Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

The Trailer somehow strikes me as utterly generic; it could literally be to any high budget Sci-Fi Action flick.

 

And this is a bad thing?

 

A little, as it doesn’t need to be Star Trek for that.

 

I'm about Zeta's age, I guess, but up until now have only seen one Star Trek episode and none of the movies. I think it was the pilot. Something about a shape shifter. One of these days...

 

Does that apply to Mon Cals?

 

Eating Mon Cals is immoral. When I eat fried Calamari in Monterey, I get very emotional.

Crap, who am I kidding? I love to eat that stuff!

--Adm. Nick

 

What if you drink them?

 

Well, it IS delicious.

 

I've only ever seen the 2009 movie.

 

Can I eat them on the basis that they taste good?

 

I've watched the OS enough to quote half the episodes, but alas, I've never had time to watch the later series. Supposedly some of them are better.... I gotta get on that task someday.

I've seen the old movies with Shatner et al, but none of the Picard or later ones. I thought the 2009 movie took itself more seriously than the older movies (more on that in a sec), but it definitely had the spirit of the OS. Half (er, most?) of the OS episodes were about Kirk being placed in an impossible situation and having to choose between the undesirable choices offered to him, and in the end he would come up with some clever third alternative of his own design. He was never so much the "tough-guy" hero as the "clever/trickster" hero (e.g. Odysseus), and the 2009 movie got that down pretty well.

and re: the older movies with the old actors -- I don't think they took themselves as seriously, but not necessarily in a bad way. If we want to know what the Star Wars ST is going to be like, it will probably parallel these. You've got a bunch of old actors getting together and reprising roles that have become entertainment icons. The 1980s-Trek films were half banter between the Enterprise crew, and it was a lot more casual than what was in the 1960s show. I think we'll probably see the same for the ST.

 

I'll probably end up watching them some time, but not in the next month or so. I haven't even had the time/motivation to watch the newest Mad Men yet.

Last night I considered it an accomplishment to churn out 2 pages of analysis of the secondary literature on the Zapotecs of Monte Alban.

 

Yeah, I think the whole "inferior/superior culture" ideal went out of style back in the mid-20th century

I actually considered doing it on the Etruscans, but they can't be considered a primary state, whereas the Zapotecs can potentially make that claim.

 

I'll most likely join the sad ranks of people who have only seen the Abrams Trek movies soon, as I'll probably end up seeing Into Darkness in theaters, and at least want to be familiar with the first one beforehand. But I will watch the series, hopefully soon. I just won't pay for those ridiculously overpriced blu ray collections.

 

...BRB, hiding the evidence.

 

Assuming you're eating people the right way, there shouldn't be any evidence to start with

 

Pretty much primary states are states that developed without any major contact with/influence by other states. The generally accepted primary states are Egypt after the unification of the two kingdoms (although some have argued that Upper Egypt alone constituted a state, IIRC); Mesopotamia starting with Uruk; the Harappan culture in the Indus Valley; the Shang Dynasty in China; the Moche, Tiwanaku, and Wari cultures in the Andes; and Monte Alban in Mesoamerica. Pretty much nothing in Italy can possibly count; any Italian state draws at least slightly on Bronze Age Aegean cultures, which in turn drew a lot on the Near East, which in turn was influenced by Mesopotamia.

I'm sure Coffee can correct any errors I made, and more ably explain just what a state entails.