Question about the planet Miranda
POSTED BY: nihonniirugaijin
UPDATED: Monday, December 29, 2008 00:47
VIEWED: 9174
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Your knowledge is impressive, and your answers are intriguing. Thank You!
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Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:Quote:
Originally posted by ncbrowncoat:
Unfortunately a lot of people have already forgotten about the World Trade Center being attacked on 9/11 or think it was a conspiracy.
Seriously??
I find this hard to believe. Not the conspiracy part, necessarily, but the forgetting part. What is this based on?
Not necessarily forgetting, but it isn't at the front of the national conciousness. of course, the people who lost loved ones will never forget and I certainly won't but there are kids now 7 years old that didn't experience it at all and those under 18 most likely won't remember it, except as a school lesson, if it's taught at all.
I figure that eventually it'll end up like the attack on Pearl Harbor. Unless you are a history nut (like me), I don't think that the average person aged 30 or younger could tell you who attacked the US or tell you when it was within 5 years.
It's a sign that our school systems are failing. To paraphrase, those that don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
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Quote:
Originally posted by ncbrowncoat:Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:Quote:
Originally posted by ncbrowncoat:
Unfortunately a lot of people have already forgotten about the World Trade Center being attacked on 9/11 or think it was a conspiracy.
Seriously??
I find this hard to believe. Not the conspiracy part, necessarily, but the forgetting part. What is this based on?
Not necessarily forgetting, but it isn't at the front of the national conciousness. of course, the people who lost loved ones will never forget and I certainly won't but there are kids now 7 years old that didn't experience it at all and those under 18 most likely won't remember it, except as a school lesson, if it's taught at all.
I figure that eventually it'll end up like the attack on Pearl Harbor. Unless you are a history nut (like me), I don't think that the average person aged 30 or younger could tell you who attacked the US or tell you when it was within 5 years.
It's a sign that our school systems are failing. To paraphrase, those that don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
I don't know. I think the term "9/11" is pretty helpful in allowing a person to remember. I find it almost poetically telling that this is what became the immediately recognized short hand for these attacks. Pearl Harbor works for a location, but the events of 9/11 defied an immediate description. It's just the date that everyone remembers who was old enough to understand when it happened.
I agree there should be a greater emphasis on such basic historic facts in general knowledge, just to allow people to put current events into context.
But I disagree that 9/11 specifically should be on the forefront of the national consciousness 24/7, 7 years after it happened. Within it, yes, absolutely. But on the forefront? Maybe as one aspect of a web of international terrorism that is currently such a vile threat to many countries in the world, and the wars that resulted as a reaction to it. Focusing just on 9/11 seems to emphasize the horrible and unjustifiable tragedy more than its equally dramatic effects upon world history.
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I don't think anyone's forgotten about the attacks on 9/11 unless they hadn't been born yet. If you want to say anything about them was forgotten, you could point to the fact that a lot of people readily believed we needed to invade Iraq as a response, even though no one in Iraq had anything to do with it. No one forgets Osama Bin Laudin's name, but a lot of people forget where he's from.
Likewise, no one who had cause to know everyone on Miranda had been wiped out would forget a planet full of people dying, but could certainly be led to believe a false cause, especially if they had no inkling of the actual one.
As to why it was wiped from the cortex, seems to me that the main focus would be on habitable worlds, that's where people would want to go, and if they came across a world that wasn't on their charts, they would know it wasn't a safe place to land, wouldn't just go exploring (especially through Reaver space, but there were probably other black rocks out there, land that hadn't been terraformed yet or places that wouldn't take the terraforming) If there were hundreds of moons, clearly not all of them were transformed into New Earths, because there weren't hundreds of Earths in the solar system. So, in terms of information, the most vital would be considered to be where it was you could actually go, and the rest would be left out, ostensibly to limit confusion. Since they didn't travel at light speed or in hyperspace or anything like that, charting a course free of a black rock would be less vital; they would see one coming and go around it. So Miranda wasn't taught about, wasn't talked about, was just a footnote of a place that "couldn't support life."
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Quote:
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
But I disagree that 9/11 specifically should be on the forefront of the national consciousness 24/7, 7 years after it happened. Within it, yes, absolutely. But on the forefront?
I agree. It's one thing to remember and honor, another to obssess. Japanese kids today who live and go to school in Hiroshima & Nagasaki do not know what happenned in their own cities in 1945. I saw that on a recent documentary, and I found it very disturbing. Great national tragedies should be remembered, not censored from the memory of mankind. 9/11 is like that for me. I'll never forget it, but I don't live with it in my thoughts every day.
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Quote:
Originally posted by PhoenixRose:
I don't think anyone's forgotten about the attacks on 9/11 unless they hadn't been born yet. If you want to say anything about them was forgotten, you could point to the fact that a lot of people readily believed we needed to invade Iraq as a response, even though no one in Iraq had anything to do with it. No one forgets Osama Bin Laudin's name, but a lot of people forget where he's from.
Likewise, no one who had cause to know everyone on Miranda had been wiped out would forget a planet full of people dying, but could certainly be led to believe a false cause, especially if they had no inkling of the actual one.
As to why it was wiped from the cortex, seems to me that the main focus would be on habitable worlds, that's where people would want to go, and if they came across a world that wasn't on their charts, they would know it wasn't a safe place to land, wouldn't just go exploring (especially through Reaver space, but there were probably other black rocks out there, land that hadn't been terraformed yet or places that wouldn't take the terraforming) If there were hundreds of moons, clearly not all of them were transformed into New Earths, because there weren't hundreds of Earths in the solar system. So, in terms of information, the most vital would be considered to be where it was you could actually go, and the rest would be left out, ostensibly to limit confusion. Since they didn't travel at light speed or in hyperspace or anything like that, charting a course free of a black rock would be less vital; they would see one coming and go around it. So Miranda wasn't taught about, wasn't talked about, was just a footnote of a place that "couldn't support life."
Phoenix Rose, you put it very well. I think I was using a bad example in 9/11, but it was the first one I thought of.
What I'm trying to say is that our collective memory is very short lived, and then the scenario you described is most likely possible.
"Black Rock, terra forming accident, uninhibitible, Reavers, don't go there."
Does anyone think that this would happen to Shadow? People forgetting how Shadow became uninhabitable and not thinking a thing about it?
I know it wouldn't fade away while the veteran Browncoats still lived, or would Shadow become like the Alamo and become a symbol of resistance for generations to come?
I know my response, good Browncoat that I am, but if the Alliance could make Miranda "disappear" by ignoring it could they, with the passage of time, could they do the same thing to Shadow?
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Quote:
Originally posted by ncbrowncoat:
Does anyone think that this would happen to Shadow? People forgetting how Shadow became uninhabitable and not thinking a thing about it?
I know it wouldn't fade away while the veteran Browncoats still lived, or would Shadow become like the Alamo and become a symbol of resistance for generations to come?
I know my response, good Browncoat that I am, but if the Alliance could make Miranda "disappear" by ignoring it could they, with the passage of time, could they do the same thing to Shadow?
Considering how often Shadow is mentioned on the show (once, and not at all in relation to its destruction) vs Serenity Valley (all the time) I doubt it is as important to the general consciousness or to all Browncoats. If this was the unspeakable war crime to end all war crimes that must always be remembered - or the grand epic symbol of resistance - then it would have come up before. From Mal or Zoe, if anything. Mal seemed downright lighthearted talking about his life there to Saffron. Try getting a funny Serenity Valley story out of him.
Just because it was Mal's homeplanet and was made uninhabitable during the course of the war doesn't automatically mean that it was the only place this happened to or that no one saw it coming or... you know? I don't think that in the course of the war, Shadow stands out. It was one ugly aspect of a long and ugly war.
Ask the same question about Serenity Valley and you get the very valid anser in the deleted scene from the pilot, where Simon oh-so-expositionarily has to consult his portable cortex history book about "Serenity Valley". A civillian in the Core who was too young to serve during the war probably doesn't know much about it. The Alliance captain in "Bushwhacked" seems to have some much more personal memories of the time and reacts emotionally. We don't know how much an Independent civilian like Kaylee would know because it's never mentioned.
We can probably assume that Independent and Alliance veterans are the ones to care and remember the most about any of the grand battle sites, each for personal reasons. The rest of the 'verse was probably more than eager to move on after the war, Independent and Alliance-affiliated planets alike. The mark anniversaries (U-day) but they'd much rather rebuild and adapt than cling to a nightmarish five years of destruction.
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Come on, folks. What fraction of the world's present population thinks about Darfur or Rwanda on a daily basis? Of course a huge number of people can die horribly and the human race can move on as if it never happened.
Sad. Beyond sad, but true.
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But Miranda should still have been listed in the astronomy database. It was a planet in the solar system, after all. Do you really think only habited planets and moons would be listed? By that logic, only our Earth should be listed in any description of our solar system. It would have made far more sense for the Alliance to state that there had been a terraforming incident on Miranda rather than deleting all reference to it and hoping people forgot about it.
Also, regarding Reaver space: the Reavers' aggression response "increased beyond madness". So how could these people function as a group? Someone had to be deciding where the fleet would be located, what planets to raid, etc. But I can't picture the Reaver rank and file taking orders.
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Rwanda was over 12 years ago and plenty of people still remember it. By contrast, nobody in the Firefly 'verse was curious as to why they couldn't find Miranda on the Cortex 12 years after the Pax debacle? C'mon!
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