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The truth is that if you buy a ticket to see the movie, then some tiny fraction will almost certainly go, via Card, to an anti-gay platform. Which sucks.
It's not the end of the world, however. If people wanna go see the movie, but disagree with Card's views and don't like there money going to such a cause? Then take the price of your ticket, find a reputable pro-gay charity, and donate to that. You'll be giving far, far more money to the pro-gay movement than you will be giving to Card. Freedom to Marry is probably a good one, since Card's national Organization for Marriage is primarily against gay unions.
Then enjoy the movie.
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I heard Orson Scott Card causes global warming and also kicks puppies.
And then there was Hamlet's Father.
(New link: oh, criminy, Werthead, that was you, too!)
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I heard Orson Scott Card causes global warming and also kicks puppies.
Not to mention selling dope to school kids dressed as a nun!
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Remember Golden Compass? Teh Catholics were up in arms about it telling people to not see it. Didn't make any difference. This is a non issue.
Well, the movie wasn't enough of a success to convince the studio to continue the rest of the series (hell, they actually cut off the ending of the first book at well). Now was it due to the Catholic response, or would it have gotten a mediocre response regardless? Who knows?
I don't know about the puppies, but he has echoed a lot of the climate change denier nonsense. And treated Intelligent Design as a reasonable thing.
I liked Ender's Game, though I was never as impressed by it as some are. I really liked Seventh Son. But after those, the more I read of Card, the less impressed I was. The more I read, the more his political/religious views became apparent in the work. I'm not sure if it was just cumulative exposure or if the preaching was more blatant in later books. This was all before I ran into any of the controversies about him online.
And then there was Hamlet's Father.
Whenever someone uses the words "climate change denier" I know they have fully swallowed the politically correct narrative.
Being skeptical of climate change is not "denial". There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of the wild hyperbolic claims presented as the results of "global warming." Some of Card's points about global warming being over-hyped are absolutely solid and supported scientifically.
Global Warming has become a religious/political issue. It is no longer treated scientifically even by scientists.
Global warming, homosexuality, evolution, Mormons, this is the best movie thread evah!!!
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Not to mention selling dope to school kids dressed as a nun!
Now you're just being ridiculous.
Global warming, homosexuality, evolution, Mormons, this is the best movie thread evah!!!
Actually, come to think of it, sans the Mormons, when are they going to film the Mission Earth books?
I’m disappointed by the apparent ages of the actors in the trailer. Ender and his cohort were children; these are teens. I’d rather have seen an animated feature that kept the original ages.
Global Warming has become a religious/political issue. It is no longer treated scientifically even by scientists.
Oh, is that what people are saying these days to justify why they refuse to believe the people with education, training, experience, and decades of hard data? I guess it sounds better than, “This is way outside of my field and I don’t really understand it, but I really don’t want it to be true!”
I’m disappointed by the apparent ages of the actors in the trailer. Ender and his cohort were children; these are teens. I’d rather have seen an animated feature that kept the original ages.
Global Warming has become a religious/political issue. It is no longer treated scientifically even by scientists.Oh, is that what people are saying these days to justify why they refuse to believe the people with education, training, experience, and decades of hard data? I guess it sounds better than, “This is way outside of my field and I don’t really understand it, but I really don’t want it to be true!”
You appear to be suitably indoctrinated Mr. Calm and Carrion. You can hang your "Global Warming" certificate on your wall with pride.
Ignore that the last 18 years with the fastest increase in CO2 concentrations have had absolutely NO increase in temperature. Ignore that the period after WW2 with the longest period of major CO2 increase in our history was accompanied by a period of COOLING. Ignore that all the "experts" predicted massive increase in hurricanes since the mid-90s and hurricanes have actually declined. Ignore that Antarctic sea ice is expanding.
There is definitely a lot of ignoring of science going on in this debate. But to think that it is all happening on one side is the height of ignorance.
I don't deny that the world is warming. It's been warming for 10,000 years. What I challenge is the commonly accepted notions that humans are the primary cause of it, that we can significantly alter it's trajectory with political platitudes or that it is necessarily BAD for the world to warm up a bit in the first place.
Throughout human history periods of warmth have coincided with human civilization ADVANCING.
There's plenty to be skeptical about dude. But if it makes you feel better to call people who disagree with you "deniers" then by all means, feel good about yourself. That's what really matters to most folks anyway.
There's plenty to be skeptical about dude.
Get published in a peer-reviewed journal and I’d gladly consider what you have to say, alongside the preponderance of evidence that has been published to date.
... that it is necessarily BAD for the world to warm up a bit in the first place.
Not to mention selling dope to school kids dressed as a nun!Now you're just being ridiculous. ** spoiler omitted **Because they're small and wouldn't fool anyone if only one dressed as a nun?
You're not making sense here.
Apaprently you've never been mobbed by midget nuns looking for dope.
There's plenty to be skeptical about dude.Get published in a peer-reviewed journal and I’d gladly consider what you have to say, alongside the preponderance of evidence that has been published to date.
Since 18 years of temperature stability is not enough to make you question the dire predictions of cities flooding in our lifetimes Calm, tell me, exactly how many more years of additional lack of realization of doom and gloom predictions will it take before you start to wonder if you've been misled?
Also, the thing about all those "peer reviewed" papers you talk about is that the vast majority of them have been stubbornly proven wrong by actual temperature results. As the IPCC had to embarrassingly admit earlier this year.
We'll know in 20 years which of us was duped Calm. I'm pretty sure it's not going to end up being me.
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it is necessarily BAD for the world to warm up a bit in the first place.
The world is going to be just fine.
It's the humans on it that might have a rough time.
An increase in temperature will most likely negatively impact places like the American Southwest. SoCal to Texas (and northern Mexico) are primed to get hotter and drier. Texas already has average temperatures of 98-110 F. If that gets pushed up just 5 degrees it will be a major increase in energy demands and cause more deaths per year, just due to heat. If it goes up 10 degree's, Texas will be nearly uninhabitable during the summer. Livestock and humans will have difficulty surviving the outdoors, completely destroying the Texas agriculture industry.
That's 14% of Texas jobs and $18 billion in economic activity that could disappear completely in the next 50-100 years.
Maybe they can move to Canada and try farming up there?
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it is necessarily BAD for the world to warm up a bit in the first place.The world is going to be just fine.
It's the humans on it that might have a rough time.
An increase in temperature will most likely negatively impact places like the American Southwest. SoCal to Texas (and northern Mexico) are primed to get hotter and drier. Texas already has average temperatures of 98-110 F. If that gets pushed up just 5 degrees it will be a major increase in energy demands and cause more deaths per year, just due to heat. If it goes up 10 degree's, Texas will be nearly uninhabitable during the summer. Livestock and humans will have difficulty surviving the outdoors, completely destroying the Texas agriculture industry.
That's 14% of Texas jobs and $18 billion in economic activity that could disappear completely in the next 50-100 years.
Maybe they can move to Canada and try farming up there?
Iron, did you read the link pres man posted? Basically, in spite of all the "peer reviewed" articles about how terrible Global Warming was going to be for Africa, what appears to be happening is that it is facilitating turning parts of the Sahara into forest.
And that's a good thing. Even for humans.
Forgive me if I don't automatically assume that every slight variation from what we currently have as "average" automatically means doom and gloom will happen everywhere.
I suspect that IF the predictions are even remotely accurate (so far they have been entirely wrong) and temperatures do rise, the end result will be some slight inconvenience to the human race as weather patterns shift. Some parts of the world will benefit, some parts will suffer.
But overall I expect that life on earth will be far more drastically affected by a legion of other things that are happening today that people are ignoring so they can buy their Prius and convince themselves they are "saving the world."
Global Warming simply doesn't scare me 1/100 as much as any of the following ongoing environmental issues:
1. Overfishing the oceans.
2. Polluting the oceans (mostly with fertilizer runoff)
3. Losing topsoil
4. Heavy metal leaching into groundwater
5. Draining our underground freshwater reservoirs
6. Draconian misguided political decisions that wreck economies and destabilize the global political environment.
Those are all far more dangerous to humans and the earth than "Global Warming."
And that's a pretty short list.
Why are you only going back 18 year AD? Something you are not telling us?
The reason why deniers love to quote the 18 year is because Temps were hotter around 1998 because of El Niño, a cyclic phenomena that causes temps to spike upward. La Niña events have the opposite effect, causing temperatures to cool. So deniers chose a year when El Niño caused temperatures to rise at the beginning of the ‘plateau’ and a La Niña event at the end.
But you go back further and take a larger sample, (say 80 years) you will see the overall average global temperature is warming.
-MD
Why are you only going back 18 year AD? Something you are not telling us?
The reason why deniers love to quote the 18 year is because Temps were hotter around 1998 because of El Niño, a cyclic phenomena that causes temps to spike upward. La Niña events have the opposite effect, causing temperatures to cool. So deniers chose a year when El Niño caused temperatures to rise at the beginning of the ‘plateau’ and a La Niña event at the end.
But you go back further and take a larger sample, (say 80 years) you will see the overall average global temperature is warming.
-MD
Yeah, the data is such that it allows you to pick any of a wide set of date ranges that will show whatever you want to prove.
And yet again, I'm not arguing that the world isn't warming. I'm arguing that even if it is, we have no compelling proof that humans are the cause, humans can stop it, or that it's actually a bad thing.
It's just ASSUMED to be a bad thing, because I guess 1977 was the most perfect year ever in the history of the world and anything that deviates from whatever the world averages were that year mean dramatic devastation and destruction for humans and life in general.
Pfaugh. The world has dealt with far higher and far lower temperatures than even the most pessimistic predictions of the alarmists.
Again, throughout history warmer has been better. Universally. Why is it suddenly assumed that it will be worse now?
It's just a bunch of nonsense frankly.
There's some truly epic thread derailment going on here (started by me guv'nor? 'Course not).
The truth is that if you buy a ticket to see the movie, then some tiny fraction will almost certainly go, via Card, to an anti-gay platform. Which sucks.
It's not the end of the world, however. If people wanna go see the movie, but disagree with Card's views and don't like there money going to such a cause? Then take the price of your ticket, find a reputable pro-gay charity, and donate to that. You'll be giving far, far more money to the pro-gay movement than you will be giving to Card. Freedom to Marry is probably a good one, since Card's national Organization for Marriage is primarily against gay unions.
Then enjoy the movie.
This is a very reasonable stance to take. I approve this message :)
Since 18 years of temperature stability
The claim that the temperature has stayed the same for 16 years (not 18) is highly controversial. It's been pointed out that this figure was chosen because it sticks the end start point just before a particularly powerful El Nino (the one which caused most people to hear of it for the first time), which affects global temperatures on a notable level. Sticking your data start point during El Nino results in a notable temperature cooling (as the El Nino ends) and skews the results to show an overall cooling or plateauing trend. Place it after the 1998-2000 El Nino, or factor out the El Nino conditions (which is difficult at best), and a small but present rise in temperature (both surface and ocean) can instead be detected.
All of that said, it's easier to actually look at practical events rather than look at graphs from different sources all day long. Could you sail around the north coast of Eurasia through the Arctic 18 years ago? Nope. Can you today? Yes, because the ice is melting (in 2012 it was half the extent it was in 1984).
Did Greenland have a tourist industry 18 years ago? Not much, because it was mostly a frozen wasteland. Does it have more today because the glaciers are melting and exposing more green and hospitable landscapes? Yup.
The extent to which human activity alone is to blame for this is debatable to some extent, though a sensible precaution would be to stop pumping carbon dioxide and methane (the greenhouse gas effects of which are well-known) into the atmosphere on such a scale just on the off chance we are. We have the alternate tech pretty much figured out and just need the economy of scale to make it work (nuclear for electricity; hydrogen fuel cells for cars, as electric still isn't practical). And if it turns out to all be bobbins and we weren't, then hey, we'd still have radically improved air quality in our cities, removed our energy dependence on increasingly hostile foreign powers or fragile allied ones, made driving economically viable again, improved public health and averted peak oil, which regardless of anything else, IS a looming major crisis for later this century.
it is necessarily BAD for the world to warm up a bit in the first place.The world is going to be just fine.
It's the humans on it that might have a rough time.
An increase in temperature will most likely negatively impact places like the American Southwest. SoCal to Texas (and northern Mexico) are primed to get hotter and drier. Texas already has average temperatures of 98-110 F. If that gets pushed up just 5 degrees it will be a major increase in energy demands and cause more deaths per year, just due to heat. If it goes up 10 degree's, Texas will be nearly uninhabitable during the summer. Livestock and humans will have difficulty surviving the outdoors, completely destroying the Texas agriculture industry.
That's 14% of Texas jobs and $18 billion in economic activity that could disappear completely in the next 50-100 years.
Maybe they can move to Canada and try farming up there?
Iron, did you read the link pres man posted? Basically, in spite of all the "peer reviewed" articles about how terrible Global Warming was going to be for Africa, what appears to be happening is that it is facilitating turning parts of the Sahara into forest.
And that's a good thing. Even for humans.
Forgive me if I don't automatically assume that every slight variation from what we currently have as "average" automatically means doom and gloom will happen everywhere.
I suspect that IF the predictions are even remotely accurate (so far they have been entirely wrong) and temperatures do rise, the end result will be some slight inconvenience to the human race as weather patterns shift. Some parts of the world will benefit, some parts will suffer.
But overall I expect that life on earth will be far more drastically affected by a legion of other things that are happening today that people are ignoring so...
You do realize that climatologists are predicting some specific regions will get colder?
For example, as the ocean temperatures change the ocean currents will probably also change. Right now, Britain is as farther north that most every major city in Canada (Scotland is as far north as some islands in Alaska), yet it has higher temps and less snowfall (cause it doesn't get as cold, so it just rains). If the warm water from the Gulf stream were disrupted, that would change and Britain would get much colder.
If Britain were to get colder, but the average global temperature rose, that would mean other places were warming more than Britain cooled.
Now, that is a big supposition. We don't know how the oceans are going to change as they increase in temperature, because there is a lot we don't know about the oceans still. We do know they're increasing in temperature though.
Deep water in the oceans is increasing in temperature faster than the land/shallow water right now. El nino (1998) released a lot of energy from the ocean (ie. heat), so if the oceans are storing more energy now, another El nino event would be more pronounced.
Wait what was this thread about? I thought it was about a movie? Sorta got derailed to climate stuff.
OK, my final comments on Global Warming.
I've been following the Global Warming issue for over 20 years. I am not only well-read and well-versed on it, I have actually examined the computer models they use to do the projections. To call those models "simplistic" is a vast exaggeration of their complexity.
For 20 years the predictions have been universally dire and demanding of immediate draconian actions. Actions that have not been done. And yet the world has not suffered any of the doom and gloom scenarios predicted. Time and time again "proof" of the effects of Global Warming have been demonstrated to be local effects (For example, the much hyped melting of the Mt. Kilimanjaro glaciers was finally proven to be caused by local deforestation, not Global Warming as originally "proved" in "peer reviewed" papers).
You folks can believe what you like and pat yourself on the back all you want for your social consciousness.
I'll check back with you in 20 years and we'll see whose predictions proved to be more accurate.
My prediction is that Global Warming impacts on the world will be virtually unnoticeable even then, and the impacts of the other things I mentioned, along with continued overpopulation, deforestation, etc. will have had a far more obvious and damaging effect than anything "Global Warming" will have caused.
Beyond that my prediction is that technological advances in the next 100 years are going to make this entire debate seem silly.
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According to interviews with Card, his views have shifted dramatically towards accepting homosexual the lifestyle since 1990 when he wrote his infamous essay.
He wrote Ender's Game in the late 70s.
I dont think his views have shifted at all. He has just thrown in the towel. He pretty much accepted that eventually gay marriage is going to be legal. Which is why he thinks the boycott is a waste of time.
Wow; here I was with the popcorn, knowing that this thread's eventual devolution into a puff of flame was inevitable, and it seems I missed the whole thing. Oh, well.
Actually, compared to what I was expecting and what I have seen in other places, this seems to have remained relatively civil. I was expecting more torches and pitchforks.
Someone boycotted the torch and pitchfork manufacturers earlier.
It's just a bunch of nonsense frankly.
That's an awfully climato-normative worldview.
I've been following the Global Warming issue for over 20 years. I am not only well-read and well-versed on it, I have actually examined the computer models they use to do the projections.
This is remarkably similar to what my hairdresser says whenever he talks to me about the link between autism and vaccination.
He’s a great hairdresser. But I’m still going with what the American Academy of Pediatrics has to say about early childhood vaccinations for my daughter.
Turns out that the people who do controlled research actually know more than folks who like to kibitz about a topic on the internets.
OK, my final comments on Global Warming.
I’m so glad. I’ll hold you to that.
And yet the world has not suffered any of the doom and gloom scenarios predicted.
Apart from the Arctic Ocean unfreezing, glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica melting, the disruption of the Gulf Stream and the recent uncovering of massive amounts of methane in the Russian Arctic which is really worrying people. That's several major events that have indeed been predicted.
Anyway, back to the film. I think the approach of going to see the movie but then giving a similar or larger amount of money to a LGBT charity of your choice is a more constructive answer than boycotting the movie. Plus standing around in November waving banners outside the cinema could be quite boring :-)
Or you could just [redacted].
I realize it's a bit of necromancy, but the movie hits theaters in a couple of days so we ought to have a thread to discuss thoughts on it.
As an aside, it's been revealed that OSC will not be receiving anything from the movie's release or success (most expected that was the case, but I know there were some people who were still set on boycotting the movie on the off chance that OSC had a backend deal of some kind).
We can now all go see the film blissfully guilt-free.
I realize it's a bit of necromancy, but the movie hits theaters in a couple of days so we ought to have a thread to discuss thoughts on it.
As an aside, it's been revealed that OSC will not be receiving anything from the movie's release or success (most expected that was the case, but I know there were some people who were still set on boycotting the movie on the off chance that OSC had a backend deal of some kind).
We can now all go see the film blissfully guilt-free.
Not completely.
Even if he isn't getting money directly, the better the movie does the better the chances of a sequel, for which he will be paid.
While it's certainly possible, I'd peg it as unlikely. There are two very different directions that the fictional universe takes after Ender's Game, and I don't think that either would translate into blockbuster motion picture form particularly well. The Ender books become insanely philosophical (not to mention hyper-violent), while the Bean series quickly ditches the excitement of Battle School for what becomes a sci-fi-ish political thriller.
Card himself has suggested that Speaker for the Dead will never be a film, and that the only way to do a sequel would be "kids in space" (which only Ender's Shadow fits the bill for, and even then is merely a retelling of Ender's Game from a different point of view).
Just got back from watching it. I thought they did an excellent job with it. Sure there were some differences, but it's a movie. I enjoyed it.
Kthulhu, yeah, the main criticism I would have is that they accelerated all the events way too much.
...I wish Bean and Petra had gotten a bit more screen time. In the book, I found them both a lot more interesting than Ender.
Kthulhu, if you're looking for more reading material, I would recommend Card's Ender's Shadow series, which, coincidentally, happens to focus primarily on Bean and Petra.
On the topic of sequels (the day after release), apparently the film's director agrees that Speaker for the Dead is basically a non-starter. He did note, however, that Card is apparently writing a more direct follow-up to Ender's Game (called "Fleet School" or something) that might serve as better sequel material. Take from that what you will.
I saw the film last weekend, not having read the book, and enjoyed it a lot. I thought that the young actors were very good indeed, as were the special effects. Some have commented that that the actors are not as young as the characters but for those who have not read the book they are more than young enough to provoke moral disquiet over their use as soldiers and younger actors would be unlikely to have produced such nuanced performances.
This is clearly a film with moral messages but they are dealt with in a way that I found to mesh well with the story and was not jarring. Those that I took from it were:
People behave differently towards enemies they perceive as people and those they perceive as unreal: In the final battle, Ender believes that he is fighting a simulation programmed by Mazer. Consequently, he ignores the non-hostile behaviour of the Formics, which he would clearly have paused to analyse and understand in "real life" because this is a tactical training scenario and the purpose of it is for him to defeat the enemy in battle, not to hold a peace conference.
People will tolerate losses in a game to achieve the "victory condition" that they would not tolerate in real life. When Alai protests that his dreadnoughts are being destroyed because Ender withdraws all the drones to shield the main weapon Ender replies "I don't care about the dreadnoughts!" but he does care when there are real lives at stake. This is skillfully built up throughout the film. This is, of course, precisely why Graff and the rest of the command tell Ender and his team that this is their final selection exercise. They want the battle fought in a specific way, resulting in the annihilation of the Formics. Ender and his team are happy to do that in a simulation but Ender, at least, would have tried to avoid that in real life. Also, to them, the entire fleet is expendable provided that victory condition is achieved. Ender will happily expend pixels but he would not have expended real people in that way.
The point at which I realised that the final exercise was actually real was only when Graff ordered the visual feed restored. The dawning horror on the faces of Ender and his team as they realised that what they had done had actually happened in reality and that they had just destroyed their own fleet, a planet and an entire species was an absolutely superb piece of acting.
The ending was quite good but frankly, given that Graff was willing (I was going to write "happy" but I don't think that is quite fair) to sacrifice both his fleet and the sanity of his command team to exterminate the Formics I can't see him letting Ender wander off into space with a Formic egg to start up the species all over again. I think he would have been more likely to grind it under his heel.
I would say this is well worth seeing. This is proving a good year for films that make you think.
"Let", no, but nevertheless Ender does keep the egg (and keep it secret) and eventually gets it settled in on a new planet.
Though, as others have said, a Speaker for the Dead (and by extension Xenocide and Children of the Mind) movie are...unlikely. They have little to no action in them, being more like psychological thriller/dramas than anything else.
There are bits from Speaker for the Dead that really remind me of The Andromeda Strain, so that gives you a bit of an idea what to expect if you read them.
I loved this movie, up until
The utterly hamfisted, tacked-on ending made my wife decry two hours of her life she'll never get back, but I still loved the movie.
I still loved this movie though.