Your Most Controversial Opinions!

1) I think physics, chemistry, and mathematics are "fake" sciences in that they do not study the natural world, but rather, study simplified mathematical models about it.2) I'm tired of hearing about the Holocaust. It's usually invoked as an excuse for Israel to do whatever it wants. As a historical event, it happened, and people who say otherwise should be opposed; but there's no additional need to have "awareness" of it.3) Religion is pretty much ridiculous.4) Firefly was a pretty crappy show. The Serenity movie was ok but they killed everybody I had a half-interest in watching. Joss Whedon is a douche.

I don't see it as religion. Even in mathematics, there's a rigor that leads to faulty models or hypotheses being rejected. But nothing is ever rejected in religion. Well, I didn't mean we should forget about the Holocaust - just, there's no need to have any more "Holocaust awareness" events or whatever. (They were pretty big on stuff like that when I went to college. Maybe it's just me?) Everybody's heard of the Holocaust by now. ...no wonder that movie totally blew. Like, what I can't figure out is - when Hollywood wants to make a space marine movie, why do they look to anybody but James Cameron and Bill Paxton? Space marine movies without Bill Paxton suck. Incontrovertable fact.

You don't yet understand what I'm saying. Right. One specific religion might reject one or another position.But the adherents of that position don't usually abandon their position; they split off and start their own religion.Nothing is ever abandoned in religion. Even that which appears to be abandoned is usually picked up again, in a "revival" movement. In science, adherents of wrong positions either die or are convinced of their error. In religion they spawn their own split-off religions. Why wouldn't they? From what basis can one religion tell another their beliefs are wrong?

"So, I have this idea for a great movie. It's about two gnomes who find a bracelet of power, and they have to take it to the Burning Steppes and cast it into the Cauldron. They form the Brotherhood of the Bracelet. Along the way they're trailed by a murloc named Gottum, who's obsessed with the bracelet, and nine bracelet boogeymen. It could be a three parter, called 'Ruler of the Bracelet'. The first part would be called 'The Brotherhood of the Bracelet', followed by 'A Couple of Towers', with a climactic ending called 'Hey, the King's Back!'"

If by "greatest" you mean "most boring." Only Stanley Kubrick could make a sex movie that you could sleep through.Sam Rami is the greatest director who has ever lived. I dare you to watch The Quick and the Dead and then disagree with me.

In a thread about controversial opinions, trust me, I'm being completely serious. I'm dragging out all the opinions that I hold that I know are going to tweak people. (I've got more than enough of those without having to manufacture them.) I really find Kubrick's movies stupefying, and not in a good way. He's got an eye for visual spectacle, but most everybody does, and Kubrick just doesn't understand pacing, in my opinion. (Or else he's deliberate about trying to put the audience to sleep.)

I didn't think it was all that special, I guess.

I thought it was opinions, not facts?

It's a simple survey that they've done several times in the past, Mod. The results are always the same - particularly if you don't call it "rape" in the survey, but simply describe the behavior, more than half of college-aged men would commit those acts if they felt they were sure of getting away with it.Or at least they say they would. I can't think of any reason they would lie about that.

I've been over it a couple of times, already. Check upthread. That in which there are no such things as "points" and "planes" and "parallel lines" and "frictionless pulleys" and "nonelastic ropes" and billiard tables where all the balls are completely spherical, and all the other inventions of mathematics that physicists seem to rely on so dearly, to the exclusion of how pulleys and ropes and billiard tables actually work in real life. Biology. I'm not saying that they're not there, simply that you can't depend on them.

To the contrary; here's me from message 5:

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4) Firefly was a pretty crappy show. The Serenity movie was ok but they killed everybody I had a half-interest in watching. Joss Whedon is a douche.

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Seriously, though, when a guy sets out to make a space western and the best he can do is to set The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas on another planet (that looks just like Southern California), full of characters who are all hookers with hearts of gold (as the saying goes), in a bordello called "The Heart of Gold", in an episode called "Heart of Gold", my guess is that you are not dealing with one of the most creative minds in Hollywood. For a good space western, see Cowboy Bebop. (Subbed or dubbed, the dub is better, actually. There's another controversial opinion.)

I didn't see anything in the above that suggested fraternity membership was corellated with score.I don't understand why this is so hard for you all to accept. Actually, I guess I do - it's fashionable to consider rape such a monstrous crime that one comes to believe that only a monster is capable of it (and certainly, one's friends are certainly not to be considered monsters.)That's probably the greatest disservice we do to rape victims. The simple truth is that even completely normal men are capable of rape. Many of your friends and family are capable of it. More than likely, you're capable of it yourself. (I won't insult your intelligence by claiming I'm the exception, either.) This is why rape victims, when they come forward, almost always find themselves alone in the midst of a very hostile reception. After all "but we know Jim, we know he's not capable of doing that... you must be a liar, or confused or something. You must not know the way the world works." Whatever that means.I've seen it happen; seen a rape victim turned on by her "friends" because they were also friends with the rapist, and the fact that they know he's a "good guy" and "could never do that." Well, he did do that.Schraf is 100% right. The "good guys" are capable of that. The sooner we realize that rape is not merely the province of monsters, but something a majority of guys are capable of, the better.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I don't know, is it? It always seemed to me that it takes more to make a western than sixguns and hokey dialogue. And anyway it's supposed to be a "space western", and so simply taking episodes of "The Lone Ranger" and setting them on the Planet of the Week is taking the easy way out. No, I get irony. (In fact as an English major I was specifically trained in irony.) I also get it when people think being obvious is ironic.

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"Irony" is a literary or rhetorical device in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says, and what is generally understood (either at the time, or in the later context of history).

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In other words "irony" is the situation where what happens is different than what is expected. An episode about hookers with hearts of gold, at The Heart of Gold, called "Heart of Gold", is the exact opposite of irony.It's like Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic", which is ironic because none of the situations she describes are actually ironic. Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife is not ironic. Irony is ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, and then you get stabbed to death. That's ironic. I didn't really think it was funny. I think it's a sign of a writer thinking he's hot shit on a shingle, and that every goofy idea he has is going to be flat-out hilarious. It's amateurish.

... are you aware that I'm male? Great, you're in the 41% or whatever. (I did say "more than likely", not "for absolutely certain.") How nice for you. What does that have to do with anything?

Whose reality? In real reality, rape is one of the safest crimes to perpetrate; less than 20% of incidents lead to incarceration or punishment of any kind.Few people commit crimes when they think they're going to get caught. The scenario of "you are sure you could get away with it" isn't unrealistic; that's a position that a lot of people, often incorrectly, see themselves as being in.