A Great Day for a Great Futurama

Tonight's episode definitely put the series back on track after that shaky one last week. This winter theme was very fitting as we out east are locked up snug in our houses while the newest blizzard rages outside. (Although for how hyped it's been, the snow has already stopped here and doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary yet.). If this episode doesn't convince any doubters that this is the most entertaining show on television today, you better check their brains for frostbite.

The show was in peak form with a combination of earthly satire, sci-fi concepts, tons of action and adventure, just enough but not too much plot with perfectly measured twists and turns, and some of the most energized and playful uses of the animated form the show has ever achieved. We even got a terrific series fan in-joke with the appearance of Free Waterfall Sr. Sr. Nevermind the apparent magic of certain jokes that seem too topical to have been animated months ago, e.g. the sign "protect our useless wasteland" or however it was phrased and how it relates to Bush wanting to drill Alaska for oil.

All of this came at a rapid fire pace, and really they've never paced an episode so fast and so perfectly at the same time. They realized there is just so much plot-heavy information you can process at that pace and didn't give us more than we could handle.

The way the animation turned the penguins into characters was incredibly well thought-out. There have been so many appearances of animals on The Simpsons where they completely ruin their credibility by making them act in a cartoonish, often too-human way. Here, the show characterized them beautifully by respecting the animal limitations of their intellect and basing the jokes and plot on that.

Then add the characterization on top of that. Leela was the great feminine center to the show, while not losing sight of her "let's kick ass" attitude. And if any one was the star, it would be Bender, and boy was he great in this. His scheming, plotting, his gadgets, his special robot abilities, his self-centeredness. They even clarified the point of how he really needs alcohol to stay sober. Fry wasn't in this one as much, but he was the source of lots of that great twisted comic dialogue the show has sort of pioneered, even if he didn't play a role in the episode, like "If I were captain, I wouldn't treat you like this!"

At any rate, all the magic of Futurama was in this episode, and I'd say it's a great one to show people to get them more interested in the series.

-Eric Sansoni ([email])

"What I'm trying to communicate is that I'm willing to do nudity, no extra charge!" -Bill McNeal, Newsradio, 1998

i liked it i liked it alot

that 6000 hulls bit was hilarious

and fly within 3 miles of pluto to avoid the toll(i guess to enter the solar system)

oh yea that point and click gun interface had me rollin

but wouldn't that liquid dark matter be really heavy and just sink to the bottom of the ocean and just flow off of the penguins like mercury would

I think a bit opposite of this episode, so I'll probably have to submit my opinions.

<: The show was in peak form with a combination of earthly satire, sci-fi

I did like seeing Pluto, but I did feel the action got a little irrelevant, and the solution of the Penguin's death was what one of the ATSers I know might call "A sacred cow" politically correct thing, as well as it being a coincidence. I do think the environmentalist satire was ok, but nothing beats "M.E.A.T" and the whole Lion Tofu fiasco. I was hoping they could have found some equally funny stuff to match Problem With Popplers.

<: All of this came at a rapid fire pace, and really they've never paced an

I hope this'll dictate my opinion on repeated viewings, as some others have done.

I don't know, I thought it was very tacky, and while environmentalist safety can be natural, the circumstances Farnsworth gives were overly essential, and Leela's care pops up only for the episode's sake, something the Scully Simpsons has done.

I've said this too many times, but I think Season 2 was the peak so far, and the one which could've attracted more people. It had a lot of witty humor, etched-in-stone characters that were juggled perfectly, and overall very fresh writing, getting past the annoying self-important first season.

Anyway, some of my opinions might get better or worse on repeated viewings, but the episode just doesn't give me the urge for that.

~DarthArada~ "Snuh!" Homer Simpson "We have all the time in the world..." ~George Lazenby/James Bond "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" MUSSOLINI TO EMBARK ON CHEST EXPANSION CAMPAIGN ~The Onion

Huh? The solution was to "let nature work itself out." That's more than a joke, it's insightful and possibly profound. It's a statement against the politically correct mentality of those who want to regulate the environment in different ways. "They can't possibly screw it up anymore than we did by trying to fix it" is truly hilarious dialogue rich in social commentary, something you used to see on The Simpsons..."As long as everybody is videotaping everyone else, justice will be served." If you think the whale was the ending of the episode, then you weren't paying very close attention to things.

I wouldn't say this was better than Popplers, which was the best episode, but it is probably in my top 5 episodes somewhere.

Leela has always had a soft spot for animals. She took in Nibbler when the rules said otherwise for crying out loud. Scully Simpsons doesn't have characters take on important roles and points-of-view in the story structure. That's something classic Simpsons did, like when Marge picketed against Itchy and Scratchy or Homer campaigned to export illegal immigrants. That's part of what makes Futurama's storytelling so damn good. The characters are not just there to be there every week. The story finds an important function where they fit in.

-Eric Sansoni ([email])

"What I'm trying to communicate is that I'm willing to do nudity, no extra charge!" -Bill McNeal, Newsradio, 1998

solar

I may be a little late but it was 3 FEET !

solar

I may be a little late but it was 3 FEET !>>

So the plot could be setup.

~DarthArada~ "Snuh!" Homer Simpson "We have all the time in the world..." ~George Lazenby/James Bond "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" MUSSOLINI TO EMBARK ON CHEST EXPANSION CAMPAIGN ~The Onion

Mercury rolls off things mainly because of its poor binding to surfaces rather than high density.

But obvisouly believability of physical properties of dark matter was sacrificed here in favor of oil spill analogy. So there.

Ostap Bender wrote:

I was actually thinking about this.

Dark matter is incredibly dense. One pound of it weighs 10,000 pounds. So it really can only exist as a super dense solid. However What if Dark Matter Oil is a byproduct of Dark Matter? So say one ounce of Dark Matter makes 10,000 gallons of Dark Matter Oil.(Meaningless numbers) It's a less energetic fuel then dark matter ounce for ounce obviously. But fills the role of Petroleum oil in the 31st century For use as lubricant, Refined Fuel, and Plastics, etc...

Huh?

BTW- Which is heavier, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?

DGH

doug holverson wrote:

Doug, do you watch the show? The second sentence is a direct quote.

It's a trick question. They are measured using different systems. A pound of gold is 12 troy ounces. A pound of feathers is 16 avoirdupois ounces. If you convert them to metric units a pound of gold is 0.373 kilograms, a pound of feathers is 0.453 kilograms. Therefore a pound of feathers is heavier.

Give the Omegaman a cigar! And stay away from that zombie mutant virus!

Now if somebody can explain how one pound of dark matter can weigh 10,000 pounds. Methinks some writer made an improbable Yogi Berrish statement about mass just to get a laugh.

DGH

On Sat, 10 Mar 2001 08:08:23 -0600, doug holverson wrote and i snipped: -snip-

it's the year 3000

comparing something's weight would be as follows: one pound of dark matter (i.e. the same volume of dark matter as a pound of water) weighs 10,000 pounds...

maybe you just have to be there

since no-one got that (including me) lets just say you have two boxes that r the same size and magically don't leak water, filled one with 1m^3 of water, and one of 1m^3 of dark matter, the water would weigh a pound, the dark matter would weigh 10,000

understand?

no?

good :)

[email] wrote:

Or it was intended as a joke because it was coming out of the mouth of a crazy old man.

Absolutely!

DGH

It was such an obvious Prof. Farnsworth blooper that I had to laugh. I didn't want to. But I did anyway.

Actually, that fact has nothing to do with density :-).

Atom/molecule packing in a solid isn't that much denser than in a liquid. In some cases - water being most obvious - same compound is less dense as a solid. There's no reason why a super dense substance couldn't be a liquid.

Care to give a What-If machine a whirl?

oil

Oil spills...

Ostap Bender wrote:

I gotta say none of your reply makes sence. Wanna give it a second shot?

OK, now I am confused. Is that some scam to get a power of attorney? :-). But OK, I'll elaborate.

Ice is less dense than water, yes? And it's the same compound - water. What does that mean? That means - solid isn't necessarily more dense than liquid. Typically it is, but isn't a hard rule. Hence, no reason why liquid Dark Matter can't be super-dense.

Ain't your question a "What If" question?

fuel

Petroleum

etc...

Oils spills is one of the uses of oil in 20th century, isn't it?

Ostap Bender wrote:

Ok here's where I was confused. Yes Ice is less dence then Watter. It's inherent to the way Ice crystals form with so much space between Molecules. But when your talking about super-dense compounds your talking about Crystaline structures where the atoms are close to the (Can't think of the term. When an atom is as close as possabe to another atom without violating Pauli's exclusion principle, like Nutron Degenercy only not exactly.) You couldn't have fluid motion in a compound like that. It's too high an energy state for something super-dense. Dark Matter would need to be bound tightly to stay as dense as it is. Otherwise it would expand enourmously and no longer be in a Super-Dense state.

Ok I was wrong I got these two the first time, so some of it did make sense. I misspoke when I sad none of your post made sense.

On Sat, 10 Mar 2001 04:25:01 GMT, Mike Zaite wrote:

I think at the anything that dense (1 pound weighing 10,000 pounds), has to be some form of Neutronium. The entire substance is atoms, collapsed to nothing but neutrons. In that case, it would be a fourth (or fifth) state of matter, not solid liquid or gas (nor even plasma). By the time matter has degenerated that far, you'd think it would have very little energy in it. Kind of odd that it would be used as starship fuel.

However, there is another usage for the term "Dark Matter". The theoretical mass of the universe, based on the behavior of galaxies etc., is much greater then the estimated mass of all the stuff that's visible. Therefore there must be some unaccounted matter in the universe, and since we cannot see it, it must be dark matter.

It's kind of like the "ether" concept. It must be there, so we say it's there. Even though it has never been seen or detected in any direct way.

--Larry

Larry F wrote:

Nope were only referring to Futurama's version of Dark Matter. And it may be an exotic form of matter that retains it's original energy while being compressed to an incredibly small volume. Maybe bound by the Weak Nuclear in some kind of Z� boson matrix, or perhaps electron cloud compression on account of some unknown lepton binding particle, or some other technobable.

But also when you think about it a Neutron Star that's sitting at the Neutron Degeneracy limit has an incredible amount of energy bound up inside it. And supernovas are caused by a star's Iron core compressing then rebounding of it's electron limit. But Dark Matter would have to retain it's Protons and Electrons in a Highly compacted state so that it would have a lot of potential energy waiting to rebound out and create energy of some sort.

On Sat, 10 Mar 2001 08:19:55 GMT, Mike Zaite wrote:

As the density increase, the distance between Protons and Electrons must decrease. At a certain point the polar attraction will exceed the weak nuclear force and the atoms will collapse in to a mass of neutrons. Once that happens, it will either stop and the last bits of energy will radiate out into space, or gravity will overwhelm the nuclear force and Pauli's exclusion principle and the mass will degenerate into a single ultra massive particle (a singularity). That's why tiny atoms are so expensive. I'm not made out of money! Leave me alone!

You would have two very strong forces in equilibrium, gravity versus weak nuclear force. If you could suppress, even partially, the gravitational force, then neutrons would fly out in all directions. This is similar to Larry Niven's device which temporarily suppresses negative charges causing matter to disintegrate.

Otherwise, Neutronium, being the end result of billions of years of extreme exothermic nuclear reactions would have very little energy left. Considering that the Planet Express ship has artificial gravity, and Fry did complain the gravity in Luna Park was phony, we can assume that by the year 3000, they can create gravity. It is a small stretch from there to the assumption that they can suppress gravity as well.

There is one catch 22 in all this. If they can suppress gravity, there would be little need for fuel, since accelerating in zero G requires relatively little energy. Unless the energy is need for the gravity suppression itself.

All this is assuming that a wizard didn't do it.

--Larry

inherent

your

principle,

I think you're still confused.

Packing of atoms can't ever possibly be as tight as packing of particles WITHIN the atom. So super density is much more likely to be achieved by making atoms bigger. Which doesn't look too far fetched - physicists have found that after the initial drop of stability of transuranic elements with increase of atomic number there's a definite trend of increase in stability. There are specilations about stable elements with atomic number 200 and on.

And these big atoms can have weak interactions, thus not excluding the possibility of liquid super-dense matter.

Now bringing atoms closer - that's not something you can feasibly do. Here's an example for you - diamond has one of the (if not THE) tightest atom packing achievable. Yet it's density is mere 3.5. Mercury, being a liquid, has a density of 13. See the differense atom size makes?

Ostap Bender wrote:

But these are examples of regular matter. Dark Matter would most likely be an exotic matter. It wouldn't work on the same principles that govern normal matter. Perhaps it generates a Graviton like short distance particle that causes it to compress itself down and increase it's density beyond that of a crystal matrix. I mean when you think about it Hg or C still have a lot of empty space between atoms. Perhaps there's less space between energy levels in the electron shell's that allow more matter to fill a given space. But I think the biggest problem here is your trying to rationalise it with real physics where as im am trying to find a thechnobabel solution that everyone can enjoy.

Actually, it's even better - it's a fictional matter.

here

find a

It's all technobable. Mine is just as BS as yours. And I enjoyed it. Didn't you?

Ostap Bender wrote:

Indoubidoubly{sic?}my good man!

"Mike Zaite" wrote in message news:[email]...

Indubitably.

Holy crap, I spelled it right. Even looked it up in a dictionary to make sure the spellchucker hadn't made a mistake.