I've apparently fallen into a pattern of creating the thread, then holding off and observing until the end of the week and posting a giant post of my thoughts. It probably has something to do with starting to read it on a smartphone (which is not logged into the forum) instead of waiting till I get home to read and respond. Here's the one for this week.
Holo puns
I tried to stay away from entries that weren't references to individuals (Gram and Day are grandma and Felicia), so while the Holocene may be epoch, it did not qualify. I'm surprised the comic references didn't get more votes- even Station did middling.
I wish to assume that "ro-" is Rodia.
Not real impressed with a society that treats an intelligent entity like that.
You're right, she is treating him pretty rudely.
A much better response than I thought of on Monday.
Not a single mention of one of the most infamous holograms out there ... Holy .... for shame .... Bring your geek cards to the desk for summary shredding.
Since we cannot read minds, what are you referring to?
Cycling through the months as names for her would have been more amusing, but our Lord and Amuser Jeph can't think of everything.
Interesting how some months are acceptable as names and some aren't. January Jones is the only January I know of, but April through July (Julia/Julius) are fairly common, and August isn't unheard of.
It's mostly about the root of the name and the seasonal connotations, I imagine.
Interesting how some months are acceptable as names and some aren't. January Jones is the only January I know of, but April through July (Julia/Julius) are fairly common, and August isn't unheard of.
Image of the robots named after the 12 months from Coyote Ragtime Show.
Aw man, don't mention that anime, it's depressing; the first episode is excellent, a taut thriller about an intelligent female detective and her spunky sidekick looking for a mass murdering (shown on screen during the series to directly cause the indiscriminate deaths of police, soldiers, prisoners, prison guards, and part of a city via tsunami) robber hiding in a prison and coming into conflict with the 12 robot assassins of a woman who wants revenge, not justice... only for it to be revealed that he's the
protagonist, and the next 11 episodes follow him instead. Oh, and the detective is swooningly in love with him, because he looked cool surfing that murdering tsunami wave apparently.
I think perhaps Perfectly Reasonable was proposing that major corporations with a monopoly on the creation of said lifeforms might deem it acceptable. Ŕ la Kara.
Aw man, don't mention that video, it's awesome but also depressing because we'll likely never see Karas story continue.
Sentience is a scale on which anything that experiences stimuli, but it's other factors like self awareness that make something worthy of legal rights. I avoid killing things if I don't need to, but that's because of general respect for life, not specific consideration for the individual radish, spider, or mouse. I need to eat, thus I am fine with consuming carrots and chickens.
Sentience is a wonky concept to begin with.
Indeed it is, which is why I believe we should be careful about denying it.
We should be just as careful about granting it.
On chiropractors, much of the criticism of them is based on a mistaken comparison with doctors (even if chiropractics makes that same mistake due to it being descended from genuine bullshit). A more valid comparison is with massage therapy, and they provide a useful service for those who want something more professional than a massage and more accessible and wallet friendly than, and whose doctors are overly inclined to pills rather than individual and physical treatment (like Garands experience).
Homeopathy however is still objectively bullshit, and potentially harmful bullshit as the previously cited examples of adulterated products show. Usefulness as a placebo for the gullible human mind doesn't change that, because damn near anything can be a placebo. That's not even getting into the moral and financial bullshittiness of it. If a placebo is needed, there are sugar pills.
"Give her time..." -- Pinkie Pie
What does a comment made by millions of people and hundreds if not thousands of pieces of media have to do with a childrens cartoon specifically?
Either that. or it's Microsoft.
That's IT! "May" is WINDOWS 8!!!!!
More likely a forgotten subroutine of Vista
Considering how annoying she is, I'd say more like Clippy. With a female version of Gilbert Gottfried's voice.
You mean May, Vista, Windows 8, and Clippy are all unfairly savaged in disregard of objective data due to the duplicity of hardware manufacturers, easily bypassable user interface quirks, and the unwillingness of competent users to take the trivially easy step to permanently disable the help tool for incompetent users?
So, Dale is a Gunnm fan...
In any case, the big question is whether May is still conscious when disconnected.
And then, if she is, is it ethical to disconnect her.
Reminds me of the ST:Voyager episode in which the holodeck characters acquire sentience and independence (yes, I watched ST:V. Sue me.).
Or the whole "am I human if I have a chip instead of a brain?" conundrum in Gunnm and Gunnm Last Order (relevant...).
I won't sue you, I'll ask you why you expect that reaction. It was a decent show- some problems with getting anywhere and not usually groundbreaking and with malleable ethics, but the acting and most episodes were fine.
I'll also ask why you refer to Battle Angel Alita by its Japanese title.
Same for Chiropractice or whatever it's spelled -- beside their crackpot claims (on the same level as homeopathy), don't go to one instead of an actual physical therapist -- there have been numerous cases of severe spinal injury by "chiropracticers" (EDIT: I think they call themselves "chiropractors"), as they are not legally subject to licensing. Same with "nutritionist" rather than dietician -- the latter is subject to legal regulation in most places.
I'm not sure why I should consider the opinion of someone who so forcefully criticizes something they apparently don't know enough about to name correctly (especially when they are voicing that opinion using a machine that makes that knowledge trivial to obtain).
If lobsters sign up for the forum we will treat them with decency and respect.
Well said. And then I'd have to revise my definition of "person" to be more inclusive.
When the facts change, I change my opinions.
This is fundamental to many conversations in regard to things with scientific proof that get viewed with undue skepticism and bears repeating as much as possible. Science changes with evidence.
I finally registered today, basically to to say that I feel bad for May 
I think she's cute and would love to have her.. instead of Dale that seems to just.. abuse her :/
I thought it was pretty interesting how she seems to have a mind of her own and not "set" in one way or another. It would be fun to hang out with her 
From the get go she has abused him (counting the sudden and unasked for appearance in his view) and insulted him and complained and suggested criminal and job ending actions, and he has responded as mutedly as he could. He spent an entire
day with her, to our perspective doing nothing but shooting down the aforementioned bad suggestions, before he reached his tolerance limit. The one time she acted helpful, it was by rattling off functions in an annoying manner. And she's hiding something. I'm still reserving judgement, but she's literally not said one kind, cute, or even neutral thing. I'm expecting that when we see her again, we'll also see another side to her that explains her belligerent behavior and is decent- still crass probably, but decent.
There is a bit of tethercat principle going on here because every time we look we only see the bad stuff she says, not the in between stuff, the long silences just watching him work, and so on.
(I suspect Dale was still sore from being ditched at the diner, but anyway)
I'm not sure that this is necessarily in sequence.
Not sure why many comments seem to assume May is turned off or in limbo or even dead. All he did was disable his ability to see and hear her, which would have happened anyway when he went to sleep. She may still be perfectly capable of using the sensors on the glasses, surf the web, and anything else except interact with him (unless she gets creative with the aforementioned internet access.)As for her expression, she's panicking- it'd look the same whether she was being rendered unconscious or getting her bullshit called out.
/megacomment
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Topic: WCDT: 2495-2499 (22-26 July, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread (Read 132121 times)