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Topic: Star Trek (CBS VOD 2017) (Read 129369 times)
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Sir T
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Posts: 14223
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Unlikely. Klingons have been Mary Sue fan wank for years.
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Hic sunt dracones.
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15160
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I do not think that word means what you think it means. Worf is not a Mary Sue, he's almost the opposite. He gets his ass kicked regularly and everybody ignores his suggestions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edflm7Hh3hs
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palmer_eldritch
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Posts: 1999
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I enjoyed this a lot. It's true that the first two episodes are really one extended pilot, but that's not a bad thing (if you're able to watch them both, I guess).
Some people say it doesn't seem very Star Trekky but to me it's reminiscent of later DS9.
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Ironwood
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Posts: 28240
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Some people say it doesn't seem very Star Trekky but to me it's reminiscent of later DS9.
That's me out. Edited to Add : Yeah, 1.5 episodes in. It's kinda telling that I'm .5 into the second one and can't be arsed anymore. I'm not enjoying this and given the cast and prod values, I should be. But I'm not.
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« Last Edit: September 28, 2017, 01:51:27 AM by Ironwood »
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"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
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SurfD
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Posts: 4035
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I have no idea whether the plot and tone for the new Star Trek will work or not, but I got to see the costumes and props up close at SDCC this weekend, and they are certainly going all out on those. They looked great.
I agree, the props and costumes look great. They just don't look like props and costumes from a decade before TOS. This appears to be a major sticking point with a friend at work. It's like the guy responsible for continuity checks was beaten with a club and stuffed in a closet or something. He describes it as trying to suspend disbelief while attempting to watch a show set in 1920s, except that everyone is driving cars with power windows, using push button telephones, and catching the news on flat screen TVs. The technology level is all wrong for a show that is supposed to be set 10 years before the original StarTrek series.
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Darwinism is the Gateway Science.
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Sir T
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Posts: 14223
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I do not think that word means what you think it means. Worf is not a Mary Sue, he's almost the opposite. He gets his ass kicked regularly and everybody ignores his suggestions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edflm7Hh3hsYe that was TNG, where his role was to show that the Alien of the week was totally bad ass because they kicked Worf's ass. In DS9 he was "TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE RAWR RAWR BULGE MUSCLES!!"
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Hic sunt dracones.
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Draegan
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Posts: 10043
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I have no idea whether the plot and tone for the new Star Trek will work or not, but I got to see the costumes and props up close at SDCC this weekend, and they are certainly going all out on those. They looked great.
I agree, the props and costumes look great. They just don't look like props and costumes from a decade before TOS. This appears to be a major sticking point with a friend at work. It's like the guy responsible for continuity checks was beaten with a club and stuffed in a closet or something. He describes it as trying to suspend disbelief while attempting to watch a show set in 1920s, except that everyone is driving cars with power windows, using push button telephones, and catching the news on flat screen TVs. The technology level is all wrong for a show that is supposed to be set 10 years before the original StarTrek series. The show was pretty damn impressive visually from effects to costumes to sets. Hopefully the story is good. The tech thing is a dumb argument. "Future tech" is always what we perceive as a society as futurish. To go preTOS would make it unbelievable to think that people 200 years in the future couldn't make a big screen TV. You have to move on. Plus, the first eps of TNG had really cool holographic displays and projections but they killed that quickly.
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luckton
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Posts: 5947
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I agree with Draegan regarding tech. Maybe if Discovery came right on the heels of Enterprise, they may have tried to retro more stuff.
It's been almost 20 years. Channel your inner-Elsa and let it go.
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"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
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satael
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Posts: 2431
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Trek was never about science in anyway. Just consider the fact that Michael jetpacked 2000 km in 10 minutes into an asteroid field and how any explanation for that would be a lot more interesting than the inconsistencies in Trek tech series to series.
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luckton
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All that said, in another 15-20 years when we reboot Trek again, can we please go back to the TNG/DS9/Voy era?
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"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
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Draegan
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Posts: 10043
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Nah. Need to go 100 years further.
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jgsugden
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Posts: 3888
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If you go too far in the future, the technology gets unrelatable.
If I were in charge, I'd:
1.) Put together a 3 year plan to end Trek. It would take the TV series, the movies, all the remaining casts and fold them together in a series of movies and miniseries to give the original Trek (and the JJ verse) a final send off that celebrates the history...
2.) Then in year 4 I would reboot TOS on TV with the folks that worked on TNG and DS9 in charge and give them free reign to be inspired by Star Trek Lore, but not be beholden to it when you reboot. What I mean by this is that the technology of the future should not look outdated by the tech of today (communicators, screens), but we should have the same tone, same general personalities, most popular makeup designs for aliens, etc... be there, while not being locked into the same exact history (no need to rehash the Kobayashi Maru again), but free to bring back the elements they want and even expand upon them (Khan's story has been told a number of different ways, but there are still a lot of great options there). Nobody would have to work arount TOS time travel episodes, future time cops, Enterprise continuity, etc... which would be nice.
Discovery fails because they took elements of Star Trek and made a new universe around it. Same thing with the JJ verse. They're fun, but not Star Trek. Let's clean the slate and give us the optimistic Trek, free to add an edge like DS9 did, but not sliced too far from the core as we saw with Enterprise, Discvoery, the recent movies, etc...
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2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
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BobtheSomething
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Posts: 452
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So, you mean make a show like The Orville?
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MahrinSkel
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When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back... she was bullshit!
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Think he means we need to reanimate Roddenberry's corpse, wipe his memory of everything after he started TOS, and have him try again.
--Dave
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--Signature Unclear
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luckton
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Posts: 5947
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Think he means we need to reanimate Roddenberry's corpse, wipe his memory of everything after he started TOS, and have him try again.
--Dave
Let's not do that. Then the GOP will want to use that shit on Reagan, and no one needs that.
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"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
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jgsugden
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Posts: 3888
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Yes, I do mean an updated version of Roddenberry's original vision. However, if you think that is the Orville, you have no recollection of what the original vision of Star Trek was.
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2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15160
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Get rid of the transporter, the translator, and put ships beyond instantaneous communication with Star Fleet. Do a show that's about nothing other than first contact missions. Have 4-6 episode arcs about one first contact. Voila, interesting Trek.
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Ironwood
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Sarek Katra Bullshit.
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"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
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Sir T
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I've heard people say that the Transporter is a really good thing for story as you can get characters exactly where they need to be for the story very quickly. So from a story writers point of view it's a really really good invention as it moves the story along. So its a good invention from that point of view.
Of course, in reality its the one thing that would pop conflicts instantly - for example "Hi an entire army just appeared inside your fortress, good luck" "We just beamed up the main antagonist, shall we commence kinetic treatment with the Wrench now that he is alone vs all our security staff?" "Ok, we just beamed all the invading aliens into the Sewage treatment plant."
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Hic sunt dracones.
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15160
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It just forces ST writers to constantly find reasons that it doesn't work at exactly the moment that working would cancel the action and drama of a given story. If your crew has to travel to the surface in a shuttlecraft, and then protect or hide the shuttlecraft and remain somewhat close to it, then you can put them in danger in ways that aren't just ended by a quick call to the ship on a communicator. The number of ST stories that have to give a lot of space to juryrigged no-transporter-right-now solutions is legion, and it is never something that helps. Plus once your transporters become replicators, you have another problem, which is having to ignore the implications of a technology that should relieve the crew of most kinds of limitations. Same thing--you have to constantly come up with reasons why an extremely flexible kind of nanotechnology can't be used to resolve 99% of the issues the crew encounters. "Oh, that's the one thing you can't replicate", etc.
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Merusk
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Transporters, replicators, and translators are not an issue. There are plenty of stories where working transporters and replicators aren't a solution to the issue. The issue is a lack of imagination, vision, and creativity among the writers.
Why can I say this with any authority?
The same reason having cell phones, data back-ups, and more-than-one-copy of a macguffin file is NOT a solution that has to be written-around by good writers to produce good stories.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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jgsugden
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Posts: 3888
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I agree with Merusk and Khaldun.
A good writer will accept that certain things are just not challenging to certain heroes and will not try to make those things be a challenge to those heroes. It is the same problem we see in comics.
However, going back to the tech level of ToS and further placing some limitations on transporting, such as shorter range, line of sight, etc... would give them more room to create challenges.
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2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19221
sentient yeast infection
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The same reason having cell phones, data back-ups, and more-than-one-copy of a macguffin file is NOT a solution that has to be written-around by good writers to produce good stories.
Does Rogue One count as "writing around" or did they just flat out ignore that concept?
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"I have not actually recommended many games, and I'll go on the record here saying my track record is probably best in the industry." - schild
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Merusk
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They flat-out ignored it because of the story being told from 1977. The glaring weakness of going back and doing prequels to a thing 40 years later.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Quinton
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Posts: 3332
is saving up his raid points for a fancy board title
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Get rid of the transporter, the translator, and put ships beyond instantaneous communication with Star Fleet. Do a show that's about nothing other than first contact missions. Have 4-6 episode arcs about one first contact. Voila, interesting Trek.
Or hell, do a whole season around a first contact situation. Spend a few episodes on initial contact, figuring out how to communicate, mishaps along the way. Now once you can communicate you have a whole pile of options -- what do these people want / need / hope to get from the Federation? Get away from Planet of Hats silliness and spend time encountering multiple species / cultures / races / whatnot on *one planet* and explore how Federation do-goodery impacts that for good or bad. You can still tell all kinds of stories within that framework, you get the advantage of sets you can use across multiple episodes, and you weave your season-wide story arc through all that.
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Der Helm
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Posts: 4025
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Watched the first two episodes. Liked it better than I thought I would.
If they avoid passing around the idiot balll like they did in the first two episodes, this could actually be good.
So far I don't like the new Klingons. Their faces are two expressionless and like somebody else said, they do not sound fluent in their own language.
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"I've been done enough around here..."- Signe
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Ginaz
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Posts: 3534
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Watched the first two episodes. Liked it better than I thought I would.
If they avoid passing around the idiot balll like they did in the first two episodes, this could actually be good.
So far I don't like the new Klingons. Their faces are two expressionless and like somebody else said, they do not sound fluent in their own language.
I didn't like either of the two episodes I've seen and the Klingons were awful. They looked stupid and it sounded like they were trying to speak with marbles in their mouths.
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Cyrrex
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Posts: 10603
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I thought the new Klingons looked just fine. But the language thing, didn't much like it. Oh well, overall I thought it was pretty decent and it sure looked the business. I hope at least they keep the high production values.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Brolan
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Posts: 1395
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Sorry but not feeling the love on this one. It occurs to me we have three hours of show in this series and we could've covered this ground in a single episode. Looks like all flash and no substance.
My free trial of All Access is over and I will not be paying for more. The value proposition just isn't there for me. The show isn't good enough for the $6 fee AND having to watch commercials too. And there isn't enough value in the rest of All Access compared to subscriptions like Netflix and HBO.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42629
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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The football screwed up my DVR recording of the first episode of this, so I deleted it before I realized that even though the first episode was free, it wasn't being shown on my cable provider's On Demand service. At that point, I just couldn't be arsed to give enough of a fuck to find a free option to watch it.
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Brolan
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Khaldun
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I'm almost kind of interested in this as I read the rough summaries of the first three episodes. Seems to me that they actually did some thinking about a new kind of character, links to the Vulcans and all that notwithstanding.
Not interested enough to buy a streaming service.
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luckton
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Posts: 5947
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I'm not paying for this, but I am watching. I agree that the first two episodes could have probably been compressed into one in some fashion, but that third episode? Now we're getting somewhere.
This isn't going to be a typical Trek adventure, with episodic self-contained epochs and a crew that miraculously survives every time. And I'm ok with that. Also, every Trek series always has an awkward start; I would say that Encounter At Farpoint was probably a really stupid episode when taken at face value. But when looked in the hindsight of seven years of character development and exploration, it's a pretty significant starting point.
I'm willing to keep watching for now. Certainly something to look forward to now that Rick and Morty are off the air for...well, while anyways.
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"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
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Quinton
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Posts: 3332
is saving up his raid points for a fancy board title
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Yeah, episode 3 has me wanting to see where this all goes. Still could turn out awful, but there are some interesting things going on here, and if the the writers and actors get things figured out and they lose some of the clunkiness it could be fun.
Also, I'll happily take space mushroom spore technology as an alternative to particle-of-the-week for this round of trek technobabble. Why not?
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MahrinSkel
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10857
When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back... she was bullshit!
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Quantum entanglement subspace mushrooms. And yeah, why not, beats tachyons and neutrinos doing things that physics says they could never actually do.
--Dave
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--Signature Unclear
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