This Month's Darkstar Chortle

[Darth Onasi]

2) what is his obsession with Wayne?? I never understood why he made it so personal.

I'm going to put on my armchair psychologist hat again and say that it's another example of him wanting attention.
Someone like that who probably has no real friends must create intense rivalries where none exist to validate themselves.

Also from what I've seen, Darkstar loves to pretend that others have something personal against him instead of the other way around and thus his arguments are automatically more reasonable.

[wjs7744]

3) why wont he just try to find sensible ways to solve the problems with his arguments without trying to brute force the result by ignoring canon.

The obvious answer is that he is simply wrong. There is no way he could solve the problems with his arguments, because the only way to argue for the Trek side is to be dishonest.

[Tyrian2000]

Check this gem. A mod of Spacebattles gives some advice to Darkstar so he can get another mod off his back:

"I wish I could give you some advice... but HBMC's a tough case. He's been around here much longer than I have, but after a few years, there's a few things I've come to understand about him...

He hates Star Trek, in all incarnations, and considers Star Wars to be practically a masterpiece, instead of the derivative pulp work it frankly is. He does, however, have interests outside of Trek, so it couldn't hurt to find some common ground.

I don't know how often you intend to hang around here, but it certainly could only get better if you visit some of the other forums. {...} Remember, every time you've posted here so far, that I can recall, it has been in a Trek/Wars debate of some kind or other, and you make some very strong arguments against his position, which psychs the hell out of him. So he gets a ten foot pole up his ass the minute he spots your name on the board.

{...} That'd be my best advice. Hang around a bit more, get to know some of the other people... get involved in different forums, and debates about *other* SF universes, and I practically garauntee he'll either shut up voluntarily, or the rest of the people on the board will tell him to."

And the following conclusion:

The fellow's basic advice was to socialize with HBMC -- make friendly with him and/or others.

There was logic to that. However, I'm not involved in this hobby to make friends.

Ahahahaaha, oh god.

[Aaron]

I thought one of the purposes of a hobby was to make friends. What's the point in having one if you don't get toghether and talk or share about it with other people?

He has his fans but a circlejerk doesn't really count as friendship, especially if your the center man.

[Darth Wong]

I thought one of the purposes of a hobby was to make friends. What's the point in having one if you don't get toghether and talk or share about it with other people?

He has his fans but a circlejerk doesn't really count as friendship, especially if your the center man.

I don't think he even considers it a hobby, despite using the word. It seems more like a crusade for him. He has attempted to infuse his campaign with a level of moral righteousness which is almost comical.

[Aaron]

I don't think he even considers it a hobby, despite using the word. It seems more like a crusade for him. He has attempted to infuse his campaign with a level of moral righteousness which is almost comical.

There's a definite opponent=evil, Darkstar=good thing going on with a lot of what he's involved in. Which fits given that he's a conservative.

[wjs7744]

Didn't he compare his crusade to the Battle of Britain at one point, I think I read something about that somewhere. That really shows how far gone he is. I mean, you just don't make those sort of comparisons. Unless your hobby actually has something to do with it, of course, like building model aeroplanes or something.

I think I'm rambling at this point, so I'll try to make my point: From what I've read, that isn't really an opinion. There seems to be significant evidence to support it.

[Darth Servo]

Didn't he compare his crusade to the Battle of Britain at one point,

That was he called his response to Master of Ossus tearing his webpage apart.

+http://www.st-v-sw.net/BB/BBindex.html

DW has mentioned that darkstar threw a shit fit when Mike Wong told him to grow up and play this game fairly. Darkstar apparently couldn't stand that someone would dare call the debate a mere "game". Where was that anyway?

[Darth Wong]

I don't even recall any more. It was so many years ago and it's really not worth the effort to go digging through my E-mail archives to track it down. All I remember is using the word "game" and watching him try to score points by attacking me for it. As if it's such a bad thing to call this a "game".

[Connor MacLeod]

I never got involved with him because I couldn't stand all the excess verbiage. Hell, I couldn't even READ his replies directly because they were mind-numbing. I always had to read his replies to other people. I could never understand how someone could argue with him to begin with either. You learn in arguing with people like Darkstar that there comes a point where it becomes really futile. They simply won't listen no matter what you tell them. At best is that yoou can do it because it amuses you (albeit briefly) or to make an example of him to others.

[Connor MacLeod]

2.) Stormtrooper armor. How do we resolve the conflict with regard to its protective power? In AotC, we see them shrug off shrapnel from an exploding LAAT (iirc) in close proximity, but in RotJ, we see them getting their armor cracked by falling impact, rocks, and even arrowheads.

I know other people have dealt wiht this, but I'm going to add my own two cents in, because this argument exemplifies the style of debating I loathe.

Put quite simply, have you actually ANALYZED the scenes? I mean more than just looking at them. I mean measuring the size of the rocks and their velocity (being dropped on stormies), or stuff like that, and making comparisons? Because Mike is right, there are LOTS of instances where the weapons don't appear to do any damage whatsoever.
u
As others have pointed out, the ST armor issue (especialyl the arrow) has been discussed as nauseum (did anyyone notice its also scout armor and not stormie armor? Bit of a difference there) but it is worth pointing out that even assuming Darkstar's analysis was correct, it doesn't really mean much. All it would tell us (given that not all results of impacts are consistent, hell I remember arrows bouncing off armour too IIRC) is that ST armor can vary in protective quality, and in the effectiveness of weapons it protects against.

This is actually quite a plausible conclusion. Modern body armours come in many types and varieties - trading weight and mobility for protection (Some armour is heavier or more bulkier.) - and depending on design some armour could protect against some attacks but not others (IE bullets vs knives or blunt trauma.) Especially if you consider differences between clone armor and stormie armor. Darkstar, for some reason, chooses to ignore this possibility in reconciling apparent contradictions and instead favors his own approach (or, more accurately, agenda.)

I will also point out that if you look at the arrow, it doesn't get more than an inch or two of penetration, tops. Technically speaking, that would STILL indicate good protection because it prevents the arrow from reaching anything vital.

[Darth Servo]

Even if Darkstar were 100% correct on the arrow issue, the irony in trektards criticizing the personal armor on other sci-fi series is incredible. ANY armor would be preferable to the (most often non-existant) armor of the Federation.

[Patrick Degan]

Didn't he compare his crusade to the Battle of Britain at one point, I think I read something about that somewhere. That really shows how far gone he is. I mean, you just don't make those sort of comparisons. Unless your hobby actually has something to do with it, of course, like building model aeroplanes or something.

I think I'm rambling at this point...

Don't worry. You're still far more coherent than Darkstar will ever manage.

[Connor MacLeod]

Even if Darkstar were 100% correct on the arrow issue, the irony in trektards criticizing the personal armor on other sci-fi series is incredible. ANY armor would be preferable to the (most often non-existant) armor of the Federation.

They just wank off to the "personal forcefield" thing, remember? Its more "high tech"

[wjs7744]

I know it's bad form to provide the other guy's evidence for him, but it's not like I'm debating him, and I guess this is the only way for impartial analysis.



Some slightly clearer shots, which seem to further invalidate DarkStar's work, seeing as the break appears to be on a seam of some kind!

Anyway, the guys were standing on a ridge, they got hit by Ewoks on ropes, rolled what looks like 1-2m down a roughly 45 degree slope. Then the Ewoks start beating them up, and we hear a crack sound, that sounds like the armour going. That's about the limits of my analytical ability . I can point out that this was clearly Ewoks hitting the stormy, rather than a ballistic rock, so I would imagine this would make quantification a bit harder.

Anyhow, if anyone wants more shots from the DVDs, I have them with me at the moment so I might as well be the one to take them.

[Aquatain]

I am amazed that Darkstar haven't jumped to the conclusion that Stormtroopers armour is in fact held together with duck tape since it is clearly show to be exactly that on several locations in ANH.

[Darth Wong]

One problem here might be culture shock. I've seen pictures of soldiers from conscript armies under totalitarian regimes where their helmets have cracks and even open holes in them. Old worn-out kit is really not that unusual in such an army, where the administration cares little about the life of any given soldier, even if the soldiers are generally equipped with protective gear (after all, you don't really give a shit if some of your soldiers die, but you don't want them to be vulnerable to mass death).

The American way of war in recent decades (which is the entire historical frame of reference for a typical young person) has been to treat each and every soldier's life as precious. This is extremely anomalous compared to world history; it is in fact almost freakish. So people who watch SW assume that every single stormtrooper's armour must be reasonably new, well maintained, and of the best quality available, based pretty much entirely on the fact that if this were the US Army, that's how they would ideally do it.

[Aquatain]

That Ewok Breaking the trooper helmet argument is such a bunch of shite.

Fuck things happen when you make a movie.

GL "you there ..trooper number 34 stand over there"

Trooper 34 " my name is Earl sir"

GL "who the fuck cares, now you guys grab the midget in the bear suit and throw him at trooper 34 and midget when you land bash the brains out of trooper 34 with your styrofoam club"

Trooper 34 " huh what?"

...a whole lot of midget tossing and bashing later earl hands in his uniform and hope secretly that nobody complains about the fact that he broke the helmet when he took 120 pounds of flying midget right in the face.

Fast forward 20 years later...

Darkstar sits in his moms basement (probably touching himself) scanning ROTJ, a film he has probably seen more times than the most avid SW fan, suddenly his eyes finds a tiny crack in earls helmet...

Darkstar "Great spock the pointy-eared..i got it, finally i have the ultimate prof that stormtrooper armor ain't worth shit..Muhahaha(he didn't really say Muhahaha but i added it for flavor)"

Look this kind of arguments are totally pointless, mistakes are made during filming, and the illusion are sometimes broken especially if you go through a film frame by frame.

One could by the same logic argue that in the Star Trek universe poles aren't worth shit since in Nemesis - Near the end of the film, when Picard bends the pole down to stab Shinzon, the pole supposedly goes through him and out the other side, but the prop travels several inches down his waist. A shot later, you can see the prop pushing against Shinzon's clothing, obviously not piercing anything.

[skies]

I know it's bad form to provide the other guy's evidence for him, but it's not like I'm debating him, and I guess this is the only way for impartial analysis.



Some slightly clearer shots, which seem to further invalidate DarkStar's work, seeing as the break appears to be on a seam of some kind!

Anyway, the guys were standing on a ridge, they got hit by Ewoks on ropes, rolled what looks like 1-2m down a roughly 45 degree slope. Then the Ewoks start beating them up, and we hear a crack sound, that sounds like the armour going. That's about the limits of my analytical ability . I can point out that this was clearly Ewoks hitting the stormy, rather than a ballistic rock, so I would imagine this would make quantification a bit harder.

Anyhow, if anyone wants more shots from the DVDs, I have them with me at the moment so I might as well be the one to take them.

No one seems to have pointed our the obvious fact that the armor seen in the movie is a movie prop. Even though it is real armor in the universe, the damage seen in the film is probably a result of a cheap prop made of plastic cracking along a seam when the extra wearing it tumbled. But of course Darkstar and his ilk will probably say this is spurious logic to cover up SW's obvious inferiority, even though continuity errors pop up all the time in movies (like changing shadows for a hectic shooting schedual) because no-one noticed it until it was to late to re-shoot (if at all).

[skies]

Even if Darkstar were 100% correct on the arrow issue, the irony in trektards criticizing the personal armor on other sci-fi series is incredible. ANY armor would be preferable to the (most often non-existant) armor of the Federation.

They just wank off to the "personal forcefield" thing, remember? Its more "high tech"

And we see how wonderful star trek uniforms are against primitive arrows when Picard gets shot by one and only survives because of bad aim.

[Darth Wong]

This is their way of trying to get revenge for people pointing out really big discrepancies in Star Trek, like people supposedly melting a planet even though the planet is not glowing at all (in "The Die is Cast"). They argue that it's an "FX mistake" (even though it was quite clearly deliberate and the FX artists put a lot of effort into showing atmospheric effects on the planet) or that the artists are not scientists and can't be expected to know what a melted planetary crust should look like (as if you really need to be a scientist to know that red-hot lava should look, well, red-hot).

So they look for every nitpicky little thing they can find and hold it up as a triumph, with the implicit argument that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Never mind the fact that they have no problem with Saavik looking totally different between ST2 and ST3, or Worf's grandfather looking exactly like him. Really, if one wanted to be as nitpicky as they are, one could declare that many of the episodes in ST are actually holodeck recreations, based on precedent (final episode of ENT) and logic (the impossibility of Worf's grandfather looking precisely like him, hence that was obviously Worf playing his own grandfather in a holodeck fantasy).

[BountyHunterSAx]

Really, if one wanted to be as nitpicky as they are, one could declare that many of the episodes in ST are actually holodeck recreations, based on precedent (final episode of ENT) and logic (the impossibility of Worf's grandfather looking precisely like him, hence that was obviously Worf playing his own grandfather in a holodeck fantasy).

That's actually a really good reductio ad absurdem to Darkstar's website. Still, I wouldn't advise telling him this, if he fought so hard to have canon policies changed then he would probably use this as his silver-bullet to ignore any evidence of any weakness for all Star-Trek technology.

-AHMAD

[Darth Servo]

Really, if one wanted to be as nitpicky as they are, one could declare that many of the episodes in ST are actually holodeck recreations, based on precedent (final episode of ENT) and logic (the impossibility of Worf's grandfather looking precisely like him, hence that was obviously Worf playing his own grandfather in a holodeck fantasy).

That's actually a really good reductio ad absurdem to Darkstar's website. Still, I wouldn't advise telling him this,

Too late. If its posted here, Darkstar or one of his cockgoblins has already read it. Its not like they have anything else to do.

[wjs7744]

No one seems to have pointed our the obvious fact that the armor seen in the movie is a movie prop.

That's probably because of suspension of disbelief. Being new at this myself, I'm not certain, but I think it means ignoring the fact that it's fiction. This would mean that in universe the armour in question really did crack, and we then explain it, not that we claim that the crack never happened in universe..

[BountyHunterSAx]

That's what I thought it was too, wjs. But even despite that aquatain made a post-long argument to that effect, and in my initial post I specified that as an out-of-universe explanation.

-AHMAD