Author Topic: EP320: Thanksgiving Day  (Read 14456 times)

Gamercow

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Reply #25 on: December 07, 2011, 04:51:33 PM
This is a general note to all future narrators:  Generally speaking, something that does the measuring has the emphasis before the "meter", and the measurement has the emphasis on the "meter".  e.g. kilometer = kill -o-meeter, centimeter = cent-i-meeter, thermometer = ther-mahmeter, speedometer = speed-ahmeter, etc.

Not sure I'd agree with that. In England, well I guess I'll be more specific in the Midlands of England but I think it is pretty widespread we would say kil-ahmeter to fit with how you mentioned speed-ahmeter. Most online sources I looked at allowed either pronunciation. But we do say cent-i-meeter.

And it's always at times like this I wish I knew how to use the international phonetic alphabetic so I could be sure people could read what I was hearing, as it were.

Here's some basis for my viewpoint:
http://youtu.be/CZVG9Ji08xg

The cow says "Mooooooooo"


raetsel

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Reply #26 on: December 07, 2011, 09:31:34 PM

Here's some basis for my viewpoint:
http://youtu.be/CZVG9Ji08xg


A good point entertainingly made but if you say kilometre like the video then  in England it will sound a little odd to most people's ears, I would opine. Though mostly they'll probably say how much is that in miles? ;)



Unblinking

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Reply #27 on: December 08, 2011, 02:47:29 PM
MCWagner summed it pretty well (though that won't stop me from doing it myself too!).

I don't mind a science-based story, but I would've liked more fully fleshed characters.  It did feel very much like an Asimov story in that respect.

If the science conundrum had been baffling and mysterious then I'd probably give it higher marks, but when I heard about the two apparent species on the planet that both had odd characteristics, my first thought was "They're two distinct stages of a single species' life cycle, like the larval and pupal stages of an insect."  It really surprised me that this crossed my mind a few minutes into listening but the professional biologist who is devoting all of his time to studying these lifeforms did not think of it.  He seemed way too intent on classifying into Earth-based classification systems--that seems like a rookie mistake to go to another planet and assume that its life will fit neatly into our own classification systems.  I mean, on our planet, isolated ecosystems can produce lifeforms that don't fit well into our ecosystem--like our good friend the platypus. 

And yes they should've included in their plans that laborers would need more calory intake.  Between this oversight and the biologists' lack of critical thinking, I really wonder how long this colony is going to last.  What else did they mess up?  Did they forget to bring plants to produce oxygen?  Did they forget to bring antibiotics?

As others said, I too was wondering what the "grunts" were for way too long.  I was picturing pig-men for quite a while, either genetically engineered workers or a captured alien race.  One thing that SF writers have to focus on that mainstream writers don't is clarity between expressions and reality, especially in a short story and especially at the beginning of that story.  If you describe someone as "walking on air" or "moving mechanically" at the beginning of an SF story, it could be either literal or figurative, so for full reader comprehension it should be a bit more explicit.  Same here with the expression "grunts", could've been spelled out that they were humans right away.

I am glad that it had an actual ending though, it seems like quite of few of the EA stories recently are lacking those.



SF.Fangirl

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Reply #28 on: December 11, 2011, 11:14:28 PM
I merely thought this story was okay.  I was very excited that we got a whole and complete plot this week and I didn't feel frustrated at the end of the podcast by dangling threads.  I think that the more interesting part of this story was the relationship and politics and that got short shrift.  The main character was concerned about his girlfriend and her political problems, but never tried to address them directly instead focusing on saving the colony through science.  In fact the author kept only hinting at those people problems at in passing when I would have preferred a little more focus.  In the end he did save the world through science and a bit of politics.  He will probably be a better mayor than his girlfriend, but, really, the most recent scientist savior may not the best political leader and the colony needs to come up with a better way to select one.



chelsilber

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Reply #29 on: December 13, 2011, 10:33:34 AM
The story lost me a bit, too technical.  I thought the narrator did very well, but it was an upward hill battle against all the sciency stuff.  I'm probably jus dumb though.  I did appreciate the ending.  I kind of had a cliche grunt vs. geek eye roll going on, but I was softened as it concluded.  As usual, I loved to death Norm's intro/outro bits.  Are the Kardashians an ancient lost tribe?  We'll never know.



CryptoMe

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Reply #30 on: December 27, 2011, 03:57:30 AM
Well, I liked that this one had an ending, but I found this ending dull and predictable. I was looking for a twist. Something like: it was only the mice who couldn't tolerate the food, but for humans it was fine because of something weird and previously unknown in the indigenous life forms....

All my other opinions have already been stated by someone else, so I won't repeat them here.



Dem

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Reply #31 on: December 27, 2011, 01:15:39 PM
Are the Kardashians an ancient lost tribe?  We'll never know.
If we're talking Cardassians, it's your warring Star Trek aliens you're after http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4hSgOVZtPs. Kardasshians are closer to home and much more dangerous.

Science is what you do when the funding panel thinks you know what you're doing. Fiction is the same only without the funding.


hardware

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Reply #32 on: January 17, 2012, 08:43:59 PM
It was nice to hear a story where the science stood front and center (although it was kind of depressing that the methods of science apparently stopped developing around 1970 in this universe, so that they had to resort to IR absorbance spectra). The story suffered a bit from the tiresome 'we-against-them' cliche with the grunts all being a threatening mob while the scientists were all oh-so-righteous and  had something like personalities.



LaShawn

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Reply #33 on: April 24, 2012, 07:32:00 PM
This was an okay story. Most of it did sound like technojargon gobbedly-gook to me (and I smiled towards the end when the scientist started explaining what he found and a grunt yelled "TECNHOBABBLE! GRRRR!!") While it was cliched, the tension between the techs and the grunts had the most interest, with the second being the tension between the main character and his girlfriend. It was interesting how he came into leadership while she seemed to burn out. Her not showing up at the meal was particularly telling. But yeah, okay story. Didn't grab me strongly, but it was okay.

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ExecuDork

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Reply #34 on: December 05, 2012, 07:23:32 AM
Sorry to drag this up out of the archives, but I read the other comments and it seems nobody else was annoyed by this story for the reason I was annoyed.

The science, and scientists, in this story were bad. Sorry, but I couldn't get over how dumb everything "sciency" about this story was. Rather than list all of the flaws, I'll just point out that cool-sounding terms does not make it science. Problem-solving by knowledgeable characters (either pre-existing knowledge, or facts and theories revealed during the story) using logic, reason, and a nice dose of empiricism is what's needed. The characters in this story were mostly clueless, and the entire setting was unbelievable as a result. I couldn't care about the characters, even as they starved to death, because I kept expecting the lid to come off and the alien overlords to stop their "let's-memory-wipe-some-humans-and-torment-them" experiment - that was a more plausible explanation to me for the circumstances than what we were told in the first half.

I'm dangerously close to a rant here, and it's only my second comment ever here. Sorry, I'll be good - I'm sure I'll have much more positive things to say about other stories as I work my way through the archive.

And thanks again to everyone at Escape Artists for all the fine work.



Fenrix

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Reply #35 on: January 01, 2013, 06:40:26 PM
I guess my biggest challenge with this story is there was The Grunt and then there was a collection of nerd-blobs, one of which was kinda girly shaped. This Thanksgiving feast was all turkey when I wanted some cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

But my biggest beef with the story is this: WHY THE HELL WOULD HUMANS COLONIZE A PLANET WITH NOTHING TO EAT ON IT??? Did they not have any survey probes? Any testing? Any advance parties? Scout ships? ANYTHING? I mean, zillions of planets out there, find one where we can eat the vegetables. I just kept coming back to that point as I listened to the story.

Or where was the ship? How did they eat while on the ship? If it's the slow sort of travel, wouldn't they have effective hydroponics and other food synthesization mechanisms in place from the journey? It can't be FTL travel or there wouldn't be a problem.

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