Blaster bolt color

[McC]

Whatever. The idea generally is to shut the fuck up is you have no good reason to make wild claims, especially when they're contradictory to those who've put in the time and effort and made the actual theory.

Conceded, conditionally. The reason I usually make the claim to begin with is so that it's there and open. If I say, "Hm, that seems wrong...I'm going to analyze it and get back to them," I'm more than likely going to forget what I wanted to do and never end up doing it. So, it's more as a reminder for me that I post my thoughts at the time rather than a wild claim.

Note: Why do people often go to this "well I have a real life!" excuse? I find it superbly annoying, for two reasons. One, it implies me, or whomever else is the opponent of said individual does not possess a real life (hint: I do), and two, it excuses the profound absence of their own reason to suggest others are wrong. And interestingly, you did have time to draw out a 11-page thread and run your own screen captures. And guys like Dr. Curtis Saxton seem to be busy, well, being an astrophysicist, Mike being a husband and engineer, and Ender a sailor aboard a CVN. So really, what is the point with this kind of remark? Does it really say anything?

Point taken. But it's a lot easier to write a reply to a thread (which takes all of 2 minutes) than it is to set up my computer and VCR for video capture, and to sit down and analyze the footage. I don't think I've ever seen you do your own footage analysis, IP. Mike, on the other hand, has. So has Saxton. Now, I do not mean to suggest you haven't done anything, I'm just saying that I haven't seen you do it. Mike wrote that site over time, not in one sitting. Same with Dr. Saxton. I'm just asking to be afforded some time too.

That's great. By extrinisic analysis they're almost certainly SFX errors. And the ISD is a kitbashed model smaller than my body, &c.

Thank you.

Suprise! We're talking about analysis of what things are from the perspective of the fictional universe in-question itself: thus, the ISD is a 1,600 warship capable of slagging a plant in an hour and thousands-of-gees accleration, and turbolaser beams propogate at c.

Yes, fine. I just wanted to make sure that no one was under the false impression that it (blasters) was meant to damage before it hit. As long as everyone knows that, then I'm cool with accepting that it does damage before it hits (or that there may be some other explanation for what appears to be damage-before-impact).

Ah, I talk about when he originally came on, and his reply is that "oh, but my first three posts!" Right. We both know what I meant, and we were discussing the history of your bitching on this subject.

My first post in that thread was meant to be a quick remark with follow-up. It didn't go the way I had intended (drop in, say some words, then come back when I could actually contribute). In short, I got off on the wrong foot here, and now it's sticking with me.

Since when is the search function based on post-count? That'd be news to me.

You have to be a member in the Archive board's memberbase in order to access it. I wasn't until the end of the month when Mike did another archive.

Nothing wrong with this. But generally, this is not considered "bitching and moaning about how there's no disproof for the current theory" before you've gotten the slightest scraps of an alternative theory together.

Do the work, put up the proof, then come on talking about alternatives.

Well, I was kinda looking for a team effort here...can I come up with something? Probably. Would it be better if a group of people worked together on it? Yes.

In case you haven't noticed, it is generally frowned upon to run around looking for any and all loop-holes or oppurtunities to contradict canon.

I kind of want to say "conceded" to this statement, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

Every whiny comment about how I've given you such an unreasonable time. As I've shown time, and time again, you have precisely no pedestal to stand on, and didn't even the first time you posted on the subject. So shut up.

I have no problem with the substance of your arguments for the c beam theory. And I never (I don't think -- if I have, I retract it) argued about this. I'm annoyed at your attitude towards me, hence why I constantly bring it up. I don't feel "victimized" as you call it because you continually "disprove my theory." I feel "victimized" because I think you're being a jerk, and not just to me.

Translation: Alright, so I did preface my post with backhanded little bitchy quips which were totally off-topic and entirely intended to refer to other long-completed thread with specific individuals.

So basically, yeah, I was right. You were an asshole for doing that.

Please. I spent the first 140-150 posts trying to be as civil as possible. I'm getting tired of the bullshit happening anyway, despite my attempts to be civil. The fact that I've made a few posts with quips in a place where quips are some peoples' modus operandi and it's openly acceptable is meaningless.

No, you look at evidence and say, hey that ain't right, and then put up the evidence and preferably some analysis to go with it.

You skipped parts two and three because honestly, this got started with you wanting to throw out some bitchy quips because you've never had a basis for this stuff since the beginning and apparently we should've been more accomodating for something we'd covered many times before.

To beat a dead horse, I haven't done parts two and three yet. *shrug*

What's your point? You don't have anything better with absolute canon than "eh, it doesn't look right to me; it should be more frames."

Sorry bub, but that just is not good enough.

Conceded, I guess. Not really sure that I said anything of substance there to concede, but conceded anyway.

Strawman. His word is enshrined as second-tier canon, but he was hired specifically because his word would probably be reasonable and consistent with absolute canon; thus fleshing it out, the whole idea of these sources. And it did both.

Not really a strawman, since I didn't intend to use it to back up an actual point. I was just asking him if it bothered him or not.

As to the latter part, agreed. It does do both. I personally don't like how it does both. May I have that personal preference?

Backpeddling. Nah, you just used it as a pretext for a style-over-substance whine fest about me, and dredging up off-topic flamebait on page 1.

I'll reiterate -- if I ever said that your attitude was a reason to disregard a valid argument on your part, I retract that statement. I don't like your usual heavy-handed style of dealing with things. But I don't ever plan to use that as a reason to disregard an actual analytical statement you make.

Good, now take a hint from this thread and shut the fuck up until you have done that, kay?

I reserve the right to state my damn opinion, so long as I specify that that's what it is. And I'm fairly certain that I've done exactly that so far.

Then what was the point?

Should be self-evident now.

Eh, yes and no. SoD results in a potentially flawed answer when one accounts for author's intent, but since author's intent doesn't matter, SoD can't be wrong.

Self-contradictory.

Not really...well, sorta. Hehe. I think I'm just tired at this point. My point was that if you look at both author's intent and SoD and put them together, you probably get a better picture of what's going on, but that falls under the Golden Mean fallacy, so it probably doesn't really work out.

Good; though you do realize even without any damage-before-impact or bolt-redirection, Mad's theory still holds. It simply means the bolt phenomenon was calibrated correctly and arrived co-incident with the damaging pulse, and that the weapon was correctly aimed from the inital firing.

Yes. I realize that. Which is somewhat annoying, honestly, because I can just foresee a situation wherein I do come up with an alternative theory, but everyone ends up saiyng, "Well, Mad's still works -- you haven't disproved it, so you're still wrong."

But you couldn't prove that.

Haven't even tried to yet.

Maybe because much of the time, there really isn't room for debate. Suspension of Disbelief and the wealth of information are quite

I'll assume something got cut off here...?

Bullshit. Hardly every discussion I get into here causes me shutting people down. However, take this thread for instance: imperial navy naming question.

I explained at least three times before I finally got sick of it. Quite frankly its not hard to understand why it is preferable, dealing with SW, to use English protocol over making stuff up (hint: "His Emperor's" is never correct address; ever). Yeah I got sick of it, but no, I'm not sorry. I support my arguments and supply quotes thereof.

Fine, but this is the kind of thing that gets to me:

There's no room for disagreement.

That's what I mean when I say absolutist. There's always room for disagreement. Saying otherwise just makes you a jackass. I happen to agree with your perspective in that thread. But that statement is just ridiculous.

Because the length of my posts is usually dedicated to explaining the why as to their being wrong; and I usually do it many times before becoming annoyed and just being blunt.

Well, in my case, if I don't understand why I'm "wrong," either I don't understand what someone's argument actually is (due to them explaining it in a way that I rationalize differently or something), I'll keep harping on the point until I do understand what's being said to me.

That's nice. Its also not a very good excuse to start bullshit like this thread hijack and its nature.

So, it's a thread hijack if it evolves out of the normal discussion? Discussions are fluid. If someone wants to totally ignore all the stuff we're saying, the beauty of internet BBs is that they can. In a RL discussion, you're kinda stuck when people go off on tangents. Unless I came in saying, "Blaster bolt color? Shit, let's talk about lightsaber color!" that's a thread hijack. But we were still talking about blaster nature, which relates to blaster bolt color. Then we got into the personal argument thing, which could be a thread hijack. I'm certainly not going to sit around and let you insult me, though, so you better believe I'll reply to what's said...

You're nitpicking the statements without sitting down and asking what I mean. This would be why I get irritated.

The "theory" is not the point at hand. The point at hand is that you must accept Suspension of Disbelief in order to do the propogation-of-beam calculations you performed originally, which was the crux of your point. It was hardly acceptable to ever question SoD after that point, without appearing a hypocrite.

Fair. My ultimate point was not to question SoD, just to point out how this is one instance where SoD makes things more obnoxious/difficult/away from what it's "supposed to be" than author's intent. Doesn't mean I'm abandoning it, though. I can't. It's there. It's the standard. It's how we have these discussions at all.

I find you whiny and annoying, with a penchant for starting shit and making off-topic flamebait quips and then playing the abused scholar. Well fuck you. I don't randomly bring up your lazy researching tendencies and general stupidity in ship threads, now do I?

I explained before about the researching bit. My hands were tied, what more do you want from me? As to ship threads...? Which thread?

[McC]

I start work later than I thought today, so I had some free time to do some capturing. I have captured every instance of blaster and laser fire from ANH. I will be analyzing it and capturing ESB, ROTJ, and the prequels as opportunities present themselves. Until such time as I am able to present at least an analysis, no matter how inconclusive, I will not speak on this topic further. Is that fair and acceptable?

[Illuminatus Primus]

If I say, "Hm, that seems wrong...I'm going to analyze it and get back to them," I'm more than likely going to forget what I wanted to do and never end up doing it. So, it's more as a reminder for me that I post my thoughts at the time rather than a wild claim.

Pal, don't backpeddle. I can admit I'm an asshole and a jerk, and I'm also impatient and difficult to deal with often.

You can admit that was definitely not the sort of tone this all began with, and this thread in particular.

I don't think I've ever seen you do your own footage analysis, IP.

McC, this is not a personal contest. There is a very big difference between sitting an reviewing the proof and evidence and study done on various subjects and coming to your own opinion of what is correct and not by logic, and challenging prior research or implying that others dogmatically adhere to it. In that case there is a large gap in the burden of proof belonging to you.

By this kind of comment, who am I to judge creationism versus evolution? I am not zoologist or geneticist. I cannot do the research and studies myself.

Its the difference between reviewing the creationism vs. evolution debate and determining by logic evolution is more valid, and challenging evolutionary theory without having put up the proof yet and being suprised when people are annoyed.

Note: I do not intend to strawman or poison the well by alikening or associating your habits and methodology with creationists. It was simply a convienent "burden of proof" thought game. Although you haven't put the money where your mouth is, so to speak, you do respect empirical methods and reasoning, and your precise tactics and logic is not comparable to creationists'.

Yes, fine. I just wanted to make sure that no one was under the false impression that it (blasters) was meant to damage before it hit. As long as everyone knows that, then I'm cool with accepting that it does damage before it hits (or that there may be some other explanation for what appears to be damage-before-impact).

This is what I mean by backpeddling. Read your own posts last page, and observe your tone. This is definitely not how you were portraying your position until called out on it, what with "fuck SoD" and all.

In short, I got off on the wrong foot here, and now it's sticking with me.

Well if you awknowledge that and try not to do it again, I think we can overlook it. Point being, your tone and tactics at the beginning of this were hardly benign in character.

You have to be a member in the Archive board's memberbase in order to access it. I wasn't until the end of the month when Mike did another archive.

There were TL debates within the non-achive search. The first links I sent you I'm quite sure came up on the regular search. I only went to the Archive to dig-up Marc's several ancient BS episodes, IIRC.

Would it be better if a group of people worked together on it? Yes.

Again, this is not how your proposed your position until now, really.

I kind of want to say "conceded" to this statement, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

You said "why not look for alternatives." Generally we don't go out attempting to find any evidence why canon should be wrong. Generally you don't go out looking for evidence to support any kind of preconcieved conclusion.

I feel "victimized" because I think you're being a jerk, and not just to me.

Than phrase it in that form, or wait for it to be on-topic. Don't hijack a thread and state it in the form of a complaint about how people treat a source like AOTC ICS, such as "infalliable and akin to the Holy Bible." Its actually ironic that you used a similar analogy, as inspirational canon comes from the context of those books considered to be authoritative works of the Christian faith.

Please. I spent the first 140-150 posts trying to be as civil as possible. I'm getting tired of the bullshit happening anyway, despite my attempts to be civil. The fact that I've made a few posts with quips in a place where quips are some peoples' modus operandi and it's openly acceptable is meaningless.

Say what you may of my quips, but I don't recall not having an argument attached (generally when you don't, like the first page, it is called flamebait). Others I cannot speak for. Keep in mind while insulting others might make you an asshole, it isn't out-of-place if there is an actual argument with support for which the insults are merely decoration.

To beat a dead horse, I haven't done parts two and three yet. *shrug*

See, here's the idea. The AOTC ICS explanation is correct and infalliable until proven otherwise via higher canon. That's the only method.

Now physicists in the Nineteenth Century would probably laugh at you for suggesting time and space were one and the same and not absolute, and from a logical perspective, they'd be correct.

Empiricism says that even if you are correct, you need to have a good reason to be correct before your opponent is really illogical or wrong in discounting what you say. Simply back then all evidence said yes to Newtonian mechanics, and there wasn't much in the way of evidence for Einstein's yet-to-be-formulated Relativity.

Not really a strawman, since I didn't intend to use it to back up an actual point. I was just asking him if it bothered him or not.

There's not really any reason we should.

As to the latter part, agreed. It does do both. I personally don't like how it does both. May I have that personal preference?

Sure, but opinions without a reason for why you think the way LFL works is stupid come off basically as, well, baseless complaining.

I'll reiterate -- if I ever said that your attitude was a reason to disregard a valid argument on your part, I retract that statement. I don't like your usual heavy-handed style of dealing with things. But I don't ever plan to use that as a reason to disregard an actual analytical statement you make.

This is progressive. I retract that claim then.

Not really...well, sorta. Hehe. I think I'm just tired at this point. My point was that if you look at both author's intent and SoD and put them together, you probably get a better picture of what's going on, but that falls under the Golden Mean fallacy, so it probably doesn't really work out.

Authorial intent is entirely irrelevent until Suspension of Disbelief suffers from the outliers or errors such as the Dimorphism Blooper, the Uniform Blooper, etc. In fact, in real-life you invoke out-of-experiment stuff into considerations for the "why" when you get errors, such as experimental and instrumentational errors.

Within SoD, this can be looked at as considering the point-of-view of in-universe documentarians and historians are their implied perspectives. However, this is rare, and is possible it should avoid taking such implied considerations offer the actual content.

In this case, you can observe the Technical Commentaries' FAQ and Canon, Continuity, and Apocrypha page.

3.3 How can continuity errors be judged?

Unofficial material (such as fan speculation) is not considered part of the STAR WARS continuity. When non-canonical official material (secondary evidence) conflicts with canon (primary evidence), the canon prevails. When canon appears to conflict with canon, we say that there is a "blooper". When this happens, or when there is a conflict between non-canon official sources, resolution must depend on reference to intrinsic and extrinsic considerations, including: physical possibility; social/cultural plausibility; semantics; intentions of the authors/artists.

You do whatever is possible maintain the picture of a realistic world from the perspective of inside the fictional universe. Obviously stuff like "its an SFX error, fuck it!" are desperately avoided.

Which is somewhat annoying, honestly, because I can just foresee a situation wherein I do come up with an alternative theory, but everyone ends up saiyng, "Well, Mad's still works -- you haven't disproved it, so you're still wrong."

Actually, Mad's theory was very hard won. Flak-burst stuff held on with a death's grip from the old ASVS days and many long-time debaters didn't relinquish it without great difficulty, but evidence for c-TLs won through.

If you don't have any faith, I don't know what to tell you. It is worth a try? I already underlined why people don't give it any credulence at the current time.

Fine, but this is the kind of thing that gets to me:

There's no room for disagreement.

That's what I mean when I say absolutist. There's always room for disagreement. Saying otherwise just makes you a jackass. I happen to agree with your perspective in that thread. But that statement is just ridiculous.

Star Wars, under Suspension of Disbelief, is translated into English for our benefit. By English conventions and structure, "His Emperor's" cannot be right. Ever. It is without basis and is irrevocably wrong. I explained this. By English conventions and protocol, and by SoD, if such a thing were to exist, the most logical assumption is that it'd follow precisely how English is structured to express such designations.

I don't know how to be lenient with that. Its essentially the same thing as gibberish. It does not mean anything and is without basis. I don't know what else there is to say about it, honestly. It can't possibly be right by any standard of logic.

Well, in my case, if I don't understand why I'm "wrong," either I don't understand what someone's argument actually is (due to them explaining it in a way that I rationalize differently or something), I'll keep harping on the point until I do understand what's being said to me.

Well I am sorry for being impatient, in this case.

So, it's a thread hijack if it evolves out of the normal discussion? Discussions are fluid.

It was a flamebaiting off-topic quip. So yes.

*snip*

You can characterize it however you please, but that matter stands it was intended to agitate and refer to nonparticipants in this thread, and to long-dead threads.

Fair. My ultimate point was not to question SoD, just to point out how this is one instance where SoD makes things more obnoxious/difficult/away from what it's "supposed to be" than author's intent. Doesn't mean I'm abandoning it, though. I can't. It's there. It's the standard. It's how we have these discussions at all.

Well I don't understand what frustration you'd have with it. SoD is particularly vital in SW, and I find it quite elegant really. Otherwise we'd have to deal with GL's off-topic post hoc magic additions and manipulations of the films he already made (as if the SEs weren't bad enough), and stuff like Timothy Zahn declaring after the fact that the Chiss were preparing against the Vong, which they were not.

I explained before about the researching bit. My hands were tied, what more do you want from me? As to ship threads...? Which thread?

The ship threads were just an example. The thought experiment was simply that the implication and quips made in page one, to express whatever thought, were not done in a particularly appropriate or prudent time and location.

[McC]

First of all, thank you for replying with the tone and manner that you did. I really and truly do appreciate it.

Pal, don't backpeddle. I can admit I'm an asshole and a jerk, and I'm also impatient and difficult to deal with often.

You can admit that was definitely not the sort of tone this all began with, and this thread in particular.

For this thread, I concede the point. I basically knew what I was saying was going to illicit exactly the response it did, but I felt the need to say the meat of it anyway. The quips were unnecessary. I apologize for them.

McC, this is not a personal contest. There is a very big difference between sitting an reviewing the proof and evidence and study done on various subjects and coming to your own opinion of what is correct and not by logic, and challenging prior research or implying that others dogmatically adhere to it. In that case there is a large gap in the burden of proof belonging to you. <snip>

I didn't mean the remark in that sense. I meant it in terms of time necessitated by the task. Personally, I find reading other people's work and posting on BBs to be much faster than going through and editing footage, which is why I brought up not having sufficient time to do the research you were asking me to do. I apologize if this came off as trying to incite a personal competition -- it was not intended as such.

Note: I do not intend to strawman or poison the well by alikening or associating your habits and methodology with creationists. It was simply a convienent "burden of proof" thought game. Although you haven't put the money where your mouth is, so to speak, you do respect empirical methods and reasoning, and your precise tactics and logic is not comparable to creationists'.

Thank you.

This is what I mean by backpeddling. Read your own posts last page, and observe your tone. This is definitely not how you were portraying your position until called out on it, what with "fuck SoD" and all.

I understand where you're coming from, but let me try to explain. I said, specifically, "Fuck SoD for a moment." My intent was to illustrate the "mistake" origin of the real-world reason for the effect in question. As such, I wanted to stop looking at it from a documentary standpoint and look at it from a technical filmmaking standpoint for the duration of that post.

Well if you awknowledge that and try not to do it again, I think we can overlook it. Point being, your tone and tactics at the beginning of this were hardly benign in character.

Of this thread, I concede the point. I was already jaded by this point The first time I posted in the other thread, though, my intention (and the tone I tried to adopt) was as benign as could be -- I didn't want to upset anyone, I just wanted to put forward a different idea because I didn't think the current idea really "fit," so to speak (obviously, it does fit the facts, but that's not really what I mean by "fit").

There were TL debates within the non-achive search. The first links I sent you I'm quite sure came up on the regular search. I only went to the Archive to dig-up Marc's several ancient BS episodes, IIRC.

Then I must have been searching wrong, because I honestly did not find them. Even when I did searches for the links you provided, they didn't come up. I could directly access those pages (you don't have to be a member to read the pages, just to do the search), but I couldn't find them in a non-archive search.

Again, this is not how your proposed your position until now, really.

I apologize for not being more clear, then. I assumed that proposing it in a BB environment would make it inherently clear. If I wanted to do it on my own, I'd make my own website about it and then come here with it.

You said "why not look for alternatives." Generally we don't go out attempting to find any evidence why canon should be wrong. Generally you don't go out looking for evidence to support any kind of preconcieved conclusion.

Oh, ok. Fair.

Than phrase it in that form, or wait for it to be on-topic. Don't hijack a thread and state it in the form of a complaint about how people treat a source like AOTC ICS, such as "infalliable and akin to the Holy Bible." Its actually ironic that you used a similar analogy, as inspirational canon comes from the context of those books considered to be authoritative works of the Christian faith.

Yep, I realize that. My point was to regard it with reverance, but not use it to bash people over the head. Referencing an authoritative text is one thing. "The Bible/ICS/book-of-choice says this is WRONG!" is quite another. That's what I was upset about.

Say what you may of my quips, but I don't recall not having an argument attached (generally when you don't, like the first page, it is called flamebait). Others I cannot speak for. Keep in mind while insulting others might make you an asshole, it isn't out-of-place if there is an actual argument with support for which the insults are merely decoration.

Yeah, this wasn't actually referencing you specifically. *cough*

But I still feel (as I said in the Blaster fire speed thread) that attaching insults to a debate that could easily be a friendly one is totally unnecessary. Just because someone doesn't understand something (and this applies globally, not just to you), there's no reason to say, "You're a fuckwhit. <insert explanation>. Try not being such a moron next time, asshole." Why not just chop out the attitude and just put in the explanation? The attitude doesn't invalidate your explanation (if someone claims it does, obvious style-over-substance fallacy), but it doesn't exactly make one receptive to what you're saying, either.

See, here's the idea. The AOTC ICS explanation is correct and infalliable until proven otherwise via higher canon. That's the only method.

Agreed/conceded.

Now physicists in the Nineteenth Century would probably laugh at you for suggesting time and space were one and the same and not absolute, and from a logical perspective, they'd be correct.

Empiricism says that even if you are correct, you need to have a good reason to be correct before your opponent is really illogical or wrong in discounting what you say. Simply back then all evidence said yes to Newtonian mechanics, and there wasn't much in the way of evidence for Einstein's yet-to-be-formulated Relativity.

I understand your point, but it doesn't exonerate those physicists from being assholes for laughing at someone who proposes an outlandish idea. That's what I'm trying to say -- if someone says something whacko, you can tell 'em it's whacko, but you don't have to be a jerk about it. (You is used in the general sense in this sentence; not meaning specifically you, IP).

Sure, but opinions without a reason for why you think the way LFL works is stupid come off basically as, well, baseless complaining.

It's a gripe. I concede that.

Authorial intent is entirely irrelevent until Suspension of Disbelief suffers from the outliers or errors such as the Dimorphism Blooper, the Uniform Blooper, etc. In fact, in real-life you invoke out-of-experiment stuff into considerations for the "why" when you get errors, such as experimental and instrumentational errors. <snip>

Agreed entirely.

You do whatever is possible maintain the picture of a realistic world from the perspective of inside the fictional universe. Obviously stuff like "its an SFX error, fuck it!" are desperately avoided.

Of course. I'm just trying to propose that instead of saying, "Aha! Look! It's exploding before it hits! Must have an invisible component!" we look for an alternative explanation first. I had a thought (as I said before) about the framerate of the playback material creating a distorted view of what's happening. However, I haven't found anything (and I've done some cursory searching) to indicate this kind of glitch might occur yet, and I haven't analyzed the footage yet to see how much of an offset we're consistently talking about.

Actually, Mad's theory was very hard won. Flak-burst stuff held on with a death's grip from the old ASVS days and many long-time debaters didn't relinquish it without great difficulty, but evidence for c-TLs won through.

If you don't have any faith, I don't know what to tell you. It is worth a try? I already underlined why people don't give it any credulence at the current time.

Fair enough. I'll post a new thread on my analysis for everyone to see and join on when I start on it. As I said, I've done the caps for ANH, but I need to edit them (I've got more footage in there than is relevant and I want to clip out the extraneous "black bars" that result from it being widescreen encoded for NTSC) first and then analyze them, so there's a bit of time yet before I can post anything concrete.

Star Wars, under Suspension of Disbelief, is translated into English for our benefit. By English conventions and structure, "His Emperor's" cannot be right. Ever. It is without basis and is irrevocably wrong. I explained this. By English conventions and protocol, and by SoD, if such a thing were to exist, the most logical assumption is that it'd follow precisely how English is structured to express such designations.

I don't know how to be lenient with that. Its essentially the same thing as gibberish. It does not mean anything and is without basis. I don't know what else there is to say about it, honestly. It can't possibly be right by any standard of logic.

*shrug* What you just said to me sounds perfectly reasonable. Why not just say that? And stick with that. Getting absolutist, while somewhat gratifying (I get absolutist from time to time too, 'cause I just get fed up being "nice"), doesn't usually get you anywhere useful.

It was a flamebaiting off-topic quip. So yes.

The quip was off-topic, yes. I apologized for it above. But the meat of the text was in direct reply to Kurgan, so I argue that it's not off-topic if it's a direct reply to a concern voiced by someone else that evolved from the natural fluid discussion.

You can characterize it however you please, but that matter stands it was intended to agitate and refer to nonparticipants in this thread, and to long-dead threads.

Conceded, as above.

Well I don't understand what frustration you'd have with it. SoD is particularly vital in SW, and I find it quite elegant really. Otherwise we'd have to deal with GL's off-topic post hoc magic additions and manipulations of the films he already made (as if the SEs weren't bad enough), and stuff like Timothy Zahn declaring after the fact that the Chiss were preparing against the Vong, which they were not.

Oh, I agree it's both elegant and vital. It's just that in this case, it creates a problem because of where it comes from. I have a frustration with what it results in in this instance rather than the convention of SoD itself, I guess.

The ship threads were just an example. The thought experiment was simply that the implication and quips made in page one, to express whatever thought, were not done in a particularly appropriate or prudent time and location.

I was actually asking to which ship threads you were referring. But, don't answer this, I'll do an "egosearch" to see which threads we had an argument about ships in

Again, thank you for replying in the manner you did. I find it much easier to concede points and interact when you discuss in this manner rather than "Fuck you, you're wrong." That's sort of the thrust of what I've been saying all along.

And I will present an actual analysis of this stuff as soon as I can.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Errr, I don't think we ever had an argument about ships. I was just pointing out where a converse of me bringing you up cynically in an unrelated thread would be poor form.

The ship threads were me and Ender and occasionally Vympel vs. Connor, Nitram, and PainRack. The classic "ISD = destroyer?" argument.

[McC]

Ohhh, okay.