Never thought I'd have anything in common with Neil - but he was my favorite character as well! In a way he was the driving force behind the entire show - doesn't he even appear in the very first episode?

The episode where he changes the past so Picard would not have had the accident causing him to get an artificial heart is just genius.

Actually, you're right. Q was in the very first episode, putting the human race on trial, and the final episode that you mentioned was the conclusion to that trial if you watch it. That was the last episode(s) of the series. So you make a good point.

In any event, I take real life seriously, not fiction on TV. When I can find something on Star Trek my wife likes too, when she normally hates the show, that's a good thing! And I got her to like Voyager (the only one she likes) and Q so. I don't honestly know how anyone could not like him, John DeLancie played him perfectly with lots of laughs.

Sorry, butt, I found it funny. It was meant as humour for obvious reasons.

As for Spock... he's a fictional character. And I don't seek approval anyhow, I found it funny whether you liked it or not. Bu-bye!

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I mostly agree with Neil's humor in this thread to my surprise. That said, Q is not meant to be a likable character. He's an asshole. You grow to like him over time, as you realize he isn't going to actually destroy the crew or ship, but you still don't like him, as doesn't either captain. The actor, of course, does a wonderful job portraying him, and for that I give kudos. The character is a misguided prick.

Toys today are shit. There's no imagination left. They all take 8 batteries every 4 hours, and they tell you what you're playing. It's no fun. My young nephew just pulls you to his toy room and says, "I have this, and this, and this, and this, ..." He doesn't really play with any of it. It's fucking depressing. I used to ignore what the character was on an action figure and invent my own self, and play for hours... No batteries required.

Anybody ever have those matchcar town play mats as kids? Basically it was a little mat with a mini town on it with roads that fit your toy cars. Just a generic town. No branding. Mostly roads. There were all the essentials. A store, a police station, fire station, etc. Thing is, they still make these today, but now the buildings are so 3D that the buildings are 60-80% of the mat. There are just a few crappy loops around it. How the Hell is a kid supposed to imagine a story out of that? Most of the mat caters to the one part of the equation he has no avatar for: people outside of cars. And you can't go inside buildings really. That's all just imaginary. Factor in the fact that most kids are playing with iPhones and Androids at 8 months of age and have the attention span of a rock. They don't have imaginations anymore.

It's just a very sad world. No wonder toy stores are suffering. They don't sell good toys anymore.

Append:

When and if I have kids they won't be getting electronic toys. They'll get non-electronic toys that don't light up, make sounds, or anything like that. You have to imagine the magic. Your imagination will do way better than $70 at a toy store ever could. The real fun is in the imagination. They also won't be playing with any mobile phones, tablets, or computers until they're a little bit older. I loved playing NES when I was 4 or 5, but in hindsight I'm not sure that it encouraged the best me that I could be. Fortunately my parents limited my usage of it, though to get around their rules I'd usually wake up quietly at like 5 or 6 AM to go play.

I'm on the fence about letting my kids play video games. I don't think video games are themselves harmful, though I think in this world kids don't use their imagination enough. Similar to the toys, the games are so detailed that they kind of make it hard to imagine your own story (I remember identifying this problem even in my teen years where certain games were sort of locked down to the developer's narrative). As a child and teen I played Driver on PlayStation countless times in free-mode imagining my own story. While it would probably have been far more beneficial to just go play with friends and learn social skills, I think that playing games that don't even afford you the freedom to reinvent the story would be even worse than if you were playing games that were loosely enough structured to let you imagine your own game within them.

Insert: I should emphasize that I think that the right video games would encourage the imagination to develop and grow, but video games don't encourage social skills. That's where I am lacking, and I can't be sure if it's my nature or if it was influenced by my exposure to computers growing up from a young age. Part of me thinks that playing video games did somewhat hinder my social development, but at the same time, they also made up in some ways for what wasn't there for one reason or another. You can always introduce your kids to video games if you discover them naturally lacking social skills. I've noticed "social" people don't play video games the way that I do, and while I insist that they're wrong and stupid and ugly for it, I can see how it would be beneficial for my kids to have better social skills than I do, perhaps at the expense of being (brace yourself) less of a geek.

Perhaps that could be inspiration to some of the game designers on these message boards. As important as immersion is for a good game, a really useful thing to achieve is a game that doesn't get in a child's way if they start to imagine their own game out of it (i.e., the game behaves in a predictable way that the child can build on, and doesn't necessarily break the immersion of their imaginary game either). Even if it's just a special free game mode like Driver had I think it's important to have.

So I tried out Microsoft Edge today. It works pretty well, but it has loads of input lag when trying to play games written in JavaScript. Keyboard inputs sometimes get stuck or don't even register at all. It's abysmal. Granted, I'm using Edge 38, so maybe this is fixed in Edge 40. But holy cow, I can't believe they'd screw up something simple like event listeners.

Still an hour to go for me.

Threads automatically lock after one week of inactivity. Two if you're in the right board(s).

What, there was an apocalypse and I missed it? Dang, not again.

Satan comes first kiddos. Then Jesus.

I love this quote:

That was a worthwhile read, Polybios. I was disappointed, however, when the author acknowledged journalism's unique importance in the private sector (as opposed to "trucking or food services," which tend not to influence public opinion) but immediately doused it with a couple of lame jokes. (Furthermore, I would argue that food services greatly affect public opinion regarding health matters.) The author then goes on to beseech journalists to solve the problem by performing their duties responsibly... but without having freed journalism from capitalistic influence (profitability via "high-carb, low-protein populist pap"), how is this supposed to make a difference? The author's call to arms is tantamount to asking nicely, and I can't seem to remember the last time the free market chose "asking nicely" over money.

Codification of logical debate, exercised as part of grade school curriculum, would better benefit society--codification being important, as teachers themselves often succumb to fallacy. Such a generation would have a better chance growing up with an appetite for meaningful journalism (as opposed to empty "identity politics") and might actually support meaningful journalism through capitalism, as opposed to against it in an unending, uphill battle.

Otherwise, you have to topple capitalism itself, as capitalism--by definition--follows money. Pretending it might do otherwise brings about no change and does more harm than good, like telling a cancer patient to get plenty of sleep instead of removing the tumor.

The Orville is amazing. Episode 3 is EXACTLY like one of the best TNG episodes. Episode 4 is pretty good but more predictable.