2005-10-04
China is SUCH a fucking shithole.
Human rights abuses out the yin-yang.
Uncontrollable population explosion of mindless drones good for nothing but sweatshop work.
Bird flu, SARS, and christ only knows what other pathogens breeding in the sodden filth of their jampacked cities.
And now--best of all--the country itself has declared that only "happy news" can be broadcast via media channels (televised, internet, etc.).
Seriously...the Chinese people are better than this shit. I've NEVER met a person of Chinese descent who wasn't bright, considerate, and just flatout wonderful to be around. But I guess if you stuff a few billion of them into a small region, however, they completely lose their minds.
And the US and EU seriously consider China to be an economic threat? Give me a break. The only thing holding that goddamned country together is the sheer inertia of their government and their horrendously-uneducated populace. Sure, they're a manufacturing "threat" to the rest of the world, but that's only because they have a literally infinite supply of sweatshop workers. Humans--for now--are better workers than robots when it comes to menial labor (since they can not only repair themselves, but make MORE of themselves, and need very little maintenance ), and China's got that in spades, so let 'em be a manufacturing powerhouse. It'll all be for nought the second the first 3D printer or nanoscale assembler platform goes online in the next thirty years. Then the country will just be a seething pit full of people dying from any one of a trillion different pathogens and monolithic governmental mismanagement.
Uncontrollable population explosion of mindless drones good for nothing but sweatshop work.
Bird flu, SARS, and christ only knows what other pathogens breeding in the sodden filth of their jampacked cities.
And now--best of all--the country itself has declared that only "happy news" can be broadcast via media channels (televised, internet, etc.).
Seriously...the Chinese people are better than this shit. I've NEVER met a person of Chinese descent who wasn't bright, considerate, and just flatout wonderful to be around. But I guess if you stuff a few billion of them into a small region, however, they completely lose their minds.
And the US and EU seriously consider China to be an economic threat? Give me a break. The only thing holding that goddamned country together is the sheer inertia of their government and their horrendously-uneducated populace. Sure, they're a manufacturing "threat" to the rest of the world, but that's only because they have a literally infinite supply of sweatshop workers. Humans--for now--are better workers than robots when it comes to menial labor (since they can not only repair themselves, but make MORE of themselves, and need very little maintenance ), and China's got that in spades, so let 'em be a manufacturing powerhouse. It'll all be for nought the second the first 3D printer or nanoscale assembler platform goes online in the next thirty years. Then the country will just be a seething pit full of people dying from any one of a trillion different pathogens and monolithic governmental mismanagement.
Blech. I should've known better.
Surface turned fucking STUPID tonight. Just when I thought the series might turn out to be cool and somewhat believable, it completely came unhinged.
First of all, the presence of your usual FBI/NSA/black-project stooge running around fucking up people's careers to keep them quiet is soooooooooooo X-Files Season One. Like I haven't seen that character turn up in damnear every "invasion" show ever produced.
But even worse...apparently, the sea-dragons are terrestrial. And there are plenty of goofy ancillary ideas to that. Check it out:
1) These things when fully grown are the size of battleships. HOW THE HELL DID WE NOT NOTICE THEM UNTIL TODAY? There's some hints that they evolved from some form of Plesiosaur...which means they should've been around throughout all of human history. Sure, they might account for some sea-monster sightings over the centuries, but don't tell me in our age of technology advanced enough to spot a fucking crab scuttling along an abyssal rift you wouldn't have already noticed carnivorous dragons the size of the fucking U.S.S. Enterprise cruising through the water, devouring blue whales, and shitting out piles of mookie the bigger than the Queen Mary? Give me a fucking break.
2) Remember that mucky that sprayed out of the carcasse and hit the Indian scientist fellow? Turns out it's just some kind of sea-dragon spooge that miraculously gives them the power to heal up overnight (and is, apparently, also compatible with the biology of other phyla), and is resistant to insane amounts of heat. How do we know this about the heat? Because...
3) The sea-dragons apparently live underground and swim around in lava. NO ORGANIC SUBSTANCE OF ANY KIND can withstand the heat of pure, flowing magma. Period.
4) The sea-dragons are also capable of discharging huge amounts of electricity to stun their prey. They can swim in lava, and dig through solid rock. From what I hear, though, there's this green glowing rock--supposedly from outer space--that dramatically weakens their super-powers and may actually allow us to defend ourselves against them.
Add it all up and it's completely mindless bullshit, on par with any Godzilla movie. But at least in Godzilla movies, you get to see a city trampled and lots of stuff destroyed, and maybe a bunch of awesome monsters fighting in the ruins. Surface just gives you miracle regenerative cures derived from kaiju snot, shifty FBI caricatures, and plot holes so big one of the grandfather sea-dragons could swim right through them. I'm going to give next week's episode a shot just so I can see the cute oceanographer babe in a wetsuit and laugh at the fact that the spearfisher dude is now having dreams in which his dead brother is talking to him from the Land of Puff the Magic Magma Dragon. And then I give up. TV sci-fi still isn't worth the effort.
First of all, the presence of your usual FBI/NSA/black-project stooge running around fucking up people's careers to keep them quiet is soooooooooooo X-Files Season One. Like I haven't seen that character turn up in damnear every "invasion" show ever produced.
But even worse...apparently, the sea-dragons are terrestrial. And there are plenty of goofy ancillary ideas to that. Check it out:
1) These things when fully grown are the size of battleships. HOW THE HELL DID WE NOT NOTICE THEM UNTIL TODAY? There's some hints that they evolved from some form of Plesiosaur...which means they should've been around throughout all of human history. Sure, they might account for some sea-monster sightings over the centuries, but don't tell me in our age of technology advanced enough to spot a fucking crab scuttling along an abyssal rift you wouldn't have already noticed carnivorous dragons the size of the fucking U.S.S. Enterprise cruising through the water, devouring blue whales, and shitting out piles of mookie the bigger than the Queen Mary? Give me a fucking break.
2) Remember that mucky that sprayed out of the carcasse and hit the Indian scientist fellow? Turns out it's just some kind of sea-dragon spooge that miraculously gives them the power to heal up overnight (and is, apparently, also compatible with the biology of other phyla), and is resistant to insane amounts of heat. How do we know this about the heat? Because...
3) The sea-dragons apparently live underground and swim around in lava. NO ORGANIC SUBSTANCE OF ANY KIND can withstand the heat of pure, flowing magma. Period.
4) The sea-dragons are also capable of discharging huge amounts of electricity to stun their prey. They can swim in lava, and dig through solid rock. From what I hear, though, there's this green glowing rock--supposedly from outer space--that dramatically weakens their super-powers and may actually allow us to defend ourselves against them.
Add it all up and it's completely mindless bullshit, on par with any Godzilla movie. But at least in Godzilla movies, you get to see a city trampled and lots of stuff destroyed, and maybe a bunch of awesome monsters fighting in the ruins. Surface just gives you miracle regenerative cures derived from kaiju snot, shifty FBI caricatures, and plot holes so big one of the grandfather sea-dragons could swim right through them. I'm going to give next week's episode a shot just so I can see the cute oceanographer babe in a wetsuit and laugh at the fact that the spearfisher dude is now having dreams in which his dead brother is talking to him from the Land of Puff the Magic Magma Dragon. And then I give up. TV sci-fi still isn't worth the effort.
