There are probably people on the ship who do that and it's considered junk food for busy people.
Food Slots
- Thread starter uniderth
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Wait.... what?!
If this was G.R.'s idea, I'm not sure if I really want to know the details.
Kor
Of course internal space must be finite, yet one oceangoing military vessel of today, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, has no trouble bringing a year's worth of food aboard and serving it up cooked by the chefs' hands. In general, I felt the blueprints proferred for the starship Enterprise were unrealistic regarding storage. The holds and workshop areas on any real ship of today occupy far more space than the crew quarters do; on the Enterprise it's almost the reverse.
And you don't want to know what Tranya is!
That is a legit pronunciation of the word!
One time as a teen my girlfriend and I heard a visitor in her house, who was pitching a health fad to her parents, pronounce it.........
ve-ge-KA-ta-bles.......
he actually threw in an extra syllable for a total of FIVE!
We both went glassy eyes like, WTF, and then slowly turned to look at each other and started laughing uncontrollably!
Her parents were mortified.
This is why I have hated the cutesy word "veggies" since it first popped up a few years ago. As soon as a corruption like that becomes the rule in casual speech, we're headed for a generation of kids who don't know the actual word. And their kids won't know it, and so on. And the language is damaged.
Of course there are times when it doesn't bother me. I don't mind if we're splashing in the pool and you call a toddler's floatation device a floatie. I'm not a monster.
It's been around longer than 'a few' years. My ex-wife's family was using it during the 70s, though they were farmers.
This is why I have hated the cutesy word "veggies" since it first popped up a few years ago. As soon as a corruption like that becomes the rule in casual speech, we're headed for a generation of kids who don't know the actual word. And their kids won't know it, and so on. And the language is damaged.
Of course there are times when it doesn't bother me. I don't mind if we're splashing in the pool and you call a toddler's floatation device a floatie. I'm not a monster.
How about this:
That's English, buddy.
The process you described above, where a word gets "corrupted" through casual use and then future generations never learn the right word, is exactly how, over a thousand years, the above text becomes:
--The opening lines of Beowulf.
By your standards, we speak a pretty "damaged" language. In fact, one might suppose it's totally destroyed and unrecoverable. A lot of people seem to think that English was somehow "done" in the 1850's and we all need to cling to the grammar and vocabulary of the vaunted past. But that's silly and ignores how language works in reality. Getting too worked up over "these kids today and their silly lingo" is a losing battle. Linguistic evolution is an unstoppable force.
--Alex
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Except as pertains to French, of course.
If those food cubes are junk food, then customs and mores have changed a bit, as they are so prominently offered for high-ranking diplomats. Although hors d'oeuvre today basically is junk food packaged differently...
Timo Saloniemi
If those food cubes are junk food, then customs and mores have changed a bit, as they are so prominently offered for high-ranking diplomats. Although hors d'oeuvre today basically is junk food packaged differently...
Timo Saloniemi
This is why I have hated the cutesy word "veggies" since it first popped up a few years ago. As soon as a corruption like that becomes the rule in casual speech, we're headed for a generation of kids who don't know the actual word. And their kids won't know it, and so on. And the language is damaged.
Of course there are times when it doesn't bother me. I don't mind if we're splashing in the pool and you call a toddler's floatation device a floatie. I'm not a monster.
Preggers is the one that irritates me to no end.
Okay just saw "the Children Shall Lead" a few days ago and Chapel tells the children to select their two favourite flavours with the cards. One kid can't decide and Chapel gives him vanilla-coconut, he's disappointed because "they're both white" so she lets him select something else and he asks for three specific flavours, which are promptly delivered. Unless the Enterprise stores sundaes in every possible combination of flavour this sounds more like the ice-cream was produced on the spot.
Standard English, as it (thankfully still) exists today, to me represents a great civilization, one I like better than the alternatives. It's a civilization that achieved great things in health and sanitation, that raised our standards of living, extended our lifespans, and best of all led to Star Trek itself. Kirk and Spock speak English. I don't want to see the language devolve into baby talk.
If you had told a proud ancient Roman that his civilization would fall, his language would die, and his homeland would be marred by poverty and cultural darkness for hundreds of years, would you also ask him to shrug it off and whistle a happy tune? Albertese makes a good case, but some kinds of cultural evolution, while unstoppable, are not changes for the better.
That scene in WCSL has all sorts of problems if we are going to assume that each card represents a specific combination of different flavours, since the cards solely are used to select the ice-creams; no additional manual or voice instructions are given.
In the scene, Nurse Chapel starts with 7 cards, 4 of which are grabbed by some children and used in the machine straight away. Of the 3 left she gives one to Steve, who is disappointed that it is "coconut and vanilla" (he discerns this by sight, not taste somehow). Chapel now has two unused cards and asks Steve to select his "surprise" dish:
That's all 7 cards accounted for, with no additional flavours available, apparently. Was Steve just lucky that she happened to have the exact flavours he asked for? Or was it some sort of game that he and Chapel were playing, a kind of oneupmanship using ice cream? In such a game, flavours are irrelevant (but colours are) and he seemed to win - he got the biggest sundae of them all!
It also means that there need be no more than 6 double flavours and 1 triple stored in the machine at any given time, although long term storage of ice cream is one of the easier technologies on the Enterprise - we can do it today!
Well, fair enough. But there's the other side of it also. The downfall of the Roman Empire and the "devolving" of Latin led to several major world languages today. Tell speakers of Italian, Spanish or French that their language is a deformed monstrosity piled together from Latin babytalk. Even though that might be one correct-ish description. After all, the correct French word for "head" (tete) came from the Latin slang word for "head." It would be like if some future version of "Murican" used the word noggin as their official and correct word for a person's head. And yet, these were the languages spoken by the people who discovered the Americas and mapped the world. What language will be spoken by the real explorers of the stars? Probably not English as we know it today.
And should we mourn that? I can see why you might want to. After all, most of us have a strong affinity for our own culture. And, thankfully, most of us won't live to see it fall. These things take many generations to unfold. After all, most of us can kinda muddle through Shakespeare and that's more than 400 years old. (but try reading a version in the original spellings... most printed stuff from that time uses modern spellings, for clarity.)
But as with all things, someday, somehow it's gonna end. Should we mourn that billions of years from now the Sun will expand and destroy all life on Earth? These things are comfortably far away. I don't think we really have to worry about them.
--Alex
^ The whole scene was just kind of weird and pointless 
I mean I get the kid being picky about what kind of ice cream he wants but beyond that....eh....it's just weirdly scripted....weirdly acted....all around weird.
Now that I think of it it's also possible that the Enterprise just had different flavors of ice cream stashed away, already portioned into scoops and the slot just dropped them into the dish as ordered.
Which still makes it weird that Chapel had those very specific cards. Who in their right mind combines chocolate with pistachio and peach? That's not even a pleasing color combination if you ask me
I mean I get the kid being picky about what kind of ice cream he wants but beyond that....eh....it's just weirdly scripted....weirdly acted....all around weird.
Now that I think of it it's also possible that the Enterprise just had different flavors of ice cream stashed away, already portioned into scoops and the slot just dropped them into the dish as ordered.
Which still makes it weird that Chapel had those very specific cards. Who in their right mind combines chocolate with pistachio and peach? That's not even a pleasing color combination if you ask me
It's pointless to gripe over word simplification, else we would all speaketh like Data sans contractions, Furthermore we wouldst refer not to transmitting a fax but a facsimile, not to contracting flu but influenza, and everyone would talk with their smart telephone not a smartphone. We could not describe our reactions to these as a chortle, but say we snort and chuckle in simultaneity.
^ The whole scene was just kind of weird and pointless
I mean I get the kid being picky about what kind of ice cream he wants but beyond that....eh....it's just weirdly scripted....weirdly acted....all around weird.
That's partly due to the magnetism and charisma of Majel Barrett, who auditioned for the part and was chosen over hundreds of other actresses. Oh, wait.
But it's mostly on the script.
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