A Short History Of Bad Ideas

Nothing Exhaustive, Just A Random Selection
My cunning plan is, to do the blog then post it, by which time it will be 3 p.m. and time to take a trip into the fleshpots of Royton and see what food is being remaindered.
     Which is kind of a good idea, not a bad one, and I can see your collective brows wrinkling*.
     Okay, we kick off this afternoon's blog with another mention of "Mission Log", which happens to be Ken Ray and John Champion's podcast about Star Trek, in this case the Next Generation episode "Booby Trap".  They begin with trivia, then a recap, then a fearfully detailed analysis.  The most relevant bit of trivia, I suppose, is that this is the first episode of Star Trek directed by a woman, which given the utopian 24th Century future put forward by Next Generation is a tad ironic.  Gabrielle Beaumont, FYI.
     The Enterprise goes noseying into an asteroid field that contains a derelict 1,000 year old Promellian startship, which is - A Bad Idea.  Apparently this vessel sent out a distress call.  Wouldn't it be wiser to see what might have been responsible for that call?
     Of course not!  Because then the episode would be 10 minutes long.  The Enterprise then gets snagged by the same booby traps that got the Promellian ship - "Aceton Assimilators".  These drain the ship's power and emit deady radiation, meaning everyone will die within 26 minutes of the shields failing and the shields will fail in mere hours.

 - as the Promellians found out

     Obviously the best way to calculate a rational response to the danger is for a hologrammatic representation of the Enterprise's power systems designer to be recreated so Geordi La Forge (Chief Engineer) can have a long flirty chat with her.  Er - right.
     During these heart-to-hearts, Riker comes up with another Very Bad Idea.  He wants to shoot the Aceton Assimilators with phasers.  After all, what can possibly go wrong?  Well, you can supercharge the booby traps, increase that power drain and magnify the deadly radiation emitted**.

Riker. What a piker.

     Geordi and Leah - that designer I mentioned - then come up with an escape plan, Picard gets his hands on the steering wheel and they escape.
     I'm sure you can see the plot hole here - blam those wretched booby traps with photon torpedoes, matey.  Perhaps they were out of stock?
     Anyway, Ken and John then undertake a very lengthy analysis of Geordi and Leah Brahms and their interaction.  I don't think there's a single instance of AI that they overlook in this bit, from the holodeck to the Enterprise's computer to the hologram of Leah and all three at once.  When these guys parse a plot, they go all out.

"Never mind the deadly danger - back rub!  Now!"

     Oh, and Picard's guilty secret is out:  as a boy he made lots of ships in bottles.

And For Today's Coincidence -
This is the Universe and causality ganging up on me, you know.  Plus I'm lying, it was earlier in the week.  There I was, thinking of what to put on Facebook and the line popped into my head "Splashing out of the cobalt shallows on my Racing Crocodile" -

Racing Crocodiles - a real thing.  Who knew!

     I posted on FB, then did the same on Twitter and then scrolled down to see what madness and hilarity had been posted and Neil Gaiman is responsible for this:

     "The Little Crocodile" - of all the animal species across the whole world, why did this one come up?

"Bleeding Edge" By Thomas Pynchon
I am continuing to research my annotation into the unfamiliar South Canadian pop culture references mentioned therein.  Yes, I could just look up the Wiki but where's the fun in that?  All references are to the Penguin 2014 edition.
Page 7: "Crazy Eddie" - the context suggests a corrupt businessman, which is correct.  Crazy Eddie was an electronics retail organisation that committed major fraud, eventually going bankrupt in 1989 when the true state of it's finances emerged.  Profit via fraud - another Very Bad Idea.

"So is our accounting!"

Page 9: "Diegesis" - A narrative or plot, especially of a film.  Trust Tom to use a long Greek word - I refer you to "Against The Day" and "Quotidian"
Page 10: "p/e ratio" - an accountancy tool, "Price/Exchange Ratio", used to value a company
Page 12: "Fraudbusters and Rachel Weisz" - Fake!  Fraud!  Fiction!  No such television programme has ever been made.

Not terribly unattractive, not a bad actress

     - "Crown Royal Shirley Temples" - Crown Royal is a brand of whisky - from Canada, hence mention of the Crown, for as you know the South Canadians don't like to tip the hat to royalty.  A Shirley Temple is normally just ginger ale and grenadine, so these seem a little stronger, although not having tasted one I can't confirm if it's A Good Idea or A Very Bad One.

Right, we are well over count and Wonder Wifey is gently reminding me to go shopping, so that's it for this post.

Chin chin!


*  Stop it!  bad for the skin.
**  Riker ain't never gonna sit in the Big Chair.