VCs actually seems to make some sort of astronomical sense. I'll go with that unless someone can give me a canonical refutation, which seems unlikely since the series creator has said "lol i'm bad at science".
Kag's is from Serenity. Note "Miranda". Of course it's a stylized map.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
Ah, the old "all sex is rape" line. Always a good indicator that awesomeness is about to ensue.
Does this mean that women who like sex are wrong? Unhealthy? Brainwashed by the horrible stereotypes portrayed in the media and forced upon them by their peers and own supposedly biological desires?
Well, I'm pretty sure that's it.
Yeah I've read some early radical feminist texts that accuse all non-lesbian women of being traitors to womanhood.
Goddamn baby boomers. edit: oops she isn't a baby boomer. Goddamn babies before baby boomers.
edit: She shot Andy Warhol, he was forced to wear a corset for the rest of his life because of his injuries. He also lived in constant fear she's come back. All because he lost a play of hers called "Up Your Ass"
"The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barrelling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won't protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants."
Really, I can't do anything here except stand up and applaud. Bravo, crazy lady. Bravo.
But not all men are the enemy! Some are merely really oogy!
SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men's Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing pall with SCUM. A few examples of the men in the Men's Auxiliary are: men who kill men; biological scientists who are working on constructive programs, as opposed to biological warfare; journalists, writers, editors, publishers and producers who disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM's goals; faggots who, by their shimmering, flaming example, encourage other men to de-man themselves and thereby make themselves relatively inoffensive; men who consistently give things away -- money, things, services; men who tell it like it is (so far not one ever has), who put women straight, who reveal the truth about themselves, who give the mindless male females correct sentences to parrot, who tell them a woman's primary goal in life should be to squash the male sex (to aid men in this endeavor SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: `I am a turd, a lowly abject turd', then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for doing so will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present.
At that last bit, I started imagining the author as Shelly Marsh. "Shtop shtaring at mygh headgyear, turd! The male ish jusht a bunch of condishunned refleckshes, incyapable of a mentally free reshponse, turd!"
And apparently proper grammatical structure is a product of the vile patriarchy.
ElJeffe on
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Has Joss ever said why Chinese culture had such a strong influence on the series, but Chinese characters were all but absent from the series? Was there meant to have been some kind of ethnic cleansing at some point in the series' history, or did casting just not work out that way for whatever reason?
Yeah I never thought about it till you brought it up, it's understandable that none of the crew members are asian but neither are none of the side characters from what I remember. It would probably be a casting issue or maybe there was an ethnic cleansing and it was going to be explained later on in the show.
It's generally accepted that beyond a certain point (some say in the next century), crossbreeding will have completely done away with ethnicity altogether. Realistically casting such a group of people would be impossible. Also, English (and Chinese for that matter) 500 years from now will sound nothing like it does today. So, call it suspension of disbelief.
Anyway, that lady is crazy and this doesn't deserve a thread this long.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
edited March 2008
Even M*A*S*H with it's setting in fucking Asia didn't have many Asian characters and the ones they did were played by four different Asian actors. In the whole series.
Okay it was probably more than four but you get the point.
It's generally accepted that beyond a certain point (some say in the next century), crossbreeding will have completely done away with ethnicity altogether. Realistically casting such a group of people would be impossible. Also, English (and Chinese for that matter) 500 years from now will sound nothing like it does today. So, call it suspension of disbelief.
Your first point assumes uniformly wide cross-breeding amongst all ethnic groups. Do you really see that happening in, say, sub-Saharan Africa in the next century? China? Extremely xenophobic places in the Middle East? Someday, sure. But someday far in the future, once the vast majority of the planet is modernized and developed.
And English will sound pretty similar even a few hundred years from now, I think. Evolution of the language was, I would think, much more rapid in the 1500s, when there was no means of recording, replaying, and communicating the spoken word beyond word of mouth. And even communicating the written word was a significant effort. Modern society makes it easier to maintain stability in the structure of the language.
If you listen to early recordings of spoken english from the late 1800s, I don't think they sound appreciably different than people with corresponding dialects of today. If there's negligible change in spoken English over 120 years, I think it's a stretch to say that spoken English will sound "nothing like it does today" in 500 years.
ElJeffe on
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It's generally accepted that beyond a certain point (some say in the next century), crossbreeding will have completely done away with ethnicity altogether. Realistically casting such a group of people would be impossible. Also, English (and Chinese for that matter) 500 years from now will sound nothing like it does today. So, call it suspension of disbelief.
Your first point assumes uniformly wide cross-breeding amongst all ethnic groups. Do you really see that happening in, say, sub-Saharan Africa in the next century? China? Extremely xenophobic places in the Middle East? Someday, sure. But someday far in the future, once the vast majority of the planet is modernized and developed.
And English will sound pretty similar even a few hundred years from now, I think. Evolution of the language was, I would think, much more rapid in the 1500s, when there was no means of recording, replaying, and communicating the spoken word beyond word of mouth. And even communicating the written word was a significant effort. Modern society makes it easier to maintain stability in the structure of the language.
If you listen to early recordings of spoken english from the late 1800s, I don't think they sound appreciably different than people with corresponding dialects of today. If there's negligible change in spoken English over 120 years, I think it's a stretch to say that spoken English will sound "nothing like it does today" in 500 years.
Well, once you get past 100 years or so, speculative fiction gets pretty open on these subjects. I mean, in Firefly, sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle-East are irrelevent, because they'd be cramped into the big spaceships with the rest of humanity. I'm personally convinced that genetic and cybernetics will allow for personal body customization, rendering racial differences moot well within 100 years, and certainly within 500. Now, how long the furries take to get culturally accepted is another story altogether.
But in the low-tech Firefly universe, that's irrelevent. Given the close proximity for generations and a complete population redistribution over multiple freaking planets, I can see the loss of old racial barriers develop pretty easily. But then, centuries of living on planets with different climates and previous recessive genes could start to re-establish some forms of racial identities; just not the ones we know of. I'm not sure on that point, though, lacking any actual experience in genetics.
Assuming all of that isn't true, though, once could just assume that the Chinese were more pro-Unification and just lived on the closer Core worlds, where the show almost never explored.
And after the Venture Brothers, I can't imagine the SCUM Manifesto without thinking of Velma.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
It's generally accepted that beyond a certain point (some say in the next century), crossbreeding will have completely done away with ethnicity altogether. Realistically casting such a group of people would be impossible. Also, English (and Chinese for that matter) 500 years from now will sound nothing like it does today. So, call it suspension of disbelief.
Your first point assumes uniformly wide cross-breeding amongst all ethnic groups. Do you really see that happening in, say, sub-Saharan Africa in the next century? China? Extremely xenophobic places in the Middle East? Someday, sure. But someday far in the future, once the vast majority of the planet is modernized and developed.
Actually I think his first point hinges on the world-destroying conflict that sends the last bits of humanity having to find a new home.
I doubt the crew of those ships would be equally represented ethnically.
Fair points, Kagera and Seth, but I sort of assumed he was talking about the future of our own planet in the real world, not talking about the world of Firefly.
ElJeffe on
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Fair points, Kagera and Seth, but I sort of assumed he was talking about the future of our own planet in the real world, not talking about the world of Firefly.
Sure. But then I assume in the future we'll be too worried about the elves, cat-people, and green-skinned plastic babes to worry about race all that much. That's my concern with future racial identity; I think that advances in science regarding biology, or even the transportation and labor markets, will render what we consider cultural differences irrelevent faster than most of us can expect.
EmperorSeth on
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ZimmydoomAccept no substitutesRegistered Userregular
Fair points, Kagera and Seth, but I sort of assumed he was talking about the future of our own planet in the real world, not talking about the world of Firefly.
Sure. But then I assume in the future we'll be too worried about the elves, cat-people, and green-skinned plastic babes to worry about race all that much. That's my concern with future racial identity; I think that advances in science regarding biology, or even the transportation and labor markets, will render what we consider cultural differences irrelevent faster than most of us can expect.
I wonder how she would deal with the idea that Orion slave girls actually run Orion society.
Zimmydoom, Zimmydoom
Flew away in a balloon
Had sex with polar bears
While sitting in a reclining chair
Now there are Zim-Bear hybrids
Running around and clawing eyelids
Watch out, a Zim-Bear is about to have sex with yooooooou!
ElJeffe, the slowing of language shift by recording technology is more than off-set by vastly increased literacy, technospeak and English globalisation. You'd be hard pressed to draw any conclusions about future language shift with so many factors at play. Looking back 120 years to the earliest recorded speech and saying "it's not that different" doesn't mean much.
If only the Greeks or Romans had recorded speech; it's really easy to do.
SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men's Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing pall with SCUM. A few examples of the men in the Men's Auxiliary are: men who kill men; biological scientists who are working on constructive programs, as opposed to biological warfare; journalists, writers, editors, publishers and producers who disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM's goals; faggots who, by their shimmering, flaming example, encourage other men to de-man themselves and thereby make themselves relatively inoffensive; men who consistently give things away -- money, things, services; men who tell it like it is (so far not one ever has), who put women straight, who reveal the truth about themselves, who give the mindless male females correct sentences to parrot, who tell them a woman's primary goal in life should be to squash the male sex (to aid men in this endeavor SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: `I am a turd, a lowly abject turd', then proceed to list all the ways in which he is. His reward for doing so will be the opportunity to fraternize after the session for a whole, solid hour with the SCUM who will be present.
Yay I'm saved! I do this all the time with the back of my hand.
It's generally accepted that beyond a certain point (some say in the next century), crossbreeding will have completely done away with ethnicity altogether. Realistically casting such a group of people would be impossible. Also, English (and Chinese for that matter) 500 years from now will sound nothing like it does today. So, call it suspension of disbelief.
Your first point assumes uniformly wide cross-breeding amongst all ethnic groups. Do you really see that happening in, say, sub-Saharan Africa in the next century? China? Extremely xenophobic places in the Middle East? Someday, sure. But someday far in the future, once the vast majority of the planet is modernized and developed.
And English will sound pretty similar even a few hundred years from now, I think. Evolution of the language was, I would think, much more rapid in the 1500s, when there was no means of recording, replaying, and communicating the spoken word beyond word of mouth. And even communicating the written word was a significant effort. Modern society makes it easier to maintain stability in the structure of the language.
If you listen to early recordings of spoken english from the late 1800s, I don't think they sound appreciably different than people with corresponding dialects of today. If there's negligible change in spoken English over 120 years, I think it's a stretch to say that spoken English will sound "nothing like it does today" in 500 years.
Actually, there has been a quite rapid shifting in the Boston dialect family, with the notable example of a New Hampshire dialect that formed in the last ten or twenty years which excludes most of the well-known features that vary from standard American, but keeping all the others that don't advertise being "from away."
It's generally accepted that beyond a certain point (some say in the next century), crossbreeding will have completely done away with ethnicity altogether. Realistically casting such a group of people would be impossible. Also, English (and Chinese for that matter) 500 years from now will sound nothing like it does today. So, call it suspension of disbelief.
Your first point assumes uniformly wide cross-breeding amongst all ethnic groups. Do you really see that happening in, say, sub-Saharan Africa in the next century? China? Extremely xenophobic places in the Middle East? Someday, sure. But someday far in the future, once the vast majority of the planet is modernized and developed.
And English will sound pretty similar even a few hundred years from now, I think. Evolution of the language was, I would think, much more rapid in the 1500s, when there was no means of recording, replaying, and communicating the spoken word beyond word of mouth. And even communicating the written word was a significant effort. Modern society makes it easier to maintain stability in the structure of the language.
If you listen to early recordings of spoken english from the late 1800s, I don't think they sound appreciably different than people with corresponding dialects of today. If there's negligible change in spoken English over 120 years, I think it's a stretch to say that spoken English will sound "nothing like it does today" in 500 years.
So the difference between Shakespeare's speech and ours is negligible?
(although I agree that the evolution of communication makes it impossible to tell how it will change)
And on cross-breeding: I can't remember what the source was, but I've read that our genetic makeup has already rapidly diversified over the past hundred years or so, and people are only going to get more mobile. It will happen eventually, though how long it'll take is anyone's guess.
We have to remember that genetic change is ongoing, so we'll still see stuff turn up, the most recent one I can think of off the top of my head being Europeans' resistance to alcohol.
We have to remember that genetic change is ongoing, so we'll still see stuff turn up, the most recent one I can think of off the top of my head being Europeans' resistance to alcohol.
A buddy of mine went to a business trip to Japan once, and then went out drinking with the business guys which seems to be some cultural thing there.
The day after the Japanese guys were all "Wooh, we survived drinking with a Scandinavian!"
So the difference between Shakespeare's speech and ours is negligible?
I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare's writing was about as accurate a reflection of common parlance as Dickens's. Even then, it's easily recognizeable as English.
ElJeffe on
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
So the difference between Shakespeare's speech and ours is negligible?
I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare's writing was about as accurate a reflection of common parlance as Dickens's. Even then, it's easily recognizeable as English.
Indeed, Shakespeare is Modern English. Any difficulty comes from poetically inverted syntax.
Dickens, as representative of Victorian rhetoric, just loved subordinate clauses.
Language will always be different stylistically, but English has not morphologically changed in a good 500 years.
Her husband, Wash, talking about how he likes to watch her bathe. Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour. I have known a black woman whose white husband would strangle and bash her while her young children watched. My white grandfather liked black women because they were ‘exotic’, and he did not, could not treat women, especially women of colour, like human beings. I grew up watching my great aunts, my aunty and my mother all treated like shit by their white husbands, the men they loved. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession.
This is the one that makes me think it's a joke.
Actually that'd be the line that made me go "red flag, batshit insane racist, please use the nearest exit"
I think I used too strong a hyperbole. I'd consider Early Modern English to be quite different from what we speak now, but it is far from incomprehensible.
We have to remember that genetic change is ongoing, so we'll still see stuff turn up, the most recent one I can think of off the top of my head being Europeans' resistance to alcohol.
A buddy of mine went to a business trip to Japan once, and then went out drinking with the business guys which seems to be some cultural thing there.
The day after the Japanese guys were all "Wooh, we survived drinking with a Scandinavian!"
Well, I'm not actually sure that the Japanese don't have the gene too. The book mostly talked about how fucked over the native Americans were when they met booze (apparently, native Americans were hygienic enough to not worry about dysentery).
ElJeffe wrote: View Post
Torso Boy wrote: View Post
So the difference between Shakespeare's speech and ours is negligible?
I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare's writing was about as accurate a reflection of common parlance as Dickens's. Even then, it's easily recognizeable as English.
Indeed, Shakespeare is Modern English. Any difficulty comes from poetically inverted syntax.
Dickens, as representative of Victorian rhetoric, just loved subordinate clauses.
Language will always be different stylistically, but English has not morphologically changed in a good 500 years.
Remember Goldmember, specifically the "teakettle" conversation?
I think I used too strong a hyperbole. I'd consider Early Modern English to be quite different from what we speak now, but it is far from incomprehensible.
I'll concede that the language will be different in 500 years, but more in the way that British English differs from American English than in the way, say, Spanish differs from Portuegese.
ElJeffe on
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I think I used too strong a hyperbole. I'd consider Early Modern English to be quite different from what we speak now, but it is far from incomprehensible.
I'll concede that the language will be different in 500 years, but more in the way that British English differs from American English than in the way, say, Spanish differs from Portuegese.
n 500 yrs vwls wll b gn llz
Or maybe we'll communicate through beeps and clicks.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited March 2008
She vetoed my comment to one of the comment threads which was basically "It was obviously intentional to put a black woman subordinate to a white man!"
I said "Yeah but she was second in charge, so everyone else was subordinate to her."
About the SCUM Manifesto: The author Valerie Solanas was Batshits crazy and had the court documents to prove it. She was remanded to a mental institution for trying to kill Andy Warhol.
Kipling217 on
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
About the SCUM Manifesto: The author Valerie Solanas was Batshits crazy and had the court documents to prove it. She was remanded to a mental institution for trying to kill Andy Warhol.
The part that gets me is that a lot of people still think of her as a hero of feminism.
I think Whedon comes off as a genuinely well intentioned person, But his work isn't quite as feminist as he thinks it is. Plus he has that stupid womb-envy thing he wrote that's just a silly "opposite = correct" reaction to penis envy.
I don't think that means he's non feminist, though. Or that you know... that he rapes his wife. Christ.
Pretty much this, also the blogger the OP quoted is a whole barrel of crazy. You want level-headed feminismey stuff, stick with Pandagon, Majikthise and maybe Feministe and Hugo Schwyzer. The rest aren't much good most of the time.
After this, I'm rather loathe to call Feministe level-headed. One would think the author might want to read some of the points the commentators are making.
I'm not seeing any major problems with that post, even though I don't like Clinton. I put Feministe at second-tier lately for other posts.
Has Joss ever said why Chinese culture had such a strong influence on the series, but Chinese characters were all but absent from the series? Was there meant to have been some kind of ethnic cleansing at some point in the series' history, or did casting just not work out that way for whatever reason?
I get the impression that they were supposed to be the majority of rich core-dwellers, but that still doesn't explain the casting in the lassiter-robbery episode or the hospital one.
I think Whedon comes off as a genuinely well intentioned person, But his work isn't quite as feminist as he thinks it is. Plus he has that stupid womb-envy thing he wrote that's just a silly "opposite = correct" reaction to penis envy.
I don't think that means he's non feminist, though. Or that you know... that he rapes his wife. Christ.
Pretty much this, also the blogger the OP quoted is a whole barrel of crazy. You want level-headed feminismey stuff, stick with Pandagon, Majikthise and maybe Feministe and Hugo Schwyzer. The rest aren't much good most of the time.
After this, I'm rather loathe to call Feministe level-headed. One would think the author might want to read some of the points the commentators are making.
There's an error establishing a database connection. What is it?
She goes off the deep end saying that referencing Tonya Harding is a sexist thing to do, and how it's only a notable event because it tarnishes our cute little ice princess idea of figure skating women. The second half of that being from her commenting on her own article.
Anywho, it's a long post and a bunch of comments going "um, it's a reference to kneecapping someone to get ahead in a competition, nothing sexist about it" and her arguing that it's totally sexist.
Normally it's a much saner site.
Well no, the majority of the post was about the pressure on Clinton to step aside and make way for The Man Candidate, and I didn't see any major problems there. Maybe you should re-read it?
I put Feministe at second-tier lately for other reasons - mostly the way trans issues are taking over the blog. I'm fine with the topic, but its pushing every other topic aside right now. Jill, the site owner, is pretty much the only author there that I read closely.
Oh, and Punkassblog is good for a lighter snarky look at things. They don't update much though.
Even M*A*S*H with it's setting in fucking Asia didn't have many Asian characters and the ones they did were played by four different Asian actors. In the whole series.
Okay it was probably more than four but you get the point.
Its like Tora Tora Tora. No actual Japanese in it, and one of the actors playing a Japanese sailor was actually an Australian aborigine :P
She vetoed my comment to one of the comment threads which was basically "It was obviously intentional to put a black woman subordinate to a white man!"
I said "Yeah but she was second in charge, so everyone else was subordinate to her."
See, I've noticed that the only people who tend to filter out comments regularly (besides the trolls and spam) tend to have extreme views that don't work when applied to common fucking sense.
Youtube is a good example; I defy you to find any comment-filtered video that wasn't uploaded by a lunatic.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
She vetoed my comment to one of the comment threads which was basically "It was obviously intentional to put a black woman subordinate to a white man!"
I said "Yeah but she was second in charge, so everyone else was subordinate to her."
See, I've noticed that the only people who tend to filter out comments regularly (besides the trolls and spam) tend to have extreme views that don't work when applied to common fucking sense.
Youtube is a good example; I defy you to find any comment-filtered video that wasn't uploaded by a lunatic.
I defy you to find someone who takes Youtube comments seriously that isn't a lunatic.
She vetoed my comment to one of the comment threads which was basically "It was obviously intentional to put a black woman subordinate to a white man!"
I said "Yeah but she was second in charge, so everyone else was subordinate to her."
See, I've noticed that the only people who tend to filter out comments regularly (besides the trolls and spam) tend to have extreme views that don't work when applied to common fucking sense.
Youtube is a good example; I defy you to find any comment-filtered video that wasn't uploaded by a lunatic.
I defy you to find someone who takes Youtube comments seriously that isn't a lunatic.
I defy you to find a Youtube comment not written by a lunatic. Or at least someone deeply stupid.
She vetoed my comment to one of the comment threads which was basically "It was obviously intentional to put a black woman subordinate to a white man!"
I said "Yeah but she was second in charge, so everyone else was subordinate to her."
See, I've noticed that the only people who tend to filter out comments regularly (besides the trolls and spam) tend to have extreme views that don't work when applied to common fucking sense.
Youtube is a good example; I defy you to find any comment-filtered video that wasn't uploaded by a lunatic.
I defy you to find someone who takes Youtube comments seriously that isn't a lunatic.
I defy you to find a Youtube comment not written by a lunatic. Or at least someone deeply stupid.
I've written Youtube comments.
I'm not sure if that proves or refutes your point.
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Kag's is from Serenity. Note "Miranda". Of course it's a stylized map.
I'm going to pretend that's an elaborate hoax.
I know it's not, but... I'm going to pretend.
That bitch ruined Andy Warhol's life.
Goddamn baby boomers. edit: oops she isn't a baby boomer. Goddamn babies before baby boomers.
edit: She shot Andy Warhol, he was forced to wear a corset for the rest of his life because of his injuries. He also lived in constant fear she's come back. All because he lost a play of hers called "Up Your Ass"
But not all men are the enemy! Some are merely really oogy!
At that last bit, I started imagining the author as Shelly Marsh. "Shtop shtaring at mygh headgyear, turd! The male ish jusht a bunch of condishunned refleckshes, incyapable of a mentally free reshponse, turd!"
And apparently proper grammatical structure is a product of the vile patriarchy.
Anyway, that lady is crazy and this doesn't deserve a thread this long.
Okay it was probably more than four but you get the point.
Your first point assumes uniformly wide cross-breeding amongst all ethnic groups. Do you really see that happening in, say, sub-Saharan Africa in the next century? China? Extremely xenophobic places in the Middle East? Someday, sure. But someday far in the future, once the vast majority of the planet is modernized and developed.
And English will sound pretty similar even a few hundred years from now, I think. Evolution of the language was, I would think, much more rapid in the 1500s, when there was no means of recording, replaying, and communicating the spoken word beyond word of mouth. And even communicating the written word was a significant effort. Modern society makes it easier to maintain stability in the structure of the language.
If you listen to early recordings of spoken english from the late 1800s, I don't think they sound appreciably different than people with corresponding dialects of today. If there's negligible change in spoken English over 120 years, I think it's a stretch to say that spoken English will sound "nothing like it does today" in 500 years.
Well, once you get past 100 years or so, speculative fiction gets pretty open on these subjects. I mean, in Firefly, sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle-East are irrelevent, because they'd be cramped into the big spaceships with the rest of humanity. I'm personally convinced that genetic and cybernetics will allow for personal body customization, rendering racial differences moot well within 100 years, and certainly within 500. Now, how long the furries take to get culturally accepted is another story altogether.
But in the low-tech Firefly universe, that's irrelevent. Given the close proximity for generations and a complete population redistribution over multiple freaking planets, I can see the loss of old racial barriers develop pretty easily. But then, centuries of living on planets with different climates and previous recessive genes could start to re-establish some forms of racial identities; just not the ones we know of. I'm not sure on that point, though, lacking any actual experience in genetics.
Assuming all of that isn't true, though, once could just assume that the Chinese were more pro-Unification and just lived on the closer Core worlds, where the show almost never explored.
And after the Venture Brothers, I can't imagine the SCUM Manifesto without thinking of Velma.
Actually I think his first point hinges on the world-destroying conflict that sends the last bits of humanity having to find a new home.
I doubt the crew of those ships would be equally represented ethnically.
Sure. But then I assume in the future we'll be too worried about the elves, cat-people, and green-skinned plastic babes to worry about race all that much. That's my concern with future racial identity; I think that advances in science regarding biology, or even the transportation and labor markets, will render what we consider cultural differences irrelevent faster than most of us can expect.
I wonder how she would deal with the idea that Orion slave girls actually run Orion society.
Make her head all explodey with MANger I bet.
If only the Greeks or Romans had recorded speech; it's really easy to do.
Yay I'm saved! I do this all the time with the back of my hand.
Actually, there has been a quite rapid shifting in the Boston dialect family, with the notable example of a New Hampshire dialect that formed in the last ten or twenty years which excludes most of the well-known features that vary from standard American, but keeping all the others that don't advertise being "from away."
(although I agree that the evolution of communication makes it impossible to tell how it will change)
And on cross-breeding: I can't remember what the source was, but I've read that our genetic makeup has already rapidly diversified over the past hundred years or so, and people are only going to get more mobile. It will happen eventually, though how long it'll take is anyone's guess.
A buddy of mine went to a business trip to Japan once, and then went out drinking with the business guys which seems to be some cultural thing there.
The day after the Japanese guys were all "Wooh, we survived drinking with a Scandinavian!"
I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare's writing was about as accurate a reflection of common parlance as Dickens's. Even then, it's easily recognizeable as English.
Indeed, Shakespeare is Modern English. Any difficulty comes from poetically inverted syntax.
Dickens, as representative of Victorian rhetoric, just loved subordinate clauses.
Language will always be different stylistically, but English has not morphologically changed in a good 500 years.
Actually that'd be the line that made me go "red flag, batshit insane racist, please use the nearest exit"
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Well, I'm not actually sure that the Japanese don't have the gene too. The book mostly talked about how fucked over the native Americans were when they met booze (apparently, native Americans were hygienic enough to not worry about dysentery).
Remember Goldmember, specifically the "teakettle" conversation?
I'll concede that the language will be different in 500 years, but more in the way that British English differs from American English than in the way, say, Spanish differs from Portuegese.
n 500 yrs vwls wll b gn llz
Or maybe we'll communicate through beeps and clicks.
I said "Yeah but she was second in charge, so everyone else was subordinate to her."
Tell that to all the black KKK members.
I can't, they asked to be taken off my mass mailing list.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The part that gets me is that a lot of people still think of her as a hero of feminism.
I'm not seeing any major problems with that post, even though I don't like Clinton. I put Feministe at second-tier lately for other posts.
I get the impression that they were supposed to be the majority of rich core-dwellers, but that still doesn't explain the casting in the lassiter-robbery episode or the hospital one.
Well no, the majority of the post was about the pressure on Clinton to step aside and make way for The Man Candidate, and I didn't see any major problems there. Maybe you should re-read it?
I put Feministe at second-tier lately for other reasons - mostly the way trans issues are taking over the blog. I'm fine with the topic, but its pushing every other topic aside right now. Jill, the site owner, is pretty much the only author there that I read closely.
Oh, and Punkassblog is good for a lighter snarky look at things. They don't update much though.
Its like Tora Tora Tora. No actual Japanese in it, and one of the actors playing a Japanese sailor was actually an Australian aborigine :P
See, I've noticed that the only people who tend to filter out comments regularly (besides the trolls and spam) tend to have extreme views that don't work when applied to common fucking sense.
Youtube is a good example; I defy you to find any comment-filtered video that wasn't uploaded by a lunatic.
I defy you to find a Youtube comment not written by a lunatic. Or at least someone deeply stupid.
I've written Youtube comments.
I'm not sure if that proves or refutes your point.