[geeks] Best ST:TNG episode...

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2002 at 01:10:58AM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > The whole "speaking in metaphor" idea bugged me.  How did they
> > develop the words they needed to speak that way

Yeah, it seems rather inefficient too, not to mention being hard to express
new concepts.

> >                                                 and how many
> > people die each year because they can't just yell "DUCK!" instead
> > of saying "when BillyBob lost hold of the rope holding up the
> > piano"?
> What do you mean?  Surely you know that the Universal Translator was
> capable of finding matching words in arbitrary never-before-heard
> languages.

The point is that in the time it takes for ugly-alien-dude no 1 to shout
"when billybob lost hold of the rope holding up the piano", ugly-alien-dude
no 2 has been shot by the sniper in the opposing side's trenches.  Whereas
if you just shout "duck!" he has a chance.

> When you think about it we do have many similar metaphor-based
> expressions in common use now!  Even some based on Star Trek!  :-)

I thought that Picard's reading Homer (I think) at the end of the
episode was a nice touch.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   o/~ we wish you a merry currency and a happy new euro o/~