h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

They could have included the bridge and changed the title to "A bridge too far."

What is it you wonder about the Black Forest, Paul? It's just a half an hour down the road from me, and still a very popular holiday destination, including skiing in the winter.

We even have at least one entry on it: A324299

(However, it's not an edited entry)

I wonder if it had survived at all. I remember reading dire accounts of pollution killing the trees.

Sorry - not wanting to derail the thread or anything, but here is some info on dying trees. It was a serious concern in the 1980s, and is probably going on to some extent still.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_dieback

I hadn't been subscribed to this thread so haven't been following it, but one thing annoyed me about Interstellar, and, as it was right at the beginning, rendered the rest of the film nonsensical:

In the opening scene, it is explained that crops have all died out except for one kind of maize - things are dire. And then you see two guys sitting on their veranda drinking beer! Where did that come from then?

Heh... Kinda like all the cigarette smoking (a major plot point) in Waterworld.

Right - I've caught up on the whole thread now. Hi, BG - look forward to hearing your nitpicks about the Neil Armstrong film. (Just released here in Germany - according to IMBD it came out in August in the US)

OOH!, Yeah!

I'm taking next week off so I should go see it... That and Bohemian Rhapsody.

BTW... Did you hear that Trumpists here got all bent and twisted because they thought Armstrong wasn't portrayed as patriotic as they expected? That they didn't see him actually plant the flag!?

Thanks for the link, TC. "The Hidden life of Trees" explains about succession -- one type of tree dominates a forest, then dies out and is replaced by another. For a while, it may look as if the forest is dying, but it's just a change in dominant species. I remember the acid rain worries in the 1980s. If the maples were dying, they were also producing trillions of seeds, which must have sprouted and replenished the population.

I guess i have to segue from trees to movies, so here goes: The reboot of "Planet of the Apes" shows apes climbing redwood trees, so they must be taking over someplace in California. Well, California may be big, but it's not the whole planet. And I couldn't help thinking of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building. Climbing things is a great skill for an ape to have, but how do you build on that and dominate a whole planet?

Maybe you should watch the rest of the films... it's explained quite thoroughly

I can summarise if you don't mind spoilers

Are you referring to PotA or Interstellar here?

If there is an explanation in Interstellar as to who and how the beer is produced and what it is made of, sorry, I must have missed it.

To continue my complaints similar to "Where did the beer come from?" - there are many films where everything is supposed to have died out, but things still mysteriously carry on. There is, for example, one ghastly film called "Idiocracy" or something similar. Everyone relies on their computers doing things for them and has become extremely dumb.

So who is maintaining the computers and programming them?

I've watched the PotA films in the reboot. They didn't seem to move beyond the Northwest U.S.

POTA

(Interstellar wasn't a series of films as I recall)

>I've watched the PotA films in the reboot. They didn't seem to move beyond the Northwest U.S.<

No they didn't but they did explain the world wide near-extinction of humans and then the coming of the virus that makes humans mute.

Thus giving a massive advantage to the now intelligent, tool using apes with humans regressing to be no longer the dominant competitors. The films didn’t go beyond the lifetime of Caesar (very much anyway) so it can hardly be expected that the worldwide spread of them would occur in that length of time. The presentation of the opportunity to spread to global domination is all you need surely.

Thanks for explaining.

Humans took about 10,000 years to go from the beginnings of agriculture to the computer age. Depending on how much Caesar and his fellow apes can pick up, they might not take 10,000 years to dominate the planet, but I still wouldn't count the humans out. More likely, there would be a corner of the planet where the humans could gather and work out a longterm solution.

Of course, I'm not unbiased. We humans have produced the occasional Shakepeares, Mozarts, and Einsteins, and (of course!) Caesars. It may be too soion to tell whether Caesar is one among many genius apes, or an outlier like the best of our human predecesors. I have my fingers crossed when I write that.

I'm glad it's just a story.
,

One thing that irritates me in films and TV shows is that nobody uses an inhaler properly. I'm asthmatic, so I know. I've seen people doing two puffs in quick succession, whereas you're supposed to give the first puff a minute or two to work before you do the second one. I've seen people do one puff and immediately start talking; you're supposed to hold your breath for a while after using an inhaler. A lot of money is spent getting visual effects, costumes, etc. right. It's a shame that one tiny thing is overlooked.

I liked Idiocracy, but no, it doesn't withstand close scrutiny.

The biggest problem with Idiocracy is that it looking more like a documentary lately.