Simply Syndicated - Latest Comments

Re: SB66_128 Topic? What Topic?

DaveK — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 16:22:47 -0000

A little of this and a little of that. Another great show guys!

Big fan of Unk too.

Re: What the iPhone 5S doesn’t have

Chris M — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:33:02 -0000

If I want to take lots of pictures on holiday I pack either my DSLR or if luggage space is tight my point and shoot and a pouch full of memory cards. A dedicated camera will still take better photos than any phone. Some devices are better when they are dedicated to the job.

As far as the small screen goes, perfect. I like it. It'll be slightly bigger for me, as I currently have a 4S. I don't want or like big screens. I want it to fit in my pocket and be comfortable.

I tell you what the iPhone 5S doesn't have. It doesn't have a perfectly good OS ruined by the crap that phone manufacturers and networks gob on top of it. With the exception of the Nexus phones, every out of the box android phone does. Windows phone fares as well as Apple on that front because they have specifications that must be there and the interface does not change. I like Android, the Nexus seven is a remarkable tablet for a bargain price. But it being open means that it is open to being abused by every Tom, Dick and Harry that wants to gob their thing on top of it.

Re: What the iPhone 5S doesn’t have

Timo — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:45:54 -0000

You forgot to mention how the resolution is still less than on some Android phones even though when Retina screens came out it was too sharp, useless and totally unnecessary.

Once again find my self agreeing with you on the points you've made. I just find it incredibly annoying when Apple puts out a new product and some people seem to forget what they have stated as gospel mere days before while simultaneously manage to track down some obscure product released in Japan that sold seven units 16 years ago that sort of did a thing Apple just introduced as a new feature.

I also have about 14 GB free on my 32 GB iPhone 4. I just can't seem to find more things to put on there that I'd use more than once a month, but I think I'll still get the 32 GB version of the 5S just in case I find something I'd like to film. I think it'll mostly be slo-mo video of my cat though..

Re: What the iPhone 5S doesn’t have

Chris — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:23:15 -0000

I dont agree with 'you should buy a tablet' because one of the great things that has come out, of the development of phones is surely the fact that you need only one device.

Also a large amount of memory is good if you go on holiday & want to take lots of pictures & videos. Dropbox isn't convenient if your abroad either.

Re: What the iPhone 5S doesn’t have

James — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:08:05 -0000

I've had iPhones forever, but now I'm seriously considering getting the HTC One next, to see what the other side is like. Just a 2 year holiday from iPhones won't hurt will it? I still have an ipad so ill still make use of my iOS apps.

Re: Second Look: A Cold Night’s Death

Dale Haskell — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:42:21 -0000

Eli Wallach was not in 12 Angry Men. Not the original version,anyway.

Re: ATW9K BUNKER TALK — Riddick is pretty good, yo

James Morrall — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 23:53:10 -0000

Great movie.

Re: NH175 – HEMLOCK GROVE / DS9 “Past Tense”

keith — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:00:11 -0000

where is the volume control on this thing?

Re: W1S1 50 – Elite

wus — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 01:17:10 -0000

Congratulations to your 50th episode! Glad you're back in the saddle and made it this far.

Re: Django Unchained: Quentin, What Have You Done?

Shane — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:06:15 -0000

Not a problem. Thanks for approaching this with an open mind to opinions that may differ from your own. Your statement about him taking a gamble he wasn't entitled to take is pretty much spot-on.

Re: Django Unchained: Quentin, What Have You Done?

dh — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 10:11:42 -0000

I think - more truthfully, I'm learning - for Django Unchained he took a gamble he wasn't entitled to, and the people whose opinions should matter most - those whose histories he's gambling with - mostly think he lost.

Thank you for your patience with me :)

Re: Django Unchained: Quentin, What Have You Done?

Shane — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 16:49:17 -0000

I'd agree with that if we (I mean "we" as in all of us) had fully learned our lessons from both slavery and the Holocaust. However, that's not the case, and so one has to be extra careful when taking on stories such as these. I feel Tarantino was far too irresponsible in both cases. I'm sure his intentions were good, but impact always matters more than intentions.

Re: Why Some Of Us Are So Annoyed With Django

dh — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 16:42:12 -0000

I certainly get that a white person shouldn't have made a film like that.

I'm not so sure whether any particular genre can never be appropriate to a particular part of history, however vile.

But yes I can see, more now after reading more critical analysis, how this film is a problem.

Re: Why Some Of Us Are So Annoyed With Django

Shane — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 16:06:17 -0000

My main beef with the film isn't the individual sum of its parts, rather than the whole thing; even if those aforementioned problems weren't in the movie, I don't think anyone (especially a white person) should take such a vile part of history, and make a thrill-ride spaghetti western out of it.

Re: Why Some Of Us Are So Annoyed With Django

dh — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 15:42:47 -0000

Ok, I'm a white guy and I didn't hate Django Unchained. In fact, although I'm finding there are real problems with it, I... enjoyed is not the word. I thought it had a lot going for it.

I can only talk for myself but a film about slavery which had moments of such in-your-face savagery I felt physically sick; whose main 'good' white character was slightly ridiculous (language, tache, bouncy tooth on his wagon), and who despite thinking he was enlightened, in truth was wincingly patronising and exploitative (not an accident, Tarantino intended us to see this); which foregrounded the utter nauseous realities of owning humans as physical property... and more...

It was, I am discovering through many insightful critiques (including the one linked to here), more deeply flawed than I'd like. But for me, it was also courageous in how it challenged its audience with the visceral truths of slavery. No, it was not technically accurate. But it was, at times, *brutally* emotionally honest.

That said, I don't have a direct connection with the theme so it's not for me to judge whether it was forgivable.

Re: Django Unchained: Quentin, What Have You Done?

dh — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:55:35 -0000

Lot of inciteful criticism in there that will deeply inform my appreciation of Django. However (you saw that coming huh) one thing I have to point out is that Inglorius Basterds was definitely not just a frenetic thrill-ride pop-corn movie. It was a deeply smart riff on the nature of language and story-telling.

Language is inherently, inevitably imprecise and so it's impossible to communicate anything 'accurately'. Pretending otherwise has dangerous moral implications. This is why Inglorius Basterds is *explicitly* inaccurate - contrast with the film-within-a-film about the sniper, which claims to show exactly what happened but is in fact Nazi propaganda. The whole script centres on this difficult to deal with truth - the more precise, accurate, you claim your language or story to be, the less integrity your language or story has.

Now, all that is not directly relevant, but the reason for my labouring the point is to ask if - notwithstanding all the issues Django Unchained undoubtedly has - it's not quite as shallow as it might at first appear?

I'm *not* saying its faults are necessarily forgivable. It clearly has some very unpleasant undertones in places. The misogyny is wtf - even if I get the impression women are silenced/sidelined deliberately to make some sort of point, I'm not keen on how it worked out in the final cut. And I've learned through reading essays on the film, how offensive the 1 n***** in 10000 theme is.

Re: SB66 Ep. 127 First Contact

eblonk — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:49:06 -0000

I only know Childhood's End through a song. I need to read it at some point.

Allow me to indulge, I love to plug Van Der Graaf Generator, UK's best kept music secret. Singer Peter Hammill is also the writer of my favourite song about stage actors, After The Show.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Childlike Faith in Childhood's End

"Existence is a stage on which we pass,
a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart;
it's hopeless, I know, but onward I must go
and try to make a start
at seeing something more
than day to day survival, chased by final death.
if I believed this the sum of the life to which we've come,
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Somehow, there must be more.

There was a time when more was felt than known
but now, entrenched inside my sett,
in light more mundane, thought rattles round my brain:
we live, we die...and yet?

In the beginning there was order and destiny
but now that path has reached the border
and on our knees is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
Though the forces which hold us in place
last through eons in unruffled grace
we, too, wear the face of creation.

As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space is living history.
It seems as though time must betray us yet we're alive
and though I see no God to save us, still we survive
through the centuries of progress
which don't get us very far.
All illusion! All is bogus...
we don't yet know what we are.

Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man,
with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand
and though, in time, the sea may claim us for its own
we are the rocks which root the future - on us it grows!
We might not be there to share it
if eternity's a jest but I think that I can bear it
if the next life is the best.
Even if there is a heaven when we die,
endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
that always comes as answer to the question
"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"

Adrift without a course,
it's very lonely here,
our only conjecture
what lies behind the dark.
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
think of a lifetime which means more than my own one,
dreams of a grander thing than we are.
Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders...
when all life is over who can say
no mutated force shall remain?

Though the towers of the city are denied to we men of clay
still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Frightened in the silence, frightened, but thinking very hard,
let us make computations of the stars.

Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run:
faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes...
colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate.
The universe now beckons
and Man, too, must take His place;
just a few last fleeting seconds
to wander in the waste,
and the children who were ourselves move on,
reincarnation stills its now perfected song,
and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.

All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too,
all the throng who have danced a merry tune...
human we can all be, but Humanity we must rise above,
in the name of all faith and hope and love.
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too,
there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude,
naked to the galaxies...naked, but clothed in the overview:
as we reach Childhood's End we must start anew.

And though dark is the highway,
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past.

In the death of mere Humans Life shall start!"

Re: HGN – Special – Pod Botherers by Here Goes Nothing Podcast

iguanaeye — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:46:33 -0000

Boz have you started the book yet??

Re: HGN – Special – Pod Botherers by Here Goes Nothing Podcast

iguanaeye — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:45:45 -0000

Oh my god were have you been!! Has it been that long

Re: FTATR 185 – Bu-iikikaesu by Maximum The Hormone

Defwill — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 07:58:00 -0000

Yes matey by all means send stuff. We look forward to it :)

Will

Re: An Announcement

Laura Eydmann Fudge — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 02:39:55 -0000

Cannot wait for the Dr Who show! :)

Re: An Announcement

Amy Dean — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 18:59:21 -0000

yay! :D

Re: cream-band-wallpaper

Dean King — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:57:50 -0000

the wonderful rock'in band cream

Re: SB66-The Admiral’s Table: Alice in Conland

Justin Time — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 05:24:41 -0000

OH MAH GAWD! IT'S ALICE!

Re: ATW9K 114 — Kevin is holding us all hostage, someone call the cops in Canada

Michael J Benton — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 21:25:35 -0000

would that be the Mounted police