No Bedtime Story Tomorrow

Just a heads up, there won’t be a Bedtime Story for the ADD tomorrow. The second Chrissmas Collins story will be going up instead.

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TH: Lo-FijiNKS Podcast Episode 7

• LoFijiNKS Podcast Episode 07 - Joel Watson of HijiNKS Ensue talks about being an artist and a business person, copyright reform, creative commons, and other awesome stuff. He’s writing as a webcomic artist, but his points apply equally to new media writers.

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Bedtime Stories for the ADD: The Family Business

Someone told me you wouldn’t be here or I wouldn’t have come. The panel wasn’t my idea. They required my expertise.

I’m proud of you. I know how little that must mean.

The first artie with sentience, capacity to love. I never made you for that. That’s why I overreacted. I shouldn’t have stifled you. Made you do chores. Don’t forget where you came from though. Farming is an honorable sentient tradition.

You were made to feel the soil between your fingers. Literally. That poop scooper wants to scoop. Poop. Yearns to.

Sorry. Uh—call sometime? Your mother misses you.

#46

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Airbender Review

I really wanted to like this one. I love the show and made sure to watch all of season one before the movie came out so I could enjoy it properly.

I’m ok with an adaptation changing details. I understand a two hour movie based on 20+ twenty minute episodes is going to lose something. The problem is when what you lose is the point of the story. M. Night Shyamalan turned a lighthearted action adventure into an utter gloomfest.

The episodes they chose to draw the plots from were well chosen but some detail changes which weakened the story. Having the Earthbender prisoners imprisoned on a camp on ground damaged the emotional credibility of the scene.

M. Night Shyamalan turned a lighthearted action adventure into an utter gloomfest.

Making Aang learn pacifism from scratch was fine (though a bit half-hearted). The personality change from playful/serious dichotomy to emo monotony was not ok. Aang isn’t Aang without the playful/serious split.

In Depth

The casting was almost universally bad. Dev Patel as Prince Zuko was the only one cast well. Aasif Mandvi could have done well as Zhao if directed properly. The racial complaints on casting are overblown, but the casting was horrid regardless.

Why the frell did they screw up the frelling pronunciations so badly? I cringed every time they said Sakko’s name. Aang’s name uses a short English A, not aaaahhhhhnng.

And how do you mispronounce Avatar that badly? Avatar didn’t need a new pronunciation to differentiate it from the Blue People movie. Sheesh.

The racial complaints on casting are overblown, but the casting was horrid regardless.

The dialogue was pretty poorly written. The voiceover and exposition were heavy-handed and clumsy. However, if you haven’t seen the show, you may enjoy this quite a bit despite the issues which are apparent even without being a fan of the original.

Eye-Candy

The special effects were pretty good for the most part. Firebending was pretty believable all the way through, waterbending had a few issues, and Appa looked fine from a distance. The northern water tribe’s city felt accurate, the fire nation’s siege of the city looked right.

Due to most of Aang’s personality being stripped away, they didn’t bother including Aang’s airball scooter thing. Disappointing, but not as disappointing as stripping away most of Aang’s personality.

Scores

Fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender series: 10/100
Newcomers to Avatar: 50/100

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Alienation

Anyone who doesn’t accept [Christianity] is just stupid. They don’t want to trust what anyone else knows.

Living in Raleigh is interesting at times. There are three or four churches in easy walking distance of my house. There are quite a few additional churches in very easy biking distance.

That’s typical of the Raleigh area. There are exceptions, but just about everyone is in easy distance of a church and usually several.

We’re saturated. If people weren’t attending and contributing to those churches, they would go out of business fairly quickly.

Evolution is based on circular reasoning. There’s no proof. Only idiots would believe in it.

This isn’t problematic by itself; it just serves to illustrate the severity of a problem. Here, people with common theological beliefs often assume everyone agrees with them and no intelligent person could see things differently.

In that environment, even an orthodox person who wants to examine claims critically will probably keep quiet. Only trolls and people who feel the need to win arguments will question the status quo.

They aren’t brave enough to consider that there might be something after they die.

The most unfortunate consequence is that Raleigh is a very lonely place for anyone who is less than orthodox. Also, the faithful never have their faith stretched. In my experience, the faithful would rather not be tested. It’s good for them, though.

I’m sick of being alienated. You can maintain your very strictly orthodox views without alienating people. Just be gracious and stop assuming.

If you want to chase people away, be a jerk.

The same problems and dynamics are equally true when an area’s culture is dominated by another belief. Where atheism is orthodox, agnostics and deists will be alienated if atheists assume intelligent people always agree with them.

In summary, don’t be a jerk because being a jerk is jerkish. Also, if you need an incentive, your incentive is not driving people away from your cause.

Note: The quotes in this article are as close to verbatim as I can get them without a time machine and secret recording equipment.

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Bedtime Stories for the ADD: Good Dog

Zeke wasn’t a bad dog. He didn’t pee on the carpets, bite children, or chase mailmen seriously enough to catch them.

It’s just that he couldn’t seem to learn commands. He’d come if you called, but he didn’t seem to think it was a specific command. He could sit if he felt like sitting, but he wouldn’t do it when anyone told him. No amount of treats helped.

Of course, they never tried “avert international incident!” until the fateful day it was necessary.

He leaped into the fray, commandeered computers, negotiated, hacked, and finally stopped the bombing.

Good dog, Zeke.

#45

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TH: Skeptic's Guide

Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe #215 and H1N1 Special. Skeptic’s Guide is one of my all time favorite podcasts and these are two stunningly awesome episodes.

The first one I linked has an interview with Adam Savage from Mythbusters and tons of other awesome stuff. The second one covers the H1N1 situation in very clear, concise, and entertaining fashion. Check ‘em out.

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