but morally looking forward...we know what's right, but our means of getting there are sorely lacking....

I prefer to be cynically optimistic...I believe people to be basically good but do not allow myself to be disappointed by their shortcomings...I am radically conservative, allowing for liberal thought to produce good ideas, but apply them with caution and wisdom gained through painful experience, and that progress is not without sacrifice...

And I ALWAYS allow for stupidity(and ignorance) in the equation...

No, you are not Darkmax!


Taalismn, I'm a lot like you in my outlook after reading your little self exploration paragraph.

darkmax wrote:cool..... two optimistic people with one grey....

Yes, we can tell by the bald head, thin body, and large oval eyes...

darkmax wrote:Uteni?

...quit waving the probe at me....

Are you sure that is not a probe-ulator? Watch out Taalismn Darkmax is from the future!

darkmax wrote:If I were from my version of the future, you would have been scanned already, without the devices.

Geez...you come back with a sixth finger and an enlarged cranium, and nobody's PIN is safe!

darkmax wrote:nay, don't need all those. Just gone to the National Archive to pick up the accounts of the long dead...... before I returned to the current time....

Man, you must have one heckuva a wrist watch to keep track of all that!

New from TemporalTell; the Holochronic 50K!
This handy wrist-wearable multifunction personal time keeper will track and display via its unique floating holo-display the time you left, the time you're in, the local time zone, the time you'll leave, the time ypu might have been, and the time to be!

Always know where and WHEN you'll be with a Holochronic 50K!

Be careful of Galactic Savings Time...Every 500 million years we turn the chronographs forward or back about a century!

LOL Very funny! What happens when the poles switch? We're due for it sometime in the near term geologically speaking.

We're talking GALACTIC time here, not PLANETARY....Besides, I don't think it would make a difference to the passage of time and its measurement if the planetary poles shifted(unless there was an accompanying slowing/accelerating of planetary rotation).

What happens if it occurs on a galactic scale. I'm talking about poles switching that is. I doubt if it does, but it is an amusing thought.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly! And what happens when two galaxies are merging. Ours will join with Andromeda sometime in the distant future.

darkmax wrote:That, my friend, would be our death. the mess of stars and their gravity and all that jazz would probably kill off this planet, if we haven't left already.... but than again, at this rate of planetary resources stripping, we won't last much longer either....

Odd are, by the time Andromeda becomes the lot next door, Earth will be home to bacterial mats again....or else tucked away in a cosmic museum...

I think we'll survive it as a race if our race is still around. It would be an exciting time to be around.

darkmax wrote:yes... suddenly we have 2 more stars......

Happiness is having your homestar positioned so as to catch the full view of a galactic spiral....

That is my view too Taalismn!

Think positively! It'll be an AWESOME view from our POV.

I think if we can survive the stupid years we'll do fine as a race!

Of course, if the native intelligences in Andromeda have managed to reorganize their stars into one massive billboard as they approach our galaxy...

"EAT AT YA!@GOY'S FOR THE BEST METHANE_CHILLED WFHANG!"

...we'll know our search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe was in vain....

ROFLMAO!!! Maybe Taalismn! But if they start spouting off ever SciFi cliche then we know there is no intelligent life in the universe!

...adn if a new idea does arise, it's likely so radical we won't recognize it for what it is!
Or so far out we immediately reject it as being derivative or an incomplete thought, because we lack the ability to comprehend how original it really is...

Until it becomes commercialized, mainstreamed, sold at Walmart at a discount, and becomes the new status qou....

But at least for the most part SciFi is more original then Hollywood!

Aramanthus wrote:But at least for the most part SciFi is more original then Hollywood!

What was it, within two years we had two remakes of 'Cheaper by the Dozen'?!

And WHHYYYYY!!!!?????? did we get TWO Scooby-Do and TWO Garfield movies!? There wasn;t enough good material there for ONE full-length movie!!!
(grumbles about insidious alien plots to contaminate our precious bodily fluids...)

I totally agree!!!

But that is different from the classic one. I like them both. They are taking the new series off on an interesting ride!

No, it's not a remake. It is it's own series. There are similarities but that is all. It's a great show in it's own right. You should check it out from the beginning.

Also a smaller relative budget.....BS:OS was primarily space opera with a psuedo-spiritual new age background of 'gods from space' and Loren Green looking9and often acting) like Moses...
New Battlestar Galactica is more a lower-tech vision combined with a running war diary and commentary on current affairs(ala Star Trek).....with the idea that we create our own threats(ie. the Cylons, the constant infighting among the Colonials). The Adama character here is more a Colin Powell-style military realist going from one bad situation to another as best he can...

BUT....at least we have no 'Boxy' cluttering up screen time!

darkmax wrote:Hmm.. sounds like I need to go have a look!

Yep...much more 'loose' camera work in this one than the posed shots of the original...

Big letdown....Chrome Cylons are few and far between(the original Glitterboys...the Cylon Centurions...)

Those guys had a special ability that nobody much talked about....Personal Lighting....They could be walking through a dark forest with little ambient light...they'd still be throwing off highlights like they had a ring of directional spots thown on them! And those starburst sparkles off their armor!
I wanna built a Phaseworld(or Rifts Earth) Cyborg patterned after a Centurion! MA-Maximum Cool Effect Rating of 14 or higher!

darkmax wrote:Hmm... Awe factor 14.... Horror factor 18...

BTW, they should be quite easy to spot with that single red scanning eye....

..and the reflector armor...but that eye slit is such a small target to specifically hit...

You can do it Taalismn! Just put your mind to it!

darkmax wrote:Spot the Cylon?

No, build one...of course, I couldn't post it, because it would almost rate as a Conversion(ESPECIALLY if he had a squad of robots made up to resemble him as decoys/minions), but then again, Palladium did do a knock-off in Rifts Mercenaries of the Shadow....

But I could probably get away with a "Cyclopean Glitterborg"


The guy would be a major schill for Rustolium and chrome-polish)had to work an ad in here somehow)...maybe as a sponsor for his custom conversion?

That raises a possibility for people seeking to pay for expensive bionic surgery....get a corporate sponsor!
So you end up with big hulking cyborgs who look like the Transformers got drafted into NASCAR, with all these commercial logos all over them...

"Hey, hey, you got paid for by Pizza, Pizza?! Hey, can I have sausage and cheese on mine?yuk-yuk-yuk!"
(*CLICK*) "I'll gladly plasma-bake you if you don't shut your yap!"

Cyber-Audio by Noikia...
Rubber soles by Goodyear...
Cyber-Optics by Kodak...
Artifical Musculature by John Deere...
Powerplant by General Electric...
Body by Subway....