I'd say that "happy birthday to you" (written in 1893) sorta qualifies as a dinosaur.

As anyone who has climbed out of their parents' basement in the last 20 years knows, restaurants are using "happy happy birthday, happy happy birthday" sung to The Lone Ranger theme (or William Tell overture if you're being pedantic) for some years now. Life finds a way.

> but not by the 20% the city had projected. Instead, they grew by a modest 3%

In my area (pacific northwest) whenever there's a new mass transit shiny object, the projected ridership increase is usually off by about 90%. (This new rail line will increase ridership by 22,000!!!! (Actual increase about 2,800)) This is in line with that. I'd ask, how is this in line with previous projections for transit projects for that area?

> What happened is that more pedestrians and bike users started to use public transit instead of walking and cycling. But car users continue to drive to work.

Likely reason is that most people walking or cycling are in an arrangement (location of home and work, condition of commute) where walking and cycling makes sense. And the people driving to work are doing so because for their circumstances it's the only practical solution.

"free" isn't the whole story. Transit is already heavily subsidized; the monetary cost to riders is down in the noise. (At least, in my area, YMMV and all that.) The biggest issue I have with transit is that the rail is a significant distance from me on both ends (amounting to over 1/3 of the total distance) and feeder lines are... let's face it, dismal. I'm assuming that what is being searched for is a way to increase ridership. There are things wrong with mass transit, at least as implemented in my area, that are totally unrelated to cost; it'd be best to concentrate on some of them.

I go to the local citizens participation board meetings, and Transit is often there giving presentations and meet/greets. When I raise the issue of park and ride security, they wax lyrical about the security systems in place ... to protect Transit equipment. When asked about the park and riders themselves, they shrug and say that's local law enforcement's job.

And maybe that's true, but I think I've seen a cop car swing through the transit mall maybe twice in the last couple of years. It doesn't exactly make me want to recommend park and ride to daughter working swing shift.

It didn't take long to realize that waiting for the feeder busses is a lost cause. So that leaves park and ride, which only covers the distance at one end. (Unless you work it like a friend of mine, who bought an old beater car to park at the park and ride on the *other* end, so he has cars at both ends. It works for him.)

So yeah, like a lot of things, if mass transit was timely and convenient, I'd use it, sure why not? I have no love for being trapped in my for wheeled cage in traffic. But as currently set up, mass transit is not convenient, takes significant extra time out of the day, (due to the rail not really going where I need to go, and feeder lines being few and inconsistent). And, being in IT with the hours that sometimes entails, I have somewhat of a bad feeling about being in a near-deserted transit mall after dark.

...the test being, prod the head with a nightstick until it makes a noise.

At very least, they could "swat" him at random times of the night while he's in youth custody. Kick in door, flash bangs, guns, wrestled to ground, all the usual. Except perhaps for the accidental shootings from overexcited police. Or maybe some of those too, if non-lethal, so he could understand the possible ramifications of his actions.

...You know all those accomplishments in the online world? They're NOT REAL. That's why it's On Line.

I don't know all of the details, but 16 months seems like a slap on the wrist for a "prank" that can get people killed. Like, you know, in real life. For ever. No do-overs, no saved games.

> Lucas can't write dialog. He got help with that for Empire and Jedi, but by the time the prequels were being written and filmed, people were too awed by his earlier success to be willing to actually *remind* him that he needed help writing dialog.

This is absolutely true, but I'm not sure I agree with your other assertions. Casting: Hayden Christensen. Jake Lloyd. Must I go on? Plot: Trade agreements. Senate sub-committees. Dialog: "Yippee".

So yeah, we agree on the dialog. And we agree on *why* the dialog sucked. And why, say, one of the actors, or crew, didn't step in and say "Hey, George. Nobody speaks like this." But I can't agree that this was the only issue.

Yes! That too.

Would have to be a flashback, but ok.

> Lucas's defence for Crystal Skull was that viewers didn't understand his source material, and that's true, but in a way irrelevant. [...]

Enh. In the seventies and eighties I developed a taste for '30's pulps, adventure stories and early "golden age" science fiction. (Doc Savage, The Avenger, various works by A E Van Voight and Doc Smith, lots of others) (This also led to "hard boiled" detective novels, which resulted in reading all the works of Hammett and Chandler, and by extension ("Perchance to dream") now delving into Robert Parker. Side issue. Never mind.) Anyway, I'm very familiar with the genre he was trying to exploit. I thought the movie was a mishmash of painfully executed tropes that didn't really fit well together. There was no "aha" moment, (which the film DESPERATELY needed) and way too many "WTF" moments.

Let me be clear: This is not the fault of the tropes he was trying to execute. It was because they didn't really fit together, and because he executed them clumsily and in a rather ham-fisted manner. Everything about this film seemed ... I dunno, unfinished. (Especially the script.) Even the digital effects were not up to the state of the art at the time.

So no, the issue with the fourth Indiana Jones film was not that it was about ancient aliens in south america (oops, spoilers) but that it was a stupid story about ancient aliens in south america.

> Are you suggesting that, because our particular planet has a lot of diversity (and do I need to point out that pretty much all of the other planets we've discovered are NOT diverse at all?) that all space operas should take place on a single planet?

Nope. I'm suggesting that the trope that you have to go to one human-habitable planet to find ice, and another to find forest, and another to find desert, and another to find lava, is a tired one and doesn't show a lot of imagination.

Yes. Yes, exactly.

> Bark less. Wag more.

...and when they lean down to pet you, go for the throat.

This.