His argument about digital watches did not age well.
My kids have known how to understand a digital clock since they were toddlers, but even now, in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face.
Beyond that, he argues that pie charts tell us more about the relationship between things than tables of numbers, and a clock face is "the world's most perfect pie chart." But a clock face is not really a pie chart. It does not indicate distribution among categories, as a pie chart does. The arms are not delimiters; they merely indicate position.
> His argument about digital watches did not age well.
Didn't it? I think it remains true. Time is a continuum, not discrete; analogue watches demonstrate that, while digital ones do not.
And yes, schools have to teach one how to use a clock, but at the end of the process one actually has enhanced one's understanding of time. Much like using a slide rule teaches one far more about numbers and maths than using a calculator.
I think this is more of a "different people's minds work differently" thing than an age thing. Some people who grew up in the digital age still find analog clock faces more useful. Here's a short youtube video exploring that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZArBfxaPzD8 . I think Adam's mistake was assuming the preference for analog was universal which was probably wrong even when he first wrote the joke.
I think the argument could be made for a clock face being a pie chart if you think of it the way the host of that video does. The categories are "time left in the hour/day" and "time passed in the hour/day".
All that said I was really happy to finally understand what Adams was trying to say with that joke witch, as a person who finds digital readouts more useful, never landed for me before.
I'm 37 and have a hard time parsing clock faces, I remember having a hard time with it in kindergarten and they basicaly wrote it of as me being a little prick and refusing to do it right
> in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face.
I'm not sure our age difference, but as a millennial I'm pretty sure we did when I was in elementary school as well. I don't remember which grade though, I didn't learn about how to read those watches from my parents. Digital clocks became so common that I never cared for it. Same with cursive, because of computers making cursive really pointless, I don't know how to write in it outside of my own signature.
Numbers on a digital face can be read by anyone who knows numbers.
Just yesterday my toddler told me it was 6 oclock because the big hand was pointing at the six.
Trying to explain to a three year old that the small hand was for the hour, and the big hand pointed at a number which you multiply by 5 to get the minutes was beyond him.
Funny how we got downgraded into "smart watches" that barely hold a charge for a day and are good at everything other than telling the bloody time. Having an always on display is an actual feature nowadays lol
Sure it does - for example the portion of the hour in front of the minute hand's sweep is "in the future" whereas the portion of the hour behind the minute hand's sweep is "in the past" and the portion of the hour under the minute hand is "now".
Three categories, and the distribution of the current hour's minutes between them
Are you sure this is not just the amount of exposure to each type of clock?
On the other hand, I’ve noticed that children who understand how to read only digital clocks are quite capable of answering what the time is (just read the numbers right off), but have trouble telling how many hours there are from 10am to 3pm.
You make a good argument about people growing up with digital clocks not understanding a clock face.
Maybe if you fill in the area covered you could more easily see it’s relation to pie charts.
A clock face is actually 3 pie charts on top of each other, indicating the ratio between hours, minutes, and seconds left in a sequence.
It might not be intuitive that it only covers half of the hours in a day (12) but then covers all minutes in an hour (60) and seconds in a minute (also 60).
By looking at the long hand (minutes) you can see the fraction of an hour that has elapsed if you color in the area between the “12” at the top, and for example, the “6” at the bottom. That would be half an hour. Or if the hand was in the “3” it would be a quarter hour, and you and see at a glance that a good majority of the hour is still remaining.
Seconds work the same way, with the skinny hand. For minutes and seconds you can just ignore the big numbers (or multiply then by 5 because 12 * 5 is 60).
But because the hours only cover half a day the ratio covers only half of that day, but you can still use the clock to decipher how much time has elapsed (or is left) between midday and midnight.
Having grown up with digital clocks, and only sweated through the difficult lessons of learning to read a clock face and not used them practically, even at school, you may not have realized this ratio (staring at the clock waiting for class to finish does not obviously indicate this property because classes are not evenly divided into hours)
In the cockpit, airspeed and altitude used to be presented on a dial like a watch (one hand in the case of airspeed, two hands or even three in the case of altitude).
In modern cockpits with screens, they could be presented like that, or just as numbers, but they are presented as infinite bands that move up and down. One sees the number on it, but also perceives movement (and how fast it moves) "out of the corner of an eye". Maybe it combines the advantages of both.
Yea I am not sure I get his argument much at all either. While I love my analog watches and wallclocks I also have digital ones. If anything I think the argument should be that the AM PM system is just ridiculous - why do we use it? I am an american but always switch all clocks to 24 hour time (if digital) and while I am completely used to analog clocks being on the standard 12 hour cycle it always also seemed crazy to me that we do not just all use 24 hour analog watchfaces.
seriously, I am a GenXer who grew up with mostly digital clocks and I still have to stop and think to get a time out of a clock dial.
But then again as Adams said elsewhere, Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so. That one still rings true, especially if you're a freelancer like me who never needs to get up and go to an office at 9AM.
‘Disused lavatory’ has been changed to ‘unused lavatory’ and I’m not sure why.
As an American it baffles me that an American editor would change the word disused but not the word lavatory.
One other thing. I’d rather have characters say ‘What do you mean?’ than ‘Whadd’ya mean?’
Again baffling. Whadd'ya mean is an accent, not a word choice. Changing it in text is as ridiculous as writing 50 as "fifdy" when it's an American character's dialogue.
Well I suppose they are called an Editor for a reason. They change the wording to reflect how they picture the character and might think that "What do you mean" is too formal, even in England we are more likey to say "What d'ya mean".
I guess the main thing was that Douglas Adams had the chance to review it and gave helpful feedback.
From my experience in the media industry some producers/higher ups like making arbitrary changes to a work/show/whatever just so they can say they had an impact, or to say that they made that change at the end, most of the time it ends up making the final product worst.
1. Digimon Season 1 English Dub is far superior to the Japanese original. Many people choose Cowboy Bebop as the "Better in English" anime, but... Digimon S1 is night-and-day. Stronger script with better jokes/puns, cooler attack names (English "Pepper Breath" vs the Japanese "Baby Flame"), everything is straight up better in English.
2. Cowboy Bebop is probably the better known example in anime community.
3. Final Fantasy VII -- Perhaps it is more obvious that "Cloud" and "Earth" would have a doomed romantic relationship if we stuck to the original Japanese. But "Earth" was chosen as a name for the Japanese audience because English sounds exotic. To return that feeling of "exoticness", they transliterated it into "Aeris", and suddenly we return back to the original exotic feeling name.
4. Power Rangers -- Okay, I don't know how to think of this one. Power Rangers took the original Japanese stuff and changed it so much, it no longer looked anything like the original Super Sentai.
------
Saban Entertainment knew how to do dubs / Americanizations. (Digimon S1, Power Rangers, Samurai Pizza Cats, Dragonball Z '96).
Just because other companies failed where Saban succeeded doesn't mean that "Americanization" is bad. Its that "bad Americanization" is bad.
There's an interesting meta phenomenon here I think. A lot of the language in this letter by Douglas Adams implies that it's Americans that are the problem. Whether or not he actually believes that is, I think, beside the point. What seems more likely is that the profit chasing publishers have created the problem by placing too much emphasis on the results of surveys and focus groups. In other words, Americans aren't really that stupid, it's just that big business executives think they are. And then they run their business accordingly in such a way that makes the whole world think Americans are stupid. Which is annoying because I'm an American and I know I'm not stupid. And I also feel weirdly inclined to give the average American the benefit of the doubt here. Sometimes, giving people a choice creates a dilemma out of thin air. They might choose one thing even if they would have been just as happy with the other.
Update: Actually, upon reading Adams's letter again more carefully, I'm seeing that he's probably making this very point! So I'll just leave my original comment as a more general one about where I think the issue originates.
Science-fiction and fantasy UK book covers were better too, which is another example of the same weird parochialism of the U.S. publishing industry as it was.
My probably unpopular opinion is that it's a reflection of a more general, largely un-self-aware New York City parochialism, which was where most of the big publishing firms were based, at least until the last decade or so.
The book cover thing is really insane, too. It's gotten a little better over the last decade, but the early 2000s period was crazy (source: moved from UK to USA at that time).
It's interesting that your pet theory is New York City parochialism. Mine is gerontocracy: the (mostly New York based) publishers of SF & Fantasy have been run by the same aristocracy for ~70 years. And those folks cut their teeth on serialized pulp fiction, comic books, and magazines, which culminated in a certain art style that (imo) peaked in the 1980s.
This whole thread seems to be in agreement, but I don't personally know anyone who didn't think the UK covers we're absolutely terrible.
Especially the first book. My impression when I first saw it was. It looks like it was done by a talented middle schooler for a community center assignment. Something to pin on a wall with a blue ribbon.
Granted I was in elementary at the time
I think you all in this thread (and I) are under appreciating how much of that opinion is just pure nostalgia.
Eh, it's something people sort of laugh about now, but in 1998 it was probably the right choice to change it to sorcerer. It made it much clearer to children (and adults, to be honest), that it was a book about magic. And 1998 was still a time when many families didn't have internet access, so you were more likely to run into it at the bookstore or library, so the title needed to be more descriptive.
Cover and book jacket art was better for all books, because what happened is that (especially in the US) instead of letting art directors have creative freedom, they started focus grouping it relentlessly. This, unsurprisingly, creates bland art.
> Science-fiction and fantasy UK book covers were better too
Same with video games back in the day. The Japanese versions had much cooler box art than the Western ones. But they were often abandoned because they used a style that wasn't as popular in the West.
Adams was brilliant, of course, but to me part of the appeal of Hitchhiker's was its deep Britishness. Absurdity is funnier against a backdrop of English inhibition. Monty Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks" is only funny because it's so English. Spinal Tap took on fake English accents because it's funnier that way. Comedy is about contrasts you see.
Americanising is building a language an accent bubble around the US.
I am a non native speaker with an accent and I am often surprised to see that some US citizens have a very hard time with my accent while non native speakers have no problem understanding me. I suspect it is due to some US citizen not being used to dealing with a variety of sounds and inflexions.
I saw a current events comedy show filmed live in the UK (The Last Leg), and they filmed two intros because the Australian network which bought the rights to rebroadcast couldn't afford the rights for the theme music. It was bizarre.
I've always been annoyed they replaced "Philosopher's Stone" with "Sorcerer's Stone" in the title of the Harry Potter novel, for American consumption. It feels kinda of insulting, frankly.
I recently and randomly picked up a Japanese book, 1Q84. I was enjoying it quite a bit, when I started thinking about the cultural references it contained - it has numerous references to Western classical music and Sean Connery. It worried me that they might have actually replaced Japanese music and actors with western "equivalents". But of course, there has been a great deal of cultural cross pollination, so it is no more unusual for a Japanese person to be aware of Sean Connery or The Brothers Grimm than it is for me. I didn't want to spoil the book by reading reviews before I read the book itself, but I skimmed enough to gather the Sean Connery part, at least, seems to be original source material.
Part of the attraction in reading a book like that is the fact that it is a Japanese book. It feels demeaning to have take that away because they worry the foreigness of it will be disturbing or unwelcomed by American readers.
One of the things I like so much about the movie Rounders is that it respects its audience enough to drop unexplained references throughout without elaborate explanation (in a way you hardly ever see in mass media). Many about poker, but many other little gems, too.
Consider the line, "Like Papa Wallenda said, 'Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting." If you don't get the reference, you aren't missing much, but for those who do it's such a delightful little moment in the film, made better by its lack of supporting explanation. Thank god they didn't add clunky exposition to inform the viewer about the Wallendas.
Another favorite: when Michael is walking back into KGB's place, the place where he previously lost all his money, he says: "I feel like Buckner walking back into Shea." Who is Bucker, what is Shea, and what does it have to do with KGB? The film takes the chance you'll get it.
There are lots and lots of poker terms and references, too, most introduced without elaborate fanfare on the theory that a smart audience will pick them up as they go, but it's these random lines -- "In the legal sense, can fuckin' Steinbrenner move the Yankees?" -- that have always stuck with me.
I used to grow up watching Danger Mouse, one of the most British cartoon shows. I still have fond memories of it and the dialog holds up well, acquiring nuance that went over my head as a kid, that I can appreciate as an adult. I learned about London landmarks -- Baker Street, Willesden Green, the Tower of London -- through this show, and even things like what a pillarbox is. Britishisms like that were always namechecked, and everything seems to have been made with a sense of British pride.
Danger Mouse got a "modern" reboot in 2015, and by comparison it's awful. It's more colorful and garish, the dialogue is more rapid fire and less funny, and though it sometimes features new landmarks like the Gherkin, it has less of a British identity. Later on I found out that the producers copped to making a more American style cartoon, which is what the market seems to want.
The irony of this is that by 1992 large numbers of Americans had already listened to the radio series, read the novels, watched the BBC show, etc., with all of their UK references and language in place. Why would anyone have thought the US audience wouldn't accept it? THey already had.
There's a deeply frustrating infantilisation when something is localized in the same language. My kids and I love Bluey, an Australian show, but apparently the producers had to refuse to have it redone with US and UK accents to stop it happening.
Never understood what the problem with having David Attenborough instead of Sigourney Weaver narrate Planet Earth was either.
My personal favorite story in this genre is that the set-top box that my employer-at-the-time imported into the US called the schedule "TV Guide."
PM: "TV Guide" is a Registered Trademark. You can't call it that!
Non-US-folks: "Uhm, TV guide is just, ehhm, what it says"
PM: "We'll be sued! We'll be wiped out"
Non-US-folks: "Uhm, OK, so what about 'TV Listings'"
PM: "Oh, yeah, that will be OK"
How any of this makes any difference still eludes me, but yeah...
For some reason, in Ireland and possibly the UK, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were instead called The Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. 'Ninja' may have been too violent
>So digital watches were mere technological toys rather than significant improvements on anything that went before. I don’t happen to think that’s true of cellular comms technology.
I think it's funny how for a brief moment there the digital watches joke became a thing again when everyone started pushing smart watches.
Funny enough, I kind of agree with adams that displaying a pictorial representation of time is better than it's numeric value, but honestly I find the classic representation too easy to trip up on.
>Incidentally, I noticed a few years ago, when we still had £1 notes, that the Queen looked very severe on £1 notes, less severe on five pound notes, and so on, all the way up to £50 notes. If you had a £50 the queen smiled at you very broadly
oh my god it's kinda there! Go to 1992, What the hell?!?!
Edit: Oh I see. In 1992 they were rotating in new notes for 5 pound and above, but the series D pound notes were still in circulation, in those the queen was more demure, and in the new notes she's much happier.
[+] [-] jawns|3 years ago|reply
My kids have known how to understand a digital clock since they were toddlers, but even now, in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face.
Beyond that, he argues that pie charts tell us more about the relationship between things than tables of numbers, and a clock face is "the world's most perfect pie chart." But a clock face is not really a pie chart. It does not indicate distribution among categories, as a pie chart does. The arms are not delimiters; they merely indicate position.
[+] [-] eadmund|3 years ago|reply
Didn't it? I think it remains true. Time is a continuum, not discrete; analogue watches demonstrate that, while digital ones do not.
And yes, schools have to teach one how to use a clock, but at the end of the process one actually has enhanced one's understanding of time. Much like using a slide rule teaches one far more about numbers and maths than using a calculator.
[+] [-] pikminguy|3 years ago|reply
I think the argument could be made for a clock face being a pie chart if you think of it the way the host of that video does. The categories are "time left in the hour/day" and "time passed in the hour/day".
All that said I was really happy to finally understand what Adams was trying to say with that joke witch, as a person who finds digital readouts more useful, never landed for me before.
[+] [-] boesboes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|3 years ago|reply
I'm not sure our age difference, but as a millennial I'm pretty sure we did when I was in elementary school as well. I don't remember which grade though, I didn't learn about how to read those watches from my parents. Digital clocks became so common that I never cared for it. Same with cursive, because of computers making cursive really pointless, I don't know how to write in it outside of my own signature.
[+] [-] _carbyau_|3 years ago|reply
Just yesterday my toddler told me it was 6 oclock because the big hand was pointing at the six.
Trying to explain to a three year old that the small hand was for the hour, and the big hand pointed at a number which you multiply by 5 to get the minutes was beyond him.
But the digital clock, he gets.
[+] [-] _trackno5|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monknomo|3 years ago|reply
Three categories, and the distribution of the current hour's minutes between them
[+] [-] joppy|3 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I’ve noticed that children who understand how to read only digital clocks are quite capable of answering what the time is (just read the numbers right off), but have trouble telling how many hours there are from 10am to 3pm.
[+] [-] coldtea|3 years ago|reply
I'd say that's a failure to teach them analog time as toddlers, not digital time being inherently superior.
[+] [-] fijiaarone|3 years ago|reply
Maybe if you fill in the area covered you could more easily see it’s relation to pie charts.
A clock face is actually 3 pie charts on top of each other, indicating the ratio between hours, minutes, and seconds left in a sequence.
It might not be intuitive that it only covers half of the hours in a day (12) but then covers all minutes in an hour (60) and seconds in a minute (also 60).
By looking at the long hand (minutes) you can see the fraction of an hour that has elapsed if you color in the area between the “12” at the top, and for example, the “6” at the bottom. That would be half an hour. Or if the hand was in the “3” it would be a quarter hour, and you and see at a glance that a good majority of the hour is still remaining.
Seconds work the same way, with the skinny hand. For minutes and seconds you can just ignore the big numbers (or multiply then by 5 because 12 * 5 is 60).
But because the hours only cover half a day the ratio covers only half of that day, but you can still use the clock to decipher how much time has elapsed (or is left) between midday and midnight.
Having grown up with digital clocks, and only sweated through the difficult lessons of learning to read a clock face and not used them practically, even at school, you may not have realized this ratio (staring at the clock waiting for class to finish does not obviously indicate this property because classes are not evenly divided into hours)
[+] [-] WalterBright|3 years ago|reply
With a digital watch, I have to wear glasses and deliberately focus on it.
There's good reasons why cars and airplanes still have analog displays, and people present data with graphs rather than columns of numbers.
[+] [-] FabHK|3 years ago|reply
In the cockpit, airspeed and altitude used to be presented on a dial like a watch (one hand in the case of airspeed, two hands or even three in the case of altitude).
In modern cockpits with screens, they could be presented like that, or just as numbers, but they are presented as infinite bands that move up and down. One sees the number on it, but also perceives movement (and how fast it moves) "out of the corner of an eye". Maybe it combines the advantages of both.
See here, for example, for both styles: https://www.flight-mechanic.com/pitot-static-pressure-sensin...
I wonder what studies were made regarding this design.
[+] [-] Melatonic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egypturnash|3 years ago|reply
But then again as Adams said elsewhere, Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so. That one still rings true, especially if you're a freelancer like me who never needs to get up and go to an office at 9AM.
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|3 years ago|reply
It's a funny little hole in their wide skillset!
[+] [-] causi|3 years ago|reply
As an American it baffles me that an American editor would change the word disused but not the word lavatory.
One other thing. I’d rather have characters say ‘What do you mean?’ than ‘Whadd’ya mean?’
Again baffling. Whadd'ya mean is an accent, not a word choice. Changing it in text is as ridiculous as writing 50 as "fifdy" when it's an American character's dialogue.
[+] [-] jimmaswell|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|3 years ago|reply
https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2018/06/disu...
(and yes, I am that Paul)
[+] [-] lbriner|3 years ago|reply
I guess the main thing was that Douglas Adams had the chance to review it and gave helpful feedback.
[+] [-] rswail|3 years ago|reply
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
Apparently that got changed from "zebra" to "pedestrian" which entirely loses the black/white joke.
[+] [-] archerx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragontamer|3 years ago|reply
But I want to point out some counter-examples.
1. Digimon Season 1 English Dub is far superior to the Japanese original. Many people choose Cowboy Bebop as the "Better in English" anime, but... Digimon S1 is night-and-day. Stronger script with better jokes/puns, cooler attack names (English "Pepper Breath" vs the Japanese "Baby Flame"), everything is straight up better in English.
2. Cowboy Bebop is probably the better known example in anime community.
3. Final Fantasy VII -- Perhaps it is more obvious that "Cloud" and "Earth" would have a doomed romantic relationship if we stuck to the original Japanese. But "Earth" was chosen as a name for the Japanese audience because English sounds exotic. To return that feeling of "exoticness", they transliterated it into "Aeris", and suddenly we return back to the original exotic feeling name.
4. Power Rangers -- Okay, I don't know how to think of this one. Power Rangers took the original Japanese stuff and changed it so much, it no longer looked anything like the original Super Sentai.
------
Saban Entertainment knew how to do dubs / Americanizations. (Digimon S1, Power Rangers, Samurai Pizza Cats, Dragonball Z '96).
Just because other companies failed where Saban succeeded doesn't mean that "Americanization" is bad. Its that "bad Americanization" is bad.
[+] [-] davesque|3 years ago|reply
Update: Actually, upon reading Adams's letter again more carefully, I'm seeing that he's probably making this very point! So I'll just leave my original comment as a more general one about where I think the issue originates.
[+] [-] sillyquiet|3 years ago|reply
Science-fiction and fantasy UK book covers were better too, which is another example of the same weird parochialism of the U.S. publishing industry as it was.
My probably unpopular opinion is that it's a reflection of a more general, largely un-self-aware New York City parochialism, which was where most of the big publishing firms were based, at least until the last decade or so.
[+] [-] cjmb|3 years ago|reply
It's interesting that your pet theory is New York City parochialism. Mine is gerontocracy: the (mostly New York based) publishers of SF & Fantasy have been run by the same aristocracy for ~70 years. And those folks cut their teeth on serialized pulp fiction, comic books, and magazines, which culminated in a certain art style that (imo) peaked in the 1980s.
If you browse wikipedia, you will see that many, many, many roads lead back to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Books
Outside of the US market, newer publishing shops were started & run by younger folks with more modern artistic visions.
[+] [-] em500|3 years ago|reply
Original (Japan): https://i.pinimg.com/originals/22/5b/d9/225bd9e4fda8aee8ed0c...
Americanized: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/351430897872-0-1/s-l1000.jpg
[+] [-] kjeetgill|3 years ago|reply
Especially the first book. My impression when I first saw it was. It looks like it was done by a talented middle schooler for a community center assignment. Something to pin on a wall with a blue ribbon.
Granted I was in elementary at the time
I think you all in this thread (and I) are under appreciating how much of that opinion is just pure nostalgia.
[+] [-] tallanvor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyclif|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nemo44x|3 years ago|reply
Same with video games back in the day. The Japanese versions had much cooler box art than the Western ones. But they were often abandoned because they used a style that wasn't as popular in the West.
[+] [-] sgustard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nestorD|3 years ago|reply
I am a non native speaker with an accent and I am often surprised to see that some US citizens have a very hard time with my accent while non native speakers have no problem understanding me. I suspect it is due to some US citizen not being used to dealing with a variety of sounds and inflexions.
[+] [-] sarchertech|3 years ago|reply
They are honestly recording 2 versions of every intro for this?
[+] [-] enzoaquino|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_British_Bake_Off
[+] [-] jaimedario88|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OEwbocwYF8
[+] [-] jetbooster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwinnski|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mordechai9000|3 years ago|reply
I recently and randomly picked up a Japanese book, 1Q84. I was enjoying it quite a bit, when I started thinking about the cultural references it contained - it has numerous references to Western classical music and Sean Connery. It worried me that they might have actually replaced Japanese music and actors with western "equivalents". But of course, there has been a great deal of cultural cross pollination, so it is no more unusual for a Japanese person to be aware of Sean Connery or The Brothers Grimm than it is for me. I didn't want to spoil the book by reading reviews before I read the book itself, but I skimmed enough to gather the Sean Connery part, at least, seems to be original source material.
Part of the attraction in reading a book like that is the fact that it is a Japanese book. It feels demeaning to have take that away because they worry the foreigness of it will be disturbing or unwelcomed by American readers.
[+] [-] dionidium|3 years ago|reply
Consider the line, "Like Papa Wallenda said, 'Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting." If you don't get the reference, you aren't missing much, but for those who do it's such a delightful little moment in the film, made better by its lack of supporting explanation. Thank god they didn't add clunky exposition to inform the viewer about the Wallendas.
Another favorite: when Michael is walking back into KGB's place, the place where he previously lost all his money, he says: "I feel like Buckner walking back into Shea." Who is Bucker, what is Shea, and what does it have to do with KGB? The film takes the chance you'll get it.
There are lots and lots of poker terms and references, too, most introduced without elaborate fanfare on the theory that a smart audience will pick them up as they go, but it's these random lines -- "In the legal sense, can fuckin' Steinbrenner move the Yankees?" -- that have always stuck with me.
[+] [-] bitwize|3 years ago|reply
Danger Mouse got a "modern" reboot in 2015, and by comparison it's awful. It's more colorful and garish, the dialogue is more rapid fire and less funny, and though it sometimes features new landmarks like the Gherkin, it has less of a British identity. Later on I found out that the producers copped to making a more American style cartoon, which is what the market seems to want.
[+] [-] throwyawayyyy|3 years ago|reply
Also Count Duckula! David Jason (who is very English) did an American accent in that. Which I don't recall finding odd at the time, as a child.
[+] [-] Finnucane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] photochemsyn|3 years ago|reply
https://watchranker.com/best-calculator-watches/
10-year battery life! Far superior to the Apple Watch and similar knockoffs.
[+] [-] JaceLightning|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalRobert|3 years ago|reply
Never understood what the problem with having David Attenborough instead of Sigourney Weaver narrate Planet Earth was either.
[+] [-] MarkovChain242|3 years ago|reply
PM: "TV Guide" is a Registered Trademark. You can't call it that! Non-US-folks: "Uhm, TV guide is just, ehhm, what it says" PM: "We'll be sued! We'll be wiped out" Non-US-folks: "Uhm, OK, so what about 'TV Listings'" PM: "Oh, yeah, that will be OK"
How any of this makes any difference still eludes me, but yeah...
[+] [-] secondcoming|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oehpr|3 years ago|reply
I think it's funny how for a brief moment there the digital watches joke became a thing again when everyone started pushing smart watches.
Funny enough, I kind of agree with adams that displaying a pictorial representation of time is better than it's numeric value, but honestly I find the classic representation too easy to trip up on.
>Incidentally, I noticed a few years ago, when we still had £1 notes, that the Queen looked very severe on £1 notes, less severe on five pound notes, and so on, all the way up to £50 notes. If you had a £50 the queen smiled at you very broadly
no way... https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/withdrawn-banknote...
oh my god it's kinda there! Go to 1992, What the hell?!?!
Edit: Oh I see. In 1992 they were rotating in new notes for 5 pound and above, but the series D pound notes were still in circulation, in those the queen was more demure, and in the new notes she's much happier.
[+] [-] skizm|3 years ago|reply