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Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Swamp on October 15, 2009, 06:00:19 AM

Title: EP053: Seventy-Five Years
Post by: Swamp on October 15, 2009, 06:00:19 AM
EP053: Seventy-Five Years (http://escapepod.org/2006/05/11/ep053-seventy-five-years/)

By Michael A. Burstein (http://www.mabfan.com/).
Read by Deborah Green.

Isabel turned the handheld on and read to herself briefly. “According to this, your bill would push the date of release of the individual Census forms from seventy-two to seventy- five years.”
“It makes sense, Isabel.”
“It does?”
He pointed to her handheld. “You say you have my argument in there.”
“I do. And I find it specious.”


Rated G.  Contains politics and reference to moral issues. (Your kids may not get it, but it shouldn’t offend.)

(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://cdn1.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP053_SeventyFiveYears.mp3?nvb=20091013204613&nva=20091014205613&t=096585ce4ab9d8b595f52)
Title: Re: EP053: Seventy-Five Years
Post by: monkeystuff on October 15, 2009, 10:53:17 AM
I herd a good saying once,  "its not where your from, its where your at"  not bad saying, but sure doesn't apply to politics :)
Title: Re: EP053: Seventy-Five Years
Post by: Unblinking on January 27, 2010, 05:58:29 PM
Good idea to post Hugo nominees!  Great way to spread the word about these stories. 

But, this one did absolutely nothing for me.  Almost anything in Escape Pod's backlog topped this by an order of magnitude.  Two unlikeable people arguing politics...  If either of them had had a cause that was worth rooting for, or if the laws seemed even remotely relevant to anything then I might give a darn. 

She claimed that she is starting this argument to keep him from pushing back the census data for a few years to avoid pushing it back into perpuity and losing history.  But why would anyone even want to push it back to perpetuity?  And that is a far cry from "losing history" in any case.  Later she admits that part of her motivation was to impede his progress, and that's a goal that I just don't care about (and seems to be her only goal that actually makes sense). 

He, on the other hand, is a typical politician trying to cover his past.  Only in this case he's not trying to cover something he's DONE but something he's been since birth.  Maybe it's just my personal religious views, but I don't really get what's the big deal about a clone vs. a natural birth.  If he succeeds, then a person I don't care about might become president over some other person I don't care about.  If he fails, then he could still be elected, even though the other person I don't care about might be more likely.  Either way, neither outcome is compellingly better than the other to me.

And in the end he just concedes to her and it's over.

I guess I just don't get the appeal.  And cases like this make it very clear to me that my personal tastes have nothing to do with what makes stories win awards.
Title: Re: EP053: Seventy-Five Years
Post by: Supernova on January 22, 2016, 02:32:24 PM
I thought this one was a little...odd too. I mean, in the beginning, when she first walks in, he wants absolutely nothing to do with her and has been trying to avoid a meeting with her. By the end he is asking for her to come back, just after she has threatened to 'out' his clone status. I think if I was in his position I would be livid ! The whole thing is very bizarre. I didn't realise in the US that the census info was withheld for LESS than 75 years??  In the UK census info has always been held back for 100 years, for understandable reasons regarding privacy.