ASVS - Hive of Scum and Villainy

After recently being astonished to discover that a bit of Vs. Debate was actually going on at ASVS (instead of just more of the spam I'd seen over the past couple of years), I was reading some of the messages earlier as I worked on updating the SW canon quote disputes page. Give that a peek.

It was like a breath of foul air, seeing the same old BS being employed by the old-timers like Graeme Dice. Attempted distractions via personal attacks, hypocrisy, message-swarms, and general BS gamesmanship designed to allow one to (at least publicly) evade even having to consider the facts still reign supreme there. It was so familiar I was almost tempted to post if even just to mock, but if you think I trust those threat-wielding psychos with so much as my IP address you can think again.

However, I did have to e-mail the participant there, because it was all so familiar. Most of the below won't make sense unless you at least peruse the last couple of days of messages there, but here we go:

Dear sweet justice, they are annoying aren't they?

I was reviewing your thread there while working on updating some canon-related pages, and came across the past couple of days of new material. As "Lord Edam" has suggested elsewhere, they like to lie and try to wear you out by making you revisit old territory. I was getting pissed off just reading that . . . be sure you don't let them give you a coronary. It's like arguing with a clever orator who rejects gravity, except (unlike with gravity) they have no reason to accept the facts in this case, ever, so their only goal is to play the game of evading the truth by any means necessary.

Some of the most egregious BS I saw:

1. "You made the claim that George Lucas said "EU is a parallel separate
universe." George Lucas has never stated that."

This comes from the fellow who has the audacity to call you a "semantics whore". Given that he is calling you a liar for making an obvious (and perfectly accurate) paraphrase, it's clear that the only semantics whore (and hypocritical scumbag) is he himself.

2. Inside sources

Who is this magic inside source who can single-handedly override Lucas? Oh, wait, silly me . . . that can't happen. The very fact that he is making the claim is appallingly sad.

3. 'Rings occur on all large vessels, like the Rebel ships'

Yeah, when shot with the Death Star . . . but he's 'conveniently' forgetting that an ISD explodes in RoTJ with no ring, and (why look!) it wasn't shot with the Death Star. Of course, this has been one of my main points for years, but he can't be bothered with little things like facts.

In short, their efforts continue to be absolutely ludicrous. They have cultivated stupidity into a fine art, though, I'll give them that.

Just had to share.

Spiffy-Tech and the End of the Vs. Debate

As modern technology has improved and we've begun to see some extraordinary things just over the horizon, I've often contemplated the end of the Vs. Debate.

In the not-so-distant future, nano- and other technology advances will bring possibilities largely undreamt of in either Trek or Wars, both of which will rapidly become anachronistic, technologically speaking. The problem is actually going to be worse for Trek, given that there have been so many more hours of it, hours in which technological details have been mentioned. However, it will affect both quite thoroughly.

Take, for instance, simple things like reports. On multiple occasions in Trek, we've seen people tasked with carrying a report to another part of the ship on an electronic padd . . . most notably in "Good Shepherd"[VOY6], but also in TOS (Yeoman Rand) and "Tapestry"[TNG6].

In large degree, this sort of thing was anachronistic when it was written . . . even by TNG6 e-mail was sufficiently prevalent that I can't imagine the writers (even the paper-and-pen Ira Behr) didn't know about it. Certainly it would be more efficient to transmit a report directly to someone else's console or place it on some sort of central shipboard server instead of having some poor guy physically carry a laptop-analogue to another part of the ship.

Of course, we can invent excuses for this sort of anachronism, such as it being a preventative measure against eavesdropping on shipboard signals. Of course, one of the promises of quantum computing is quantum cryptography, which would theoretically make eavesdropping impossible. But, the history of cryptography (not to mention the existence of subspace doohickeys) would suggest that a way might be found around that, assuming quantum cryptography is even employed in Trek.

(Incidentally, eavesdropping-avoidance is why I always liked the whited-out windows on the older physical and low-res CGI models. In truth it was merely because they couldn't show the interiors easily until the CGI ability and budgets got high enough. But personally, I liked the idea of a "white-out option" since, after all, if you're looking at important ship data you'd hardly want to let the enemy simply peek in your window! And just think of the windows of certain quarters on the Enterprise-D that are within line-of-sight of other windows . . . voyeurs would rejoice!)

Similarly, both Trek and Wars have weapons with various sorts of small scope mechanism, little scanners or whatnot with tiny screens, and other similar things. The basic idea is that of hand-held tools that don't obscure the face of the actor. However, even today we're well on our way to tiny hologram generators that would be far more useful than the tiny screen of a tricorder or the vague, zoomless aiming that comes from a handheld pistol or especially a Type I phaser. They could also be used for augmented reality systems . . . or, alternately, a tricorder-like device (using ultra-wideband and other techniques could be worn visor-like over the eyes or as a helmet. Or, as long as we're at it, just go ahead and do a direct overlay-projection into the eye (or from within via nanotech).

Just imagine the difference between traipsing through the woods on some alien planet looking down every few seconds to check your tricorder as you look for some alien object (not to mention lifesigns of your enemies) versus having a display right in front of you that not only gives you a constant reference of which way to head, but will also pull up little target boxes and show you an augmented view of your surroundings with that badguy behind the tree clearly visible. And then, imagine if that were tied in to your weapon so that you could see exactly where you were aiming even if you were aiming from the hip.

Now picture that happening at night.

(Of course, at night and in a situation of stealth I'd rather have a projectile weapon with a flash suppressor as opposed to a phaser or blaster.)

I'm reminded of a paper I recently read that touched on some of the tactical issues regarding the Winter War between Russia and Finland, which (along with the Continuation War) is an often-forgotten conflict from during WW2. In the paper, we hear of how, during the frigid December of 1939, a Russian motorized division (tanks and other heavies) was basically completely wiped out by a bunch of loggers on skis. The Finns, more experienced with dealing with the bitter cold, could approach quietly at night on the powdery snow via their skis and, shooting from the hip with their Suomi submachine guns, pick off the invaders. Naturally, their only real lighting was from the Russian campfires . . . moonlight was generally scarce in mid-December 1939 (-1938 on the chart).

(Though most people in the modern electrified era with its bright city lights have little conception of just how dark night can really be and thus how well one could probably see on a snow-covered terrain reflecting even a moon-sliver's light, it remains true in the final analysis that it was pretty damned dark.)

Ignoring the enhanced mobility of the Finnish skiers versus the non-skiing Russians being forced to wade and trudge through the deep powder, there's still the fact that they were firing on the enemy at night in hit-and-run attacks, perhaps even 'ski-by shootings'. The Finns favored shooting from the hip with the Suomi, since even the "smokeless" powder would produce enough of a cloud to foul up one's efforts at aiming from the shoulder pretty quickly. Just imagine how much more effective they could've been even with modern night-vision, not to mention a full augmented reality system like the type described above.

But I digress . . .

In short, the writers were generally bound by the limitations of the technology during the time they wrote (or at least the popular knowledge of it), along with some Hollywood-specific limitations . . . hence all the macroscopic components, handheld devices, and so on. Indeed, one of the great things about television and film is that you can actually show some really cool stuff . . . but one of the perils of television and film is that you can't go on talking about it if you're trying to tell a story.

For instance, imagine if Riker walked into a briefing with his sleeve rolled up, incessantly tapping a finger at his exposed arm. The camera closes in and we see him hard at work pressing padd-like touch-screen buttons and making a video display on his arm change. It would look absurd, of course, but that sort of thing isn't too terribly far away.

That would certainly be one way to have a padd on you while also roaming about on an observation mission of some 20th-Century-or-less society, wouldn't it?

Of course, some of the Trek and Wars anachronisms would be intentional. For instance, there's the 'dataport' as seen on DS9, a device allowing direct neural interface with a computer and even mind-to-mind contact (leading to 'net-girl' non-physical prostitution . . . evidently dataports are more advanced than the Prytt psionic neural transceiver from "Attached"[TNG7]). This concept has appeared elsewhere, of course . . . perhaps the most useful version I know of was in 3001, where Arthur C. Clarke mentions that everyone uses "braincaps" which allow a person to directly access all the information of the world, and are self-aware secretaries besides. I don't know of any current research that will give us something that advanced, but I can certainly understand why a person might not want to have one, and why it wouldn't be a good idea to solely rely on it. (On the other hand, I could get a helluva-lot more work done if I didn't have to type everything out, for although I'm a helluva-speedy typist it still takes time. And of course, it's remarkable how quickly we come to rely on things that start out as merely helpful. Cellphones, anyone?)

But that brings us to my final point for the moment. In the end, one of the things from either franchise that will continue to be relevant (beyond the entertainment value of the basic storylines) will be the Borg. In an age where people could integrate and internalize technology into their person to that extent, the concept of holding on to one's humanity will become increasingly important. Thus, although Trek and Wars tech will probably look pretty backwards in a few years (not counting things like hyperdrive and excessive energy production), the two might yet have a little bit of relevance for the future.

The TNG Space Hippies Theory

A thought I've been toying with for the past few months . . .

As mentioned previously, the first war between the Cardassian Union and the UFP appears to have occurred from 2358-2362.

Consider the first couple of seasons of TNG (which starts in 2364) . . . the crew simply does not appear to be a war-hardened force. If anything, they act more like space hippies then quasi-military officers . . . Riker believing combat training to be a "minor province" in the make-up of a starship captain, Picard avoiding holding actual wargames, and so on. There are several examples wherein the idea of 'a generally-peaceful aim' would be a bit of an understatement. This isn't a bad thing in a time which can support it, mind you, but it was almost as if there was a cultivated naivete at times. Certainly it was a much different era than Kirk's TOS.

I think there is a relationship between that era and the Cardassian conflict. From Mosaic, we know that as of 2351 there hadn't been a war or other significant conflict for decades . . . the word "war" was hoped obsolete.

We also know of the Talarian border skirmishes (where the Talarians, near Cardassian space, are a remarkably low-tech people), the Tzenkethi war (apparently of the early 2360's), and so on.

Also, as noted on the Setlik III page in the Tech Archives, the first known use of the TNG pajamas was sometime between 2349 and 2354.

(And you never know . . . there might be a relationship there, too. The militaristic uniforms of the latter-TMP era, worn throughout the first half of the 2300's, might've helped cause some other races to blink faster than they would if the Federation showed up in one-piece speedo pajamas.)

If war was thought obsolete and evidence of unenlightenment . . . if the Federation hadn't been tested in real war for decades . . . if they showed up in pajamas . . . if they seemed to blink out of a spirit of conciliatory friendliness . . . if Earth was a paradise and the rest of the Federation seemed to be following suit quite nicely, with troubles minor . . . then the Federation's adversaries might've taken these things as a sign of weakness. "They are unprepared."

(Certainly if some backwards fartcatchers like the Talarians start rattling sabers with you, you know that you're not projecting anything resembling fear, nor are you absorbing such a society as a member anytime soon.)

In short, I would argue that the first half of the 24th Century saw a steady decline in the rather more martial philosophies of the mid-to-late 23rd Century. Those more martial philosophies were borne of the cold war with the Klingons at the time.

(Indeed, I think the Klingons are why the remarkably TNG-esque Earth Starfleet of the early 2150's were able to become the mid-23rd Century Federation Starfleet. Sure, the Romulans brought everyone together in war, but it was the decades-long cold war with the Klingons that really kept the Federation on its toes.)

After Organia and the eventual peace with the Klingons beginning in the 2290's, there just wasn't the same impetus anymore, and by the early-to-mid-2300's the hippyism had begun. To be sure, we know that during the 2340's the Federation got worried about the Cardassians, but worry is not a direct lead-in to a return to martial philosophies.

It's possible that no one recognized that three separate "western" powers challenged the Federation at the same time for the same reasons . . . this may simply have been viewed as a necessary 'taming of the west'.

In short, the Federation became complacent, and despite a brief spat of trouble with a few rabble-rousers in the west, they really never had much cause to question their complacency.

With the end of the western conflicts of the 2350's and early 2360's, then, it was a new dawning of the Age of Aquarius . . . harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, no more false or dark derisions, and so on. After all, the west was tame and they'd all soon see the light, the Romulans were being quiet, and by damn even the Klingons are friends! The only real worry was the Ferengi, but even they turned out to be a non-threat.

In other words, the early 2360's resembled the late 1960's in the United States. Sure, there were still hardasses around, but even the hardasses were pleased that the trials of the 2350's were over and might've secretly hoped that all would be well for a long long while.

Of course, as we now know, the idea was wrong. The return of the Romulans in late 2364 got a few balls rolling, but it was the "kick in our complacency" that the Borg produced (thanks Q) which resulted in a scare real enough that the non-warship-building Federation came out with the Defiant Class.

(Had the Federation encountered the wormhole and the Dominion circa 2364, I don't think they would've had the spirit to win.)

============

In any case, that's the general gist of my idea as to why there's such a gap between the attitudes in early TNG versus late-TNG / DS9. The ideals are still there, but there's a more realistic approach that, while perhaps not working as well at times, has certain merits.

Of further interest would be the period around 2380 or so, with the end of the devastating Dominion War. I can't help but wonder how the Federation's attitude would be circa 2400.

Hull Temperature Data

In "Coda"[VOY3], we get to see yet another Voyager shuttle crash. The shuttle Sacajawea, variously shown as a Type-6 or a Type-8 shuttlecraft, encounters a powerful and sudden ion storm disturbance in the atmosphere of some planet or other.

After taking a series of ion lightning hits, the shuttle loses attitude control and navigational systems. Janeway soon reports:

"Altitude: 12 kilometers. Hull temperature: 4,000 degrees. We have to reduce speed!"

That would seem to imply that they were nearing some maximum tolerance . . . though I suppose it could also refer to simply slowing down before colliding with a planet.

Also, in Mosaic[VOY], we get some Voyager-specific hull temperatures. The highest stated maximum is 17,000 degrees, though we do hear of minutes passing between the 14,000 and 15,000 degree marks, along with a number of minutes on the way up to 14,000. The hull doesn't boil off and there's no mention of permanent damage (though it does get up to 62 degrees on the bridge), so this is apparently a readily-survivable (though probably highly-inadvisable) hull temperature.

Also, I've updated the Tech Archives with some unfinished materials from Pathways and Mosaic, as part of continuing work on defining and dating the Cardassian Conflict (with the war still appearing to fall in the 2358-2362 timeframe). Check it out here.

Dominion War Convoys

" . . . With the safe arrival of the convoy PQ1 to the Vegan system, our escort duties are now complete, and I've set course for home."

That's from "The Sound of Her Voice"[DSN6]. That implies that at maximum, there could be 6,760 convoys by such a numbering scheme (26 x 26 x 10), with that one being the 2,721st, more likely than not.

Of course, the idea of a convoy going toward Vega (i.e. awfully close to Earth) doesn't make that much sense.

But just for kicks, we know that a convoy in "Waltz"[DSN6] was carrying 30,000 troops. If each convoy carried that many, then the total Federation ground force could number 81,630,000 troops.

Note that this is just a number . . . not a maximum, minimum, or recommended estimate.

Remarkable Applicability

Still such an excellent quote:

"Gradually the Greeks lost their brilliance, which had been as the bright freshness of early youth. This is painfully obvious in their literature, if not in other forms of art. Their initiative vanished; they ceased to create and began to comment. Patriotism, with rare exceptions, became an empty name, for few had the high spirit and energy to translate into action man's duty to the State. Vacillation, indecision, fitful outbursts of unhealthy activity followed by cowardly depression, selfish cruelty, and criminal weakness are characteristic of the public life of Greece from the struggle with Macedonia to the final conquest by the arms of Rome. No one can fail to be struck by the marked difference between the period from Marathon to the Peloponnesian War and the period from Alexander to Mummius. Philosophy also suffered, and became deeply pessimistic even in the hands of its best and noblest exponents. 'Absence of feeling,' 'absence of care'--such were the highest goals of human endeavour."

From Malaria and Greek History, 1909

Canon Wars revision

My overview and replies to the EU Completist responses to the Starlog quote are incomplete, I'm afraid. The weekend was simply too lovely weather-wise for me to even dream of staying indoors. But, I did remember this evening that I was going to try to get that done, at which point I started appending the info to the "Quote-Specific Argument Overview". This, of course, was a mistake, because man that thing is out of date. And thus a general update to that page is underway, and will include the Starlog bits.

In brief, though, the 'strongest' counterclaim . . . or perhaps (given the general absence of strength) the term 'meatiest' should be used . . . is from the ASVS thread wherein they simply try to use the old "intrude" bit. (In other words, they try to reinterpret the 2002 Cinescape quote by taking the word "intrude" and discarding or otherwise ignoring the context. That sort of 'reasoning' has long since been dealt with on the Quote-Specific Arguments page.

At ASVS, that merged with the claim which sounds great, but has no meat at all. The 'Production Defense', as I call it, is the claim that every time Lucas speaks of parallel universes he is only referring to either (a) the act of film-making vs. publishing/gamecrafting/et cetera, or (b) the people who engage in the latter.

There's no particular logic behind the claim that I can see, and indeed that's the very claim that I can't seem to get any of them to explain the rationale behind. It basically runs like this:

Them: "He's just talking about production."
Me: "How so?"
Them: "He's talking about production."
Me: "And you came to this conclusion because . . . "
Them: "Because he's talking about production."
Me: ('fro-slap)

Anyway, more to come

About ST-v-SW.Net: The Store

Where the hell did that come from?

Spur of the moment thing, really. I was sitting there really thinking about buying a shirt online that featured a hysterical re-do of the Sistine Chapel when it dawned on me that I wouldn't mind having an ST-v-SW.Net shirt.

Are you making money off of it?

No, not really. I just went ahead and put the shop up because I thought it was nifty. I don't expect to sell anything.

In any case, the shop is free for the person who runs it (i.e. I don't have to pay them for it) . . . people make money off of them by putting in a mark-up. I went ahead and marked things up by just enough to get to the next integer or half-integer (i.e. their weirdly-priced $16.45 shirts would go to $17.00), but that hardly counts. Even if a shirt a week were to be sold, at the end of a year I'd have, oh, about twenty-five bucks. In short, if I were in it for the money I'd put up ad banners or a Paypal contribution link or something.

In any case, though, any money earned (i.e. all 55 cents, since of course I did buy a shirt) will be used for upkeep of ST-v-SW.Net.

Is this legal?

"I will make it legal."

Okay, well, maybe not. But seriously, I'm not infringing on anyone's copyrights or anything . . . hence the boring designs which don't feature ships fighting or character names or quotes or anything fun like that. The closest I come is with the use of the site symbol chevron in its "Battle of Britain" configuration . . . something very similar to the site symbol chevron was recently used in "In A Mirror, Darkly"[ENT4]. However, my symbol came before that, and is sufficiently different than any predecessor.

Further, with the BoB modification it is an independent design using elements of an independent design that is a formerly-unique variation of a previously-little-known Trek design. That alone makes it more original than most TV or songs available today.

I have this great idea for a new shirt/whatever . . .

Send it in! If it's really cool I'll see if I can whip one up for you and add it to the store. Or you can make one yourself via the folks who are providing the store for me.

Anyway, I figured this would be useful for clearing up any potential questions. If I get questions not related to the ones above I'll edit this accordingly.

And You Will Know Them By The Trail of The Annoyed

In case you've ever thought that the SD.Netters just come after me, think again. They've sprayed their collective venom against many a real or imagined foe, going off to invade places that just aren't interested.

Perhaps the most amusingly disturbing fight they've picked has been with the very people who make the EU they (normally) defend to the death. I've previously mentioned their issue with Pablo Hidalgo, who downplayed the import of number-crunching fans like Saxton. This of course offended them no end, and a year and a half ago it resulted in all manner of outrage among SD.Net denizens. They bitched and moaned all over SD.Net and even the StarWars.com forums, flinging insults every which way . . . even Saxton got involved. They even called for a letter-writing campaign to try to get Hidalgo ousted.

He's still around. Oh, and Ossus got banned from StarWars.com. Oops.

Now, they've picked another fight. A recent issue of Star Wars Insider had an article on the Grand Army of the Republic. If you'll recall, AoTC implies about 1.2 million clones. The article, discussing a time around RoTS some three years later, gives the Republic a total of about three million. Seems about right, to me.

The rabid Warsies of SD.Net, however, considered this to be far too small, and thus began flaming the authors all over the internet, not only at their SD.Net haven but also on the forums of TheForce.Net. Now they've even carried the matter to the StarWars.com blogs of the offending authors, calling a very nice lady and the fellow who helped with the article some remarkable names and giving all manner of hell to anyone else they can find, including (inevitably) Pablo Hidalgo. The mods of StarWars.com are being kept busy trying to ensure that their personal attacks and other flames aren't allowed to go out of control . . . which of course has the SD.Net crew attacking the mods, now, as well.

They're basically just a few steps away from those freaks who sent death threats to the EU author who was tasked to kill Chewbacca. And of course, given that the SD.Net crowd is not unfamiliar with composing death threats, I'm sure Karen Traviss, Ryan Kaufmann, and Pablo Hidalgo have or will get some very interesting mail from these weirdos. I'm just waiting for them to start trying to call them at home while holding satellite photos of their homes.

So let's see . . . reason, common sense, me, Lucas companies personnel, EU authors . . . yes, their list of Enemies of the State is growing. But hey, what do we know? Only the SD.Netters know what real Star Wars is. We should let them write it.

Of course, now that they're up to claiming rapid-fire 50 teraton per shot ship weapons (an increase of 250 times over the already-absurd ICS 200 gigaton crap), I'm sure most of what they wrote would be zeroes and commas (aNd t3h C4pt41n uNl34$#3d t3h 700,000,0000,00,,000,000,,000 uB3rt0n tUrB0l4z0Rz 4nD 400,000,000,00,0000,,00 g1g4cl0n3z!!!!!!1111one111!!!!!11shift+one!).

But come now . . . who'd really want to read that?

Poe: Lord of the Dance

As noted in the comments to the last post, there has been a bit more chatter discovered at ASVS, of all places . . . a locale I've long thought dead as far as Vs. Debating went. I'll be making a general response to the various claims found there. None of it is any more impressive than the other online responses . . . more "intrude" nonsense, anti-contextual wordplay, claims of Lucas Licensing going rogue, and so on.

But what I've been highly amused by has been Poe. He's been one of the most vocal opponents of the Starlog quote, which granted isn't saying much this time out.

As noted in earlier posts, he originally claimed that the Galvaron rendition of the quote was production based, a claim that wasn't really supportable. And, now that the full Starlog quote has appeared, the claim makes no sense at all.

Which, I imagine, is why Poe has avoided the full quote like the plague.

His first post-Starlog response was to simply post a number of non-Lucas quotes . . . one was hearsay, another a previously-quoted Chee statement, a couple of attempts to support the Creator Involvement Thesis, and so on. In short, nothing substantial.

Then, he updated his website with a heavily-edited version of the ASVS thread from June 2002 . . . three and a half years ago . . . where I directly questioned the ASVS use of the EU for the first time.

Actually I have to thank Wayne . . . it's rather pleasant to see that I was on the right track back then, even though that was a month before the "parallel universe" quote and some time before I knew of the 2001 TV Guide quote. It's like looking at the first seeds of what was to become the new canon page.

In any case, Wayne claims that since he feels my position at the time was "ripped [...] to shreds", that my current argument is likewise dashed. Given the seed analogy, I suppose he would also feel that by beating up newborns, he can claim to have "kicked the butts of 20 year old men" a couple of decades later. (I'm also amused at how he edited the posts to make me appear to be the aggressor in regards to ASVS-standard personal attack tactics. So many dishonest people are willing to slack off and just do things halfway, but Poe gives dishonesty that extra personal touch that is the mark of quality.)

But I digress . . . Poe's exhaustive quotation and editing of a three and a half year old argument is amusing on many levels, but basically is bordering on a straw man. Indeed, by claiming that he and his won three years ago and hence my new canon page and the Starlog quote are defeated, that's pretty much exactly what it is.

And so, feeling that this was a successful maneuver, Poe repeated it. Poe's third post-Starlog response involves denying the "easy victory", quoting the incomplete Galvaron rendition of the Starlog quote to the SD.Net denizens, making his production claim again, and then quoting a post by "Lord Edam" at ASVS against "Mike4ty4", who had shared the Galvaron rendition with them. Poe, automatically declaring Edam's EU Completist position victorious in that thread, thus claims that my position about the quote is wrong.

Thus we end up with two straw men. First, Wayne is unable or unwilling to respond to the full Starlog quote. Second, he is unable or unwilling to respond to me. And thus, he takes the watered-down quote and (... if Mike4ty4 will forgive me ...) watered-down argument and declares victory with those, and thus victory against the full quote and a complete argument thereon.

It's people like Poe (and web boards like SD.Net) that make you really stop and question democracy. Deviousness and idiocy are far too commonplace for comfort.

Ah, well . . . it's the best we've got. But, at least reality is not subject to a popular vote . . . much to SD.Net's chagrin and dismay.

An Easy Victory?

So is that it? Is the canon argument all wrapped up? Looks like it from here right now.

Frankly, I expected that there would be more of an uproar over the Starlog quote among the Vs. Debate EU Completists, but thus far it simply hasn't happened. Usually by this point several competing forms of BS would've appeared already, along with one thoroughly convoluted re-interpretation. This last one, by virtue of being so subtly full of it that it takes several minutes of thought for the average person to untangle, would become the standard line. I then publicize the rebuttal to their BS, and they ignore it.

However, this time there's simply been no substantive counterargument whatsoever. What little "counterargumentative chatter" I've seen about the quote is so easily brushed aside that I almost feel bad taking the time to type it out.

Of course, there have been no concessions either, which is to be expected. I suppose they're just trying to ignore it for as long as possible, which is unusual for them to do with the original quote.

In any case, I'll give them more time. I prefer to avoid even the appearance of overconfidence, and thus do not bust out with the dick-waving and declarations of victory at all . . . or at least, not immediately.

(Indeed, over at STrek-v-SWars I've been semi-patiently waiting for a guy to explain why he keeps denying that the Starlog quote means what everyone thinks it means. This I do in the spirit of honest inquiry, but it's been days now and he's refused to answer the question.

Also, expect a post soon wherein I actually do trouble myself to type out the quick responses to the EU-Phile reactions observed thus far, such as 'Lucas's words are to be ignored' and the "It's a fake!" objection, among others.)