Some Saturday Stuff (Ask Peter and New Series)
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Author’s Note: The title of this blog post was not intentionally alliterative.
First off, I wanted to apologize for not getting anything off on Friday, but technical difficulties left me without internet, so now I have a single blemish on my otherwise impeccable calendar of posts. Today I’m going to be doing a bit of housecleaning, clearing out my Ask Peter mailbag and then suggesting something new for a series.
Remember, if you want any question answered in public for all to see, all you have to do is go here and mail in a question. It’s a win-win situation for both you and me, because you get to read something you probably want to read, and I don’t have to think of content all by myself. So get to it! (Why yes, I did just link to the same page three times. Thank you for noticing.)
Now, to get to the actual mail. There are three pieces, but by lucky coincidence, they all seem to be answerable with the same response. First the actual mail:
Questions!
John:
How many people are in this room
Tanya:
How many people are in this room
Tom:
How many poeple are there in this room?
Why, thanks for the questions, Tom, Tanya, and John. They mean a lot to me. Really. First off, hats off to Tom for using the much speculated question mark. While forms of punctuation are not required for Ask Peter Questions, they really do help get your question across in a professional manner.
The answer to your question depends on which room this refers to. If you guys are referring to the room you’re in — strictly there must have been at least one. I’m assuming that at some point there was three people in the room, and there must be something pretty interesting in it, or you wouldn’t be talking to me about it. I can only assume you guys are holding a wild zebra. Maybe you guys could send me some pictures?
Not tremendously related, but still awesome.
Or maybe you guys are referring to the room I’m in. It’s a library that currently contains twelve people. Congratulations for making me look suspicious while I was glancing around. Thanks for the question. Let me know if I didn’t answer it to your fullest expectations.
Now for a topic shift. I’m going to be introducing a new series that would complement the Death Star one I’m already running.
I’m going to take all sorts of groups from various sci-fi shows and attempt to pit them in a bracketed fight until one sci-fi show remains. They will be analyzed as much as possible from a raw technical standpoint as contained within their respective fictional universes, and not from a standpoint of “who is the coolest”. Additionally, omnipotent or near-omnipotent “deity beings” will not be permitted to compete.
So far I’ll include The Federation (Star Trek), The Borg (Star Trek), Species 8472 (Star Trek), Taur’i (Stargate SG1), Gua’old (Stargate SG1), Replicators (Stargate SG1), Ori (Stargate SG1), and The Empire (Star Wars). Any suggestions for who else to include?
Followed up by: How To Use A Truck To Game, Or Trick, Google Images
You’ve always wanted to see this, right?
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The zebra’s zig-zaggy patterns look like a butterfly
(awesomely and intentionally alliterative).
As far as the sci-fi series goes, I think your study will go far to disprove the validity of the controversial Sturgeon’s law, which seemed to be directed specifically at sci-fi.
I also think you should include groups of various people from Monty Python, which is not exactly sci-fi but still cool. It’s not their fault that they didn’t have robots in Arthurian legend, and who else has holy hand grenades? The Knights Who Say Ni definitely merit a spot.
I wrote a similar non-blog post thing where I pitted different teachers against each other. It was really funny; I’ll have to see if I can find it.
@Katie: Sturgeon’s Law was directed at 1950s SciFi, which I guess was really bad.
The Monty Python guys can’t possibly hope to compete against the other sci-fi shows from a technical standpoint because they’re Arthurian and they don’t have spaceships. Maybe one could find the output of a Holy Hand Grenade though by measuring the blast radius and damage to the environment.
Hmm… There aren’t any overly-powerful races in GRRM’s scifi short stories, everything’s too chaotic and anarchic.
No time travel allowed, I assume, else I’d be all, Daleks and/or Timelords. They aren’t deities or deity-like to be fair, though. At least Daleks aren’t.
@Jeff: I can accept Daleks, but there isn’t much technical specs available on them. Cybermen don’t seem to have space ships. Time Lords don’t have coherent ships and time travel is banned as a combat tactic.
@Peter
Well Daleks are pretty badass even without time travel, I think we can all agree. Still, the lack of hard-scifi tech specs makes them kinda useless.
No deity-like figures rules out Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Azothoth and all the other Lovecraft scifi gods, I guess…
I got nothing so far.
@Jeff: Maybe we can throw in some Cylons and some Battlestars for fun. Although it’s group v. group, so fleet size is taken into account. Perhaps we need the Dominion.
poop