Today’s article is a guest post by Pez Minotaur. You can check out his old LiveJournal here, but these days he just writes an article for the Big Bad Blog once every few months.

Today he looks at Star Wars. Pez’s opinions are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the blog.

I am a big fan of science fiction, and tend to enjoy most science fiction. I feel that statement is not redundant because we all know people who use being a fan of science fiction as an excuse to hate most science fiction. Whether or not science fiction is good or bad tends to have little effect on whether or not I enjoy it. Sometimes bad science fiction can be a lot of fun.

All that was a lead up to my next confession, I am a Star Wars fan. I can say unashamed that I enjoy watching all six Star Wars films, and yes there are six. We can’t exclude films from the franchise just because they disappointed us. For anyone reading this at home, whose blood pressure is going up after reading the starting of this paragraph, I have some homework for you. I did something similar to this on a ski vacation many years ago.

Step one is to watch Armageddon and The Core, and try and point out all of the bad writing and scientific impossibilities in these movies.

This is a warm up round. It is good to stretch before exercise. Also coincidentally this is also part of the NASA management training program. Seriously, Wikipedia said so.

Step two, now that you are warmed up, watch Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III, doing the same thing. Point out all the bad writing, bad science, and if you wish, bad acting. At this point if you wanted to you can start keeping some kind of score but it isn’t necessary.

Step three is the important part. Now that you have built up all this hostility watch Star Wars Episodes IV, V, and VI. You have to let yourself go and allow yourself to mock a childhood icon, but it won’t be hard because you prepared for it. Once you start pointing out all of the bad writing, bad acting, and bad science in them you will
realize two things. First they never were that great, they were good and fun to watch, but not worth of the esteem you held them too.

Second you will realize that when compared back to back the prequel trilogy isn’t that bad.

I do realize that I have just asked you to watch 8 movies, and if we assume an average of about 2 hours that is 16 hours. So you should break it up over a long weekend or something, but it is important to watch all 8 movies within a relatively short time span otherwise you lose your critical momentum.

Now everything I have said so far is not what I wanted to talk about. All of that was to set up how I quantifiably and dispassionately rated the Star Wars movies so I could answer a question.

Who was the coolest Jedi?

Here is how the ranking was arrived at. The first criterion is how many movies the character appears in, a number between 1 and 6. The second criterion is in how many of those appearances was the character cool, another number between 0 and the number of appearances. The number off cool appearances is divided by the total number of appearances to determine their cool percent. Then you take this list and put it into order twice. The first time based on the number of cool appearances, and then assign each character a rank. The second time based on the cool percent, and again assign each character a rank. Take these two ranks and added them together, a number theoretically between 2 and something much higher. Finally take your list of characters and rank them based on this sum to give you an accurately weighted list of how cool your favourite Jedi are. I did this and got this result.

The definitive number one was Obi Wan Kenobi. He was the only character in the franchise to have six appearances and always be cool.

Second place was a four way tie between, Yoda, Darth Vader, The Emperor, and Mace Windu. All very cool guys.

Third place is a tie between Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul. Also cool dudes, but lost points for only having one appearance in the series.

Fourth, fifth and sixth places are filled out with Count Dooku, Luke Skywalker, and Anakin Skywalker respectively. Now it is important to note I prepared this list twice. One time with Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader scored together, and a second time scoring them separately. I liked it a bit better scoring them separately, the alternative brings Vader down two spots and Anakin up two where they meet in fourth place. Also although Luke Skywalker does appear in Episode III he is a baby and cannot be judged and either being cool or not. Hence he is only credited with 3 appearances. However further analysis has revealed that if you do making his total appearances 4, he was still only cool once so his rank does not change.

Disagree that Episodes I-III are that good? That Episodes IV-VI are that bad? With the Jedi Cool Metric?

Let us know in the comments!

In less than four weeks, Back to the Future will be re-released in theatres in the UK, presumably in celebration of my daughter’s birth. Today, the Big Bad Blog celebrates the awesome grandeur of this spectacle with a special morning coffee.

(A Back to the Future Tattoo, photo by David Lewis.)

In part two of Back to the Future, Marty travels to the future — October 2015, to be exact. Here is a list of things that the movie predicted correctly.

Of course, Back to the Future II was not entirely accurate other. Not including the double-tie (which still could happen), here is a list of things that we can say with confidence won’t be happening by 2015. I look forward to the author of that article being wrong on several accounts, such as hoverboards.

On Monday evening I attended Westminster Skeptics, and the speaker mentioned how the format was “unfriendly” — a speaker at the front, speaking, and everybody else watching. A first-time attendee does not have the opportunity or an environment in which to meet other people attending the same event. This, it was argued, makes newcomers feel unwelcome within the “skeptic community.”

I am skeptic about the concept of the skeptical community, and attend these events when the speaker/topic combination sounds like it might be interesting — in short, meeting people is not part of my personal agenda. However, there is no doubt that these events are held in a social setting — a pub — implying that there ought to be a social aspect to the gathering. Perhaps Skeptics in the Pub is a meet-up event with guest speakers, rather than a lecture at which you might make a friend.

As regular readers of the Big Bad Blog will know, I am a Canadian ex-pat living in London. As an introvert in a strange city, this presented an issue — how do I meet friends? Sure, there were friends made in the workplace and at the fencing club. Friends of friends. A couple of other Canadian transplants I knew before moving. But this circle was still too small — the group of like-minded individuals that I knew in Canada could not be adequately reproduced.

So what was a person to do? Particularly in a place like London, where it can be particularly difficult to simply start chatting with people you have never met before.

Enter the Internet, and the meet-up group.

What is a meet-up group?

A meet-up group is, quite simply, a group of relative strangers with a commonly stated interest that meets regularly to interact. At these meetings, the strangers gather together to (allegedly) converse about said mutual interest. These are often — but not always — held in pubs, which can provide some social lubrication.

The concept is simple enough: You put a group of people with similar interests in a room. Many of them are strangers, and the point of the evening is to meet new people with those similar interests. Social interactions begin, and hopefully people have found a place where they feel they belong.

How it actually works out tends to vary. While your Big Bad Blogger has never been on the inside of a meet-up group, and is perhaps unqualified to reveal what does and does not work, participation in several meet-up groups might reveal something of use to prospective organisers or meeters.

Case Studies

The Weasels Unusual
Weasels Unusual is a group that is organised through gumtree, with the tagline “Sci-fi, associated weirdness, and beer.”

This was the first meet-up group I participated in, and I think it is the best — I still attend, two years later, and it is responsible for the majority of the friendships I have formed in London. Unlike other groups that are organised through tools like meetup.com or Facebook, the Weasels Unusual is organised by an individual, by e-mail — it relies on a classified ad to attract new members.

The result of this is that people who make others uncomfortable can simply be taken off the list.

Unlike other groups here, Weasels is quite happy to have a night, a pub, and a mix of personalities … and that’s it. The members of the group take it from there.

London Bloggers
I was so taken with the positive impact that Weasels Unusual had upon my social life that I decided that meet-ups were for me. So I went to a second meet-up — the London Bloggers Meet-up.

This meet-up is very different.

First, it fails on the “common interest” front. Everybody has a blog. Mothers, perverts, technophiles, nudists, roleplayers, cosplayers, rollerbladers, hamsters. To say that they have a “common interest” is pushing it. I mean, I like breathing. You like breathing. Let’s talk.

Not so much.

So conversations were a bit more forced that I would have liked. Particularly since a common icebreaker was “what do you blog about?” I blog about everything, people. Everything. Every day. So I’m not sure how to answer that. I should have said “tattoos and unicorns”, but I was young then and had not yet discovered the magic formula that leads to fame and success.

But still, the people were nice. They were there to meet people. Also, London Bloggers gets sponsors for its events, so the beer is free. Free beer always tastes better.

London Bloggers has not become part of the fabric of my social existence, however. And perhaps the cause is that sponsorship.

With each event sponsored, that sponsor gets a chance to address the crowd. And the goal is always to get the people in the audience to blog about their product — in a positive manner, of course. The corporate spin on the nights change them into an event that I will just as happily skip if there is something else going on. I am not certain about selling reviews on this blog for beers.

Scratch that, I am happy to review things on this blog for beers. Send me your beers. I will review them.

That aside, there is something slightly off putting about being taken out for a drink and pitched to, even if you know it’s coming. It changes the meet-up from being about meeting people to a transaction — I get beer, you get blog space.

The lesson here is to know the purpose of your meet-up. Not all meet-ups are first and foremost about meeting people. They might have more nefarious and/or businesslike purposes.

Skeptics in the Pub
There are two skeptic groups near me — Westminster Skeptics, mentioned above, and London Skeptics. Both are organised around similar lines. There is a pub. People enter the pub. There is a guest speaker, who often has PowerPoint slides.

The attendees watch the presentation (and drink beer). They then have an opportunity to ask questions of the presenter (and drink beer). Then they go home.

Your blogger does not consider these to be meet-ups, per se, as much as they are lectures in odd locations. But that should not stop people from treating them as such. After all …

… does it occur regularly? Check.
… is there social lubricant? Check.
… is there a common point of interest amongst members? Check.
… is there time available to socialize? Check.

The problem, of course, is that it is considerably harder to break the ice at one of these events. With people attending primarily to listen to the speaker (rather than meet), it becomes more difficult to start a random conversation with a stranger.

And the basic ice-breaking questions that can be asked in the groups above don’t work. There is no equivalent to “what sort of sci-fi do you like?” or “what do you blog about?” There are no easy questions.

What do you think of homeopathy? … nah.
Skeptic or sceptic? … a bit better, but you had better come prepared for some debate on that one.

I could go on, but most of these either have a solid, regular answer amongst skeptics, or they exist to spur debate. Which strikes me as an odd way to meet people, but perhaps it works for you.

The Canadian ex-pat meet-up
Your correspondent has been a member of this group for a long time. But not once have I attended.

There are plans to attend one on August 14th, but that might fall through as alternative plans are forming again. In the end, there is only so much meeting up that one can do.

At this point, the need that meet-ups generated — to make friends in a place full of strangers — is fulfilled. There are too few evenings in the week, and too few days in the weekend. Plans have generally been made, and a baby is coming.

Is there time for new meet-ups?

Perhaps. Maybe there is an interest I have that goes unfilled, as I have nobody to explore that interest with. But if so, I am having trouble identifying it.

As a new person in a strange place, meet-ups proved invaluable — and I went far too long before discovering them. As a person with an established life in that same place, meet-ups are increasingly feeling odd (other than Weasels Unusual, which is now like a group of old friends). I do not need them. But others do, and new friends can always be had.

In light of this, I, Mr. Topp, do declare that I will attend a meet-up at least once a year.

In the end, they almost always prove to be great fun.