As regular readers are aware, some of the comment threads to my posts go on and on, with later comments having little or no connection to the original post. This is a common feature of internet discussion boards. Some recent examples are the one in which I referred to speculations that dinosaurs may have used fire. That generated 386 comments, most of them dealing with creationism and evolution and nothing to do with dinosaurs. A post on free will generated 105 comments. Even more surprising was the response to a posting of a New Yorker cartoon that has 102 comments. A mere cartoon!
This usually happens when a commenter picks on some point (even if it is minor or tangential), makes a comment or criticism of it, and then we are off to the races, with people going back and forth about it, the points being made becoming ever more arcane. Sometimes the distracting thread is because a commenter has some fixation about an issue and insists on inserting that issue into any discussion, however irrelevant, and others respond to it.
Some readers find this kind of extended discussion irritating and have suggested to me that I should consider banning commenters who introduce extraneous comments and then keep defending it, thus prolonging the discussion. I have refrained from doing so and felt that perhaps I should explain my reasons.
I am not going to ban someone who simply makes tangential points, even if they make them over and over again. It takes two to argue and if two or more commenters want to go over the same thing over and over again, it is presumably because they see the need to and even enjoy it, so why should I intervene? It is like seeing two or three people argue endlessly over some point. If they want to do it, it is because they get some benefit from it, so why not let them? Sometimes, even if you are not going to persuade the other person of your point of view, arguing with them over minute points can help you refine your arguments and make them better.
Those who find such exchanges tedious can just move on to the next post and ignore the discussion. But I am puzzled by those who cannot seem to let go of a thread and keep returning to it even while sounding exasperated. It may be because they feel that if they let the opponent have the last word, they have lost the argument. This is of course a fallacy. Having the last word means nothing in itself. I myself, once I have said what I want to say, will walk away and stop taking part in a discussion, leaving readers to judge the merits of the case and confident that they will not be swayed by whoever happens to get the last word. I find that saves me a lot of time.
As the blog’s owner, I feel obliged to read all the comments and often learn new things from them. As the moderator, I am obliged to maintain some standards but tend to intervene with a very light hand. I let slide rude comments such as people calling another person an idiot or making similar ad hominem attacks. It is not my own style to be gratuitously rude, seeing it as serving no purpose, but some people feel the need to make such comments and I think the commenters here are adults who can shrug off such rudeness.
While I do not have a rigid set of criteria as to what might lead to my intervening or banning, bigoted comments on race, gender, sexuality and the like are the most likely to undergo strict scrutiny and possibly trigger such an action. Excessively abusive language, as opposed to casual rudeness, also gets scrutiny. There is a difference between being dogmatic and rude on the one hand and being abusive and hateful on the other and that is where I try to draw the line, though it is not always easy to do.
I hope that clarifies things.
All of which brings us back to the ridiculous contention by _______ some months ago claiming that the average Klingon could beat the average Wookiee in hand-to-paw combat, when they never addressed my point that planet Kashyyyk’s gravity exceeds that of Q’onoS by …
@1 Pierce
This strikes me as a derivative of the sectarian arguments over what god/jesus/allah/mohammad/zeus/buddha actually said, did and wants. Arguing over the true nature of that which is human conjecture is a time-honored tradition, only about a day younger than religion itself. Some people will come to blows over whether the toilet paper should feed from the front of the roll, or be mounted wrong.
@2, TGAP Dad, that reminds me of this quote:
I’ll say that I first read, and admired, this tag at the beginning of Edgar’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. When I finally tracked down a copy of the entire essay…. Let me just say that Poe took the best line from the piece.
Oblgatory xkcd cartoon:
https://xkcd.com/1166
flex @3: I’m sure that, if you looked more closely, you could dig up other gems. Here’s one: “Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.”
It seemed to inspire someone, anyway.
Dudley Hill @4: People keep using that phrase, but I’ve yet to see a xkcd cartoon that is in any sense obligatory. Is this the right room for an argument?
Rob @5,
Undoubtedly. It has been awhile since I read it. My main memory was being somewhat disappointed. I’ll put it back into the queue to read again. It isn’t that long a piece.
It does for me. Thanks. I try to bear it in mind.
(I know I am often one of the culprits, mostly because I really like to argue)
John @8:
Gosh, I hadn’t noticed!
Why are you puzzled ? Isnt your explanation that they have no free will (the ones who feel compelled to walk away , the ones who feel compelled to respond both are just obeying some combination of the laws of physics state though.
Deepak, you provide an immediate example of how it might go.
You are apparently puzzled that Mano is puzzled, and you furthermore think that Mano’s inclination to accepting a lack of free will (which does not entail predictability, BTW) is explanatory. Well, you do ostensibly.
So, I retort much as I now do (Mano would let that slide) and so you retort and someone chimes in and… well. It goes from there. Seen it before.
—
In passing, one thing a lot of people do is pose a question in any given response, often (as in this case) rhetorical but a good hook; after all, one can hardly complain if a question gets answered, no?
(There are different ways of posing rhetorical questions, obs)
I enjoy a good debate, as in the Free Will thread, but the other two threads are more like a creationist train wreck. I keep looking, mostly out of curiosity over the increasingly bizarre arguments advanced by the creationist.
He never acknowledged the racism inherent in his ‘argument’, but did refrain from making any further justifications for colonialism.
@John Morales
No, merely amused by how rarely hard determinists want to apply hard determinism to their daily lives .Yes , yes , perhaps they cant .
So, here we go.
Deepak to Mano: “Why are you puzzled ?”
Me to Deepak (as characterised by Deepak): “You are apparently puzzled that Mano is ”
Deepak to me: “No, merely amused”
As I noted, a rhetorical question, one which I took literally.
Clearly, the statement was mocking in nature but justified on a fatuous basis (that lack of free will means all behaviour is thereby explained), and in my estimation not one to which Mano would respond given its silliness. Obviously, one to which I in fact did respond.
But fine, a little dig at Mano. Exactly how I took it. Shame it was so flawed.
But it was sufficiently remarkable for me to remark upon it.
Vulcan eyebrow raise
Indeed.
Exactly, Tethys.
If one is gonna employ such a rhetorical technique, then it’s best that it should work on both levels.
Gotta understand how such things function if one wants to be more than a cargo cult rhetorician.
That’s why those who essay such tend to get annoyed when the results backfire by counter-techniques such as I employ from time to time. And, often, they get annoyed in a personal way. You seen it, very recently! You chided me over it.
—
I should add — no, I’m not sucking up — that I find this impressive because I find it credible: “”
[um… “As the blog’s owner, I feel obliged to read all the comments”]
So Mano does a post about endless arguments and Morales has posted five times before the comment count hits twenty.
X-D
I have long thought this a strange attitude. For those that don’t like silly arguments between curmudgeons, the answer is simple: skip over those comments. No one is compelled to read them, and their only detrimental effect for the blog is the ‘recent comments’ tab is often filled, pushing out other comments such a reader might have preferred to read.
Dudley @4: There’s something close to a perpetual-motion thread on “Dispatches from the Culture Wars,” an OP titled “Yes, the Bible Does Say to Kill Infidels.” It was posted in early 2015, and various Christians have been getting defensive and attacking it on and off ever since. The last such comment was about 3 months ago.
https://xkcd.com/386/
https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2022/01/22/what-a-feeling/#more-17865
Holms, @19: Unfortunately, at some point the signal-to-noise ratio becomes such that filtering isn’t worth the effort. At that point, those who might be interested in actually having some sort of reasonable discussion start walking away, reducing the signal-to-noise ratio yet further, and before too long you’ve gone from having an interesting community of people exchanging thoughts and ideas to yet another howling void, functionally indistinguishable from some long-abandonded newsgroup, where only trolls and spammers survive. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen it play out, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Perhaps this is just the natural lifecycle of all internet forums, but moderation styles can certainly make an enormous difference to how it plays out.
What is “the average Klingon”? Films and TV have shown only the biggest, most aggressive ones -- the above average in size, skill and tendency to fight. The “average” ones stay home. And those big ones seem, in the main, to be more or less human-basic size -- 1.8 to 2m tall, 90-110kg or so, with a couple of exceptions -- Koral, the mercenary from “Gambit” was 2.06m tall, but he was exceptional. Sure, they’re stronger and more resilient than the average human, but in size and weight terms, that’s what you’ve got.
What is the “average Wookiee”? Per the movies and the TV special, they are uniformly huge. Chewbacca seems to be an unexceptional example of his species, and he’s 2.3m tall -- a little under a foot taller than even the exceptionally large Koral.
Decades/centuries of combat sports results show that the most important factors in any UNARMED combat matchup (assuming on both sides a basic level of fitness and skill) are reach and weight. There’s an entertaining video on Youtube of world-class MMA champion Connor McGregor sparring with Hafthor Julius Bjornson, the actor who latterly played Ser Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane in “Game of Thrones”. Bjornson, an actor and former professional basketball player with little to no combat experience, nevertheless has a HUGE weight and reach advantage over the professional fighter. McGregor is 1.73m tall, Bjornson is 2.06m. McGregor weighs 77kg, Bjornson weighs 143kg. It’s almost comical, and it’s clear that McGregor knows it, as he attempts to use his speed to get in an out before the bigger bloke can get hold of him. He knows that if The Mountain can gain a grip on him, it’s all over -- he could pick him up and rip him in half, practically. (This is also the reason that the fight scene between Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill in Mission Impossible was so hilarious -- Cavill is the best part of a foot taller and much, much heavier.) Combat sports have weight divisions for a reason.
Now: it’s conceivable that a stocky, muscly Klingon might conceivably weigh something close to a Wookiee, which are much leaner creatures. But there’s another consideration: evolution. Klingons look like they evolved from something like a Predator, something bigger, more heavily armoured, with venom sacs and wacky mandibles. But that was millions of years ago -- they bear about as much resemblance to those things as humans do to chimpanzees -- and no human would stand a chance against a chimpanzee hand to hand.
Wookiees, on the other hand, are still chimpanzees, living every day in and among the trees, getting about by brachiating as easily as walking, but they’re chimpanzees that a bigger than gorillas. The upper body strength this implies for a creature of their size is terrifying. Sure, they can walk about like humans, but they have ape-level strength, several multiples of human basic capability, and haven’t evolved away from it to the extent that Klingons have.
One notable giveaway with Klingons is that they carry and use bladed weapons, in a setting with ranged energy weapons. That, and they TRAIN to fight -- because they need to. At no stage in any SW show or film I’ve ever seen is there any indication Wookiees train. They use guns, sure, but when they get up close, they simply pick up their opponents and tear them into pieces. They apparently don’t feel the need to carry tools to make this any easier. A Klingon has NEVER been shown capable of simply ripping off the limb of an opponent -- Wookiees are shown to do this with relative ease and do it often enough that it’s practically their “thing”. This speaks of an enormous strength advantage, likely partly due to their arboreal lifestyle.
Furthermore, Klingons, despite their natural resilience compared to humans, go into battle and indeed seem to just walk around their houses wearing bulky armour, gloves, heavy boots and so on. Wookiees go into battle -- even armed, technological battle against ranged weapons, aircraft and tanks -- NAKED. If a Klingon wasn’t intimidated by that, you’d have to question whether he or she had thought it through.
In summary:
-- Wookiees have the weight, most likely
-- Wookiees have the reach, most definitely
-- Wookiees have the strength, certainly.
-- Wookiess have a berserker mindset
In a straight up fight, it’s Wookiee all the way. The only way a Klingon would have a chance is with some kind of subterfuge -- something “clever”. Klingons don’t like “clever”. It’s not honourable. In which case, they’re literally in pieces, every single time.
That’s my take.
sonofrojblake, I tip my (metaphorical) hat to you.
sonofrojblake sez: “a little under a foot taller than”
Pro-tip: when comparing sizes like this it’s best to keep the description running in the same direction — “nearly a foot taller than.” I.e., “nearly” evokes an increasing direction from smaller point A to larger point B, which is what you’re after, while “a little under x taller than” requires a mid-sentence mental change in direction on the scale and confuses the imagery. Also, perhaps don’t change units, and instead put those in () for the metric impaired.
(Have I sufficiently sidetracked the discussion on a minor and irrelevant point in the spirit of the thread? ;))
@Ridana,
Well, no one has commented on sonofrojblakes spelling error yet, which could give us a different direction to sidetrack as well.
(Mind you, I am awed by the analysis of sonofrojblake. He has converted me from not caring about the physical differences between two fictional alien races to thinking that I should be greatly concerned with it. Now I need to see his analysis comparing the tactical skill of Admiral Akbar and Khan.)
@John Morales
A hard determinist believes that all things that we know of obey the laws of physics hence hard determinism -- They believe our complex behavior can be explained by laws of physics , even though they do not know its exact mechanism , even though they cant point to which law or laws are responsible by some loose extrapolation of what we see. Why then is a an explanation of it happens because it must not acceptable ?
Sorry ..the laws of physics are flawed :).. But no it was not intended as a dig . It was just a way to attempt to get this post to devolve into an endless thread which would amuse me with its irony, especially since it also mentioned free will -- Thanks for your contribution.
It takes two to argue…
This is technically true, but I, for one, am really fucking tired of hearing it, because it’s always — ALWAYS — said as an excuse not to do anything about obnoxious or bullying behavior, and instead to leave targets of same to “deal” or “ignore it” on their own. Does it ever occur to you that someone dealing with bigotry every day in meatspace might not want to let the same bigots dominate conversations in cyberspace? Why would any decent person want to come here, if they have to wade through ignorant and indecent comments while being told to “just ignore it?” Is that what you would say to friends whom you’ve invited to your realspace house?
Those who find such exchanges tedious can just move on to the next post and ignore the discussion.
This is certainly true — but would you really want decent and sensible commenters to ignore and walk away from your blog, and let your comment-threads be dominated by obnoxious idiots, liars and bigots? I’d be embarrassed if any such thing happened to either my blog or my realspace house.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe some of the people who’ve found your blog and like it, have had to deal with persistent obnoxious assholes in real life and might value your space as a place where they could say what they want without being hounded or shouted down? Did you ever think that some of us might feel a real need to defend our place in this space because they can’t so easily defend their places in meatspace?
We may not be entitled to such a space, and you may not have any legal or contractual obligation to provide it; but did you ever think that might just be a nice and helpful thing to do for people? Did you ever feel that you might owe it, at least to yourself, to make your space a place where decent people can come to talk with other decent people? You certainly CAN let your space be infested with less worthy people; but why would you WANT to?
Take a look at some of the other FTBers: in addition to being atheists, some of them are also members of other minority groups who have for DECADES had to endure ignorance, insults, abuse and even deadly violence — such as trans people. I don’t see them letting stupid bigots like txpiper infest their comment threads day after day. I suppose you could say that’s because they’re thin-skinned illiberal-left meanies who can’t handle opposing views…but I’m sure you’d agree that a more plausible explanation is that they want to maintain a space where others like them can simply speak freely and not be bothered by bigots.
Debates about Klingons vs. Wookies in a bar fight are amusing. Coming to a blog and seeing the same old often toxic lies we’ve already had to address and refute dozens of times, both in cyberspace and in realspace, is not.
But I am puzzled by those who cannot seem to let go of a thread and keep returning to it even while sounding exasperated.
Perhaps you should be more “puzzled” by the people who insist on showing up where they’re clearly not wanted, and spouting bigoted nonsense that they probably already know has been refuted or disproven. Shouldn’t you be asking why they’re here, and whether or not it does anyone any good to keep on letting them bother people and hog our attention? Instead of complaining about us being triggered, maybe you should take a look at the people who go out of their way to trigger us.
sonofrojblake @ # 24 -- like I said, _______ got it all wrong.
Furthermore, …
@Ridana, 26: nicely done! 🙂
@flex, 27:
This one is much simpler. Ackbar is an admiral in a spacefleet of a society that has had transgalactic flight for at least ten thousand years. Khan is essentially a 20th/21st century human, who fast-forwarded only a few hundred years to a society that still thinks warp drive is a pretty neat idea. Consider: when Khan died, the plight of the Voyager was almost a century in the future. Recall: the Voyager, the fastest ship in the fleet of a major military power, was flipped most -- not all -- of the way across the galaxy, and faced a journey time home of multiple decades using its warp drive. By contrast, the Millenium Falcon, a small, privately owned stock light freighter with some custom adjustments, was (despite the “fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy” nickname) relatively unremarkable in being able to cross the galaxy in a matter of hours. Come to that, even an Incom T-65 X-wing -- a single seat fighter with no apparent arrangements for the pilot to, ahem, use the loo -- was equipped for unsupported interstellar flight, despite being in essence a close-quarters dogfighter. The technology level difference between Ackbar’s background and Khan’s is laughable. Furthermore, canonically Khan was unable even to out-think James Kirk in the Mutara nebula due to his apparent unpreparedness to fight in three dimensions. Gial Ackbar is a fleet commander, and widely regarded as a master tactician. It’s Ackbar all the way, I think. You might just as well compare the tactical abilities of Norman Schwarzkopf and a Neanderthal.
@Raging Bee, 29:
Aww, you were doing so well. I was right with you, nodding and agreeing, then you went and said
Ouch. That was bad. Entitled, much? But it gets worse. Much worse.
Mano. Singham. Take a look at that name. It’s not exactly Chad Whitemanson. Are you even thinking at this point?
I invite you to imagine the response if you dared to lecture any of your precious other FtB bloggers in this fashion about their chosen moderation policy -- Pharyngula, say. I think any such post would be your last, and there’d be a flurry of sycophantic “don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out” posts from the commentariat before they swiftly forget you exist. Perhaps our host here’s known tolerance is what has emboldened you to be so rude.
Ouch. That was bad. Entitled, much?
Did you even read the rest of that sentence, let alone the whole paragraph? Your response sounds like you just got triggered by the word “owe,” and totally lost the thread of what I was saying.
Mano. Singham. Take a look at that name. It’s not exactly Chad Whitemanson.
No, it’s not, but his tolerance of ignorant or dishonest trolls, and his questioning of those who respond to same, is very similar to the responses of other white bloggers who don’t seem to grasp that others outside of their own demographic may have different perspectives on trolls and trolling behavior.
@sonofrojblake @31
Do Batman now.
Batman vs. Klingons…WHO WILL PREVAIL? The winner gets to fight Smaug…
This thread has become (mostly) hilarious!
Sonofrojblake has given us a great analysis of the predetermined outcomes of Klingon vs Wookie, based on physics and hand to hand combat.
I could quibble with Wookiess having a berserker mindset. Then I realized that a Wookiess must be a female Wookie, so they very well could be capable of berserking. Does anyone know the mating habits of Wookiee’s?
It would be handy to be able to enter a battle trance state that makes you impervious to fire and metal/ bladed weapons.
I am happy for the clarification, as I had not read your earlier comment as a dig. Therefore I had to gently chide Mr Morales, as the irony was too much to ignore.
@John
I’m not trying to dig at you, but you do amuse me when you grab hold of the wrong end of the stick in your attempts to be perfectly logical and perfectly correct. Humans are neither… 🙂
Which batman?
Bale loses. (Lost to Bane)
Batfleck wins. (He beat fuckin SUPERMAN)
Batman vs. Batman vs. Batman (cripes, how many are there now?) vs. Batman vs. Sparticus vs Batman vs Batman ….
flex, many.
(source: https://deadline.com/2022/09/queen-elizabeth-james-corden-stephen-colbert-jimmy-kimmel-late-night-1235112734/)
@sonofrojblake
Sacrilege! There is only one Batman and he was written by Dennis O’Neil and drawn by Jim Aparo though I suppose Neal Adams will do in a pinch.
The most important thing in life is to always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman, in which case, always be Batman.
Meaningless piffle. If you put Chewie up against Worf or Martok, then Chewie doesn’t stand a chance. One swing of the bat’leth from either of them, while he’s using his pitiful fists and his great reach which is worth nothing. Then it’s over for Chewie, because he doesn’t have a head anymore. Simple as that. (Star Trek probably just won’t show it on-screen, to cater to people with your delicate Wookiee-favoring sensibilities.)
Or if you want it to be an unimportant (redshirt) Wookiee versus a similar Klingon, it’s still not obvious why the Klingons are supposed to have anything but a clear advantage. Their empire didn’t come by accident, you know. Meanwhile, the Wookiees have control of one (1) obscure planet of no real consequence in the galaxy. And if they don’t end up enslaved, they’re always just hired muscle for some low-life criminal merely to scare off anyone (totally unlike a Klingon) who has no interest in actually fighting.
But why root for a nameless Wookiee anyway? You only really know or care about the one (Chewbacca) who is comic relief more than anything else since he barely does anything that matters at all in the entire story (much like C-3PO).
I should’ve included B’Elanna too — another Klingon hero. She might break a sweat doing it, but she can definitely beat Chewbacca and look cool at the same time (i.e., not like a bigfoot, which isn’t even a real thing).
You probably think Ewoks are epic warriors too, when all they had to do was fuck around with some dumbass Stormtroopers and stall for time…. The whole thing is a farce.
CR @40:
about the proposition
Tsk.
(Maybe an Edward Scissorhands-type Klingon, I suppose. They have the tech)
[I bet Mano did not predict this when clarifying his policy]
Predict what — racist stereotyping of races that don’t exist?
Okay, we’ve established that a Klingon can easily beat a Wookie…so now we gotta decide how a Klingon would take down Smaug. ‘Cuz Smaug is a far bigger threat to the Klingon Empire than any silly-assed Wookies anyway…
Defeating Smaug requires a ring of power, the skills of a thief, a ball of invisible thread, and an enchanted sword named Needle. Finding the Smith to forge the sword and getting the thread from those three women are only possible with the Ring.
Klingons would just get themselves incinerated by trying for honor and glory in battle against a Dragon.
Not a fan of either Star Wars or Star Trek, but I can’t take anyone seriously who considers a “bat’leth” a serious weapon, as say, opposed to a basic sword, or even a club.
seriously, that shit is dumb
So, I guess I have to begrudgingly side with the starwars folk, because wasn’t there some quote about wookies ripping people’s arms off? and at the very least, a ripped-off-arm as an improvised club is going to be a more effective weapon that that silly mall-ninja klingon bullshit…
If a black arrow can take him out, then it’s even easier with a Klingon disruptor.
If all else fails, one Bird-of-Prey ought to do it. One of those killed a fake god in The Final Frontier, when even the Enterprise’s photon torpedoes didn’t cut the mustard.
But why not a dozen just for fun? They’ve got plenty to spare. They’re Klingons, not some impoverished fisherman from Lake-town. Smaug is no threat to them. I bet he doesn’t even go to outer space.
If a black arrow can take [Smaug] out, then it’s even easier with a Klingon disruptor.
Are you sure about that? Maybe pure-fantasy dragons always beat science-fiction weapons.
OTOH, a bird-of-prey warship firing “black-arrow” projectiles (whatever the frak that is — a particular kind of metal?), with sufficient precision, could definitely kill Smaug.
An idle threat, just to intimidate a small defenseless droid who outplayed him. That’s how bullies act, not warriors like Klingons. Bad sportsmanship too, and he’s also not a very good Dejarik player.
-3 points for Chewie (and +1 for R2-D2)
@consciousness razor, 40:
First of all, reading comprehension fail. I suppose you fancy your chances against Mike Tyson on the basis that you’d just be able to stab him.
Second of all, you’ve clearly never held a bat’leth. Some time in the mid-nineties I was in my tai-chi phase, and the style we did had a bunch of weapon patterns. Options included something that was basically a bo staff, nunchuks, a thick broadsword, a thin “Green Destiny”-style sword, and a scarf (?). One day, just for a laugh, the instructor brought a bag of other stuff -- rubber knives, a golf club, a baseball bat and, most entertainingly of all, a plywood bat’leth. For a room full of geeks, this was catnip.
I won’t bore you with a description of how the evening went. Suffice to say that out of the bag, EVERYONE wanted a go of the bat’leth, but by the end of the evening, the only thing people wanted less was the golf club. Bat’leths are intended to look cool hanging over a fireplace, and to look alien. This, they succeed in. As a practical weapon, they suck donkey balls. This shouldn’t be surprising, since evolution is a thing, so if that was a practical shape for a blade, it wouldn’t look alien.
Star Trek trivia FAIL. Their empire absolutely did come by accident. They weren’t an expansionist technological power -- they were a primitive people. Then, by coincidence, the warp-capable Hurq turned up, invaded and enslaved them. So the Klingons rose up, rebelled, and killed the Hurq, using their own tech against them. Once they got out into the stars, they kept going. Unlike humans, they didn’t invent warp tech themselves, just like they didn’t invent cloaking devices. By Alpha quadrant standards, they’re on they same kind of tech level as the Pakled…
You seem quite contemptuous of the Wookiees for not being expansionist, violent arseholes. It’s instructive that you seem to admire this trait in Klingons -- wish fulfilment?
Ewoks are the Viet Cong. Are rather, were, before the holocaust that destroyed their planet and killed every single one of them. They’re tremendously ineffective one-to-one, but in their own environment against an unprepared, arrogant enemy, they perform well as a distraction — that’s all.
@Raging Bee
Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. (Wrong franchise, I know, but the point stands).
The real question is whether Luke Skywalker would be able to defeat the Borg Queen.
I suppose he would again do the “I won’t fight you” thing like he did with the Emperor, and then she would self-destruct somehow. Because he’s awesome like that.
But then … what if it were Luke versus Janeway or perhaps mirror universe Janeway? I mean, at first it seems kind of obvious, but as I think about it, I have no idea. She would probably time travel or some shit, and I don’t know how Luke could handle that sort of thing.
But Skallagrim has.
If you were a Dahar master like some Klingons (fictionally) are, only then would you truly understand how utterly wrong this (fictionally) is.
And seriously now, you’re talking like this, while Chewie has a laser crossbow (??) and wears a bandolier (but nothing else) that holds ammo that he apparently never uses? (Are those little boxes supposed to store his extra laser crossbow “bolts,” if those even exist? Spare batteries? Or what?)
No, I don’t approve of any of that. I’m just saying that evidence is in, you can look at the scoreboard, etc. The Klingons did all of that warrior stuff for real, becoming a major power comparable to the Federation, and it looks like there’s just a lot of hot air to that effect when it comes to the Chewbacca and his ilk. Your wookiee emperor has no clothes, is what I’m saying.
CR, what, again with the non-responsive response?
about
Tsk.
(I suppose if you imagine the average Klingon is a Dahar master, it works)
John, ignoring your objections is part of the bit.
You’re doing your part too — not great at it, I must say, but serviceable. May this carry on indefinitely.
OMG, am I being out-metaed? 😐
You voluntarily retracted your own point both times anyway, so actually, you’re losing both the game and the meta-game. Maybe next time.
(sigh)
At last! One where I can say Trek wins. Even if we go with your perverse insistence on ignoring the “hand to hand” stipulation, what can Skywalker bring to the fight? Blaster? (Likely not his first choice of weapon unless we’re talking some time before his first trip to Dagobah). Maybe the first shot will work… for a bit. The second would just be absorbed/deflected. Lightsaber? Go ahead, cut her arm off, cut her right in half if you like. This is a character whose literal first introduction involved her head and shoulders being lowered onto the rest of her body from a crane. Being cut into pieces doesn’t seem to slow her down at all. In the execrable second season of “Picard” the Queen spent most of her time as just a torso.
What it comes down to is midichlorians vs. nanoprobes, which sounds like a microscopic level equivalent of a bunch of hippies vs. the SAS. Trek all the way, in that one very specific example. To a large extent Skywalker likely wouldn’t even see the attack coming -- the Borg would be inside his range and assimilating him before he’d even understood that they’re a threat. I’d be interested to see what the Borg did with lightsabers… Excuse me I need to go and have a little lie down.
Your contention re: bat’leths says the weapon’s design absolutely requires top-end skills. Which really only reinforces my point, that the design is dogshit. They’re “fictionally” good -- fine. I get that. In-universe, they’re great, IF the wielder is a far-above-average skill level master. Using one therefore counts as showing off. A real-world somewhat equivalent is nunchuks -- IF you know what you’re doing, they’re a not-terrible weapon against an unarmed or knife-wielding opponent, especially if you’ve got the drop on them. If you don’t know what you’re doing, or opponent is carrying something slightly longer than your nunchuks (e.g. a walking stick), then you’re buggered. I’ve trained with nunchuks, and they are hands down the worst real-world weapon I’ve ever handled -- a bloody liability. Anyone who would choose to use them is doing so to show off -- end of story. They’re making life intentionally difficult for themselves, in the style of Inigo Montoya fighting left-handed. The difference being, Inigo Montoya could, mid-fight, reveal “I am not left-handed”, and be using the full effect of his skills and superb sword. Mid-fight with a bat’leth, if you realise your opponent outclasses you… you’re screwed. Your hubris will lead to your death. Whether you consider that honourable is a conversation you can have with Fek’lhr.
But in any “comparing universes” discussion, there has to be an agreed common standard based on observed behaviour and as close to real-world physics as possible. (Leaving aside the whole “we said AVERAGE, not world-champion level”)
For example: if you’re going to do a “who would win out of” comparison between, e.g. a Galaxy-class starship and a comparably powerful ship from the Star Wars universe -- a small patrol craft like Boba Fett’s Slave 1 for example -- you have to go on what the shows/films have demonstrated they’re capable of, not your imagined ideal of what they might be able to do, and not relying on plot magic.
I see what you did there. Nice.
I can’t recall (can you?) any situation where we’ve seen Chewie involved in a firefight long enough to require a reload. Per the background material, bowcasters fire a magnetically-accelerated physical object which is enveloped in plasma. So they’re essentially a railgun firing extremely hot projectiles in semi-automatic mode. Has there been a sequence where we’ve seen Chewbacca fire more than 30-40 shots? I don’t think so. Correct me if possible.
Oh, one other thing I forgot re: Klingons vs. Wookiees, an item of dubious relevance but I’ll mention it. A Klingon of 120 is still just about able to fight, although they’re clearly getting on and no match for a younger man. Chewbacca is canonically TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD, and additionally relatively recently a father, so presumably even at that age in his prime. His father appears to have slowed down a bit (sitting home and watching porn, fair play to him), but Chewie is still out there mixing it up long after any human or Klingon would have given up the ghost.
Well there you have it, folks. Your average Klingon is fighting constantly, making them much more experienced than any Wookiee, even the great Chewbacca, who always seems to prefer hiding, running away, getting captured, or doing meaningless busywork to avoid battle.
I mean, I try to think of a prolonged fight like the invasion of Hoth, but then I recall he sat that one out. “Doing repairs,” eh? What a convenient excuse. And how about that, they escape the planet and hide in an asteroid field, since he can’t handle a few TIEs, but the Millennium Falcon still needs repairs then too. Does he even try to fight the giant slug? No. Does he whine like a little baby because of a stupid mynock flapping its wings in his face? Yes. Then, the rest of Empire he spends tinkering with C-3PO (his fellow do-nothing whiner on the team) and backing off from a fight to let Han be frozen in carbonite.
So, no, you don’t see him fighting much. He’s all hat and no cattle, as they say.
You’re parodying the absurd, mindless, irrelevant arguments routinely found on the internet… and you’ve all yet to compare your opposition to Hitler?? It’s like you’ve never seen an internet argument before!
This post and thread is why I believe in the uselessness of comment sections and that Hj Hornbeck is the wisest blogger in this network for disabling them. In fact, my posts work as a kind of warning against letting speech run free. I post because I can, as a kind of rule-breaking. Ironic, hypocritical? Probably. But it wouldn’t happen if things were run as they should, if Mano wasn’t such a weakling.
Free speech and individualism poison minds. The one true road to achieveing a real utopia is to seek uniformity of thought and feelings among people. Especially if that resulted in the collective mass suicide of humankind, my ideal outcome if it could be implemented.
I just looked up pictures of a bat’leth, and while I have no training in any kind of sword-fighting, I can easily say the bat’leth is an utterly crappy weapon, at least for any humanoid species. Just for starters, no matter how you hold the thing, you can’t keep it from being twisted about in your hands, and once it’s turned so the blades are no longer pointed toward any part of your opponent, it’s just effing useless, even as a shield. All your opponent would need, even a semi-skilled one, is a hammer or club to knock your bat’leth out of line, and suddenly you’re on the defensive, frantically trying to turn your weapon back to where you need it (without having to hold a sharp part of it)…or, you know, just dropping it in disgust and reaching for another weapon…you would have had another weapon on hand, right…?
Oh, and nunchucks? sonofrojblake is right on them — they’re just for show. Middle-school boys who watch chop-socky movies swing them about to look badass and scary to other middle-schoolers, but they’re not controllable once they’ve actually hit something, and they don’t hit anything with much force because the part that hits isn’t really attached to anything more massive, so not much kinetic energy really goes into any blow. I’ve seen kids swinging them about every which way, and it certainly looks impressive as a means of keeping an opponent from getting close to them; but you can’t stop swinging them, and pretty soon the sequence of moves gets predictable, and thus easily bypassed. They’re good for catching an opponent’s weapon, but then the opponent’s weapon has caught the ‘chucks too, and may be able to yank them out of your hands.
(Also, I don’t remember seeing any good guy in a chop-sccky movie winning a fight with nunchucks. They’re for the bad guys to look scary and make it look like the good guy is in danger…for a few seconds before the good guy wins with his bare hands.)
“I don’t remember seeing any good guy in a chop-sccky movie winning a fight with nunchucks”
Chap name of Bruce Lee used them a couple of times I seem to recall. You may have heard of him.
So did Michaelangelo.
Only a Nazi wouldn’t know that. (is that OK?)
I must have missed those scenes — I don’t watch chop-socky movies that much, even the Bruce Lee stuff.
Do you remember what he actually did with them, by any chance?
Bruce Lee -- Nunchaku collection
The segment from about 3:00 to 4:45 is a classic of the genre, complete with poorly dubbed soundtrack.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqzOo6B0Ic
Okay, thanks for the video. Not sure how much it says though, since a lot of Lee’s opponents were either unarmed or clearly less skilled than Lee. Also, the depiction of actual blows didn’t look realistic, and it’s hard to see where the business-end of the ‘chaks went after hitting his opponent.
As one commenter on that thread said: “upvote if you’ve ever hit yourself in the head or groin trying to be like Bruce =)”
Phenomenal nunchucku skills at this video. A middle aged Chinese woman taught herself by watching Bruce Lee videos, and invented a few of her own moves as well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=110&v=hKtBnSGeIy8&feature=emb_logo
That’s quite impressive, and more real too. If Bruce Lee were still alive, he’d probably have good reason to fear an opponent like her. (Or her friends.)
Also, I saw someone else in her video wielding a long and kinda bendy stick/bo of some sort. I’d like to have seen what sort of counter that could have been to her ‘chaks. (One of the baddies in the Bruce Lee sequence had a bo too, and I suspect he might have been more effective with it if only he’d had a similar level of competence. Or any competence for that matter.)
Raging Bee
I think Bruce Lee was widely held to be exceptionally skillful with nunchucks. I remember all the bruises and stitches that resulted when the various neighborhood kids watched Kung Fu and tried to emulate him but smacked themselves instead.
Martial arts and Nunchucks are specifically used for self-defense, so they probably aren’t the best weapon in a gladiator type matchup.
Watching Bruce Lee smash toes of 30 opponents and take out much larger opponents by just kicking them in the shin and then the face should come into consideration on the outcome of any combat based solely on size and reach.
The first scene of Bruce Lees nunchuck skills (Bruce against an entire class) was clearly the inspiration for the Brides revenge in Kill Bill 2.
The Bride against the Crazy 88’s has a lot more samurai swords and blood, but it captures the campy fighting in Bruce Lee movies perfectly.