Or the DS9 episode where Miles gets jumped back and forth in time, and actually switches with a different instance with him because a method for controlling the jumps ends up poisoning him. (“Wait… if you’re me from the past… and you’re sick… how am I not sick?” both: “I hate temporal mechanics.”)
On the other hand, a double Groundhog Day loop like that one episode of Stargate SG-1, would be pretty cool.
My wife is Jewish, and this weekend Passover begins. The conversation about whether Omni is Jewish is a very interesting discussion, and mirrors the various discussions my mother-in-law and I (an Episcopalian preacher’s kid) have about various theological topics. Usually it’s about how various rituals and traditions came around and got started (look up what is considered Kosher for Passover between Ashkenazi and Sephardic sects).
Personally, I think Omni probably had a soul before Omni-U came about. If for no other reason than I think the battle in Onmi-4, the Omni-X’s sense of self is a key part of his/their survival. But it may be that Omni doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t see the point of the discussion until after. Like… that’s part of the “I am your friend” part. I like the line “you ARE a soul, you HAVE a body,” personally, and I think that it’s something that Omni developed.
This might be related to the idea of Omni working with magic-based troubles. Maybe in addition to being a library and having a lot of parallels with Soothsayer, it’s show that certain magic/psychic effects over a long time start to have more of an effect on Omni, to show that they start out as a machine, and eventually “grow” a soul.
Given that robotic technology is getting fairly advanced here in the real world, with AI experiments being done regularly, the question of whether a robot can be Jewish is not as ridiculously theoretical as it might initially seem. To avoid controversy, I’ll say no more than that.
I never thought it ridiculous… If nothing else, the ins and outs of what can be used/handled during Passover are… odd, and I imagine with increased automation in domestic applications, the question is very pertinent.
A story I’ve been told is that in the more Orthodox communities, the elevators are set to stop at every floor automatically on the Sabbath, so the “work” of pushing the buttons is not needed to get from floor to floor. Then I saw a number of discussions on whether a dragon’s fire is considered “cooking,” and apparently the answer depends on whether the dragon has to decide to breathe fire, or whether it’s an automatic thing…
Okay, the elevator thing makes a bit of sense, but the discussion of dragons is not exactly disproving my “ridiculous” point.
We’re on the “Lore” forum for a card game, having a chat about the metaphysics present in a non-existent superhero comic. “Ridiculous” might not be the stone we want to throw from this particular glass house. 
I’m a fantasy writer that world-builds magic systems on an annual basis (NaNoWriMo!). I’ve debated things with my writing group like the strengths/weaknesses/limitations of magic tattoos, the ecology of kaiju in stasis so long they accrete rock and soil, and having a blood magic ritual that increases the range of a hyperdrive, unknown to the people that reverse engineered it thinking the ritual components were part of the system.
This is an old hat for me.
I fundamentally disagree. Humanity has been telling stories since the dawn of time; mythology is just as crucial to our psychological functioning as the love of our families, or our capacity to organize into nations. Making sure that our stories are quality ones is just as important as making sure that our food is both nutritious and flavorful.
I think it’s a bit much to be calling stories intended for the sole purpose of entertainment “mythology”. And there’s a fine line between critiquing stories and searching for flaws instead of enjoying content.
I think the difference is only one of degree. The ancients couldn’t exactly devote their time to anything as ephemeral as “entertainment”, since they needed to do hard physical labor basically non-stop just to stay alive, but in the few spare moments they had, they turned to things like religion to add meaning to their lives, and the tales that were told by old religions outlived the genuine religious belief, becoming stories told for entertainment, as the quality of life was improved by technology and there was more time for leisure in people’s lives. The last hundred or so years have seen a radical shift in the technological and social balance; entertainment is now plentiful, and we don’t think it’s super important, because we perceive scarce things as valuable and plentiful things as less so. But IMO this is a severe miscalculation. The value of some things is intrinsic, not entirely governed by the laws of supply and demand. Entertainment, mythology, religion - they’re all the same concept, something akin to what sociologists call “meaning-making”. And just because we have a lot of that sort of thing doesn’t mean that it isn’t still valuable, serious, and worth devoting a master level of craftsmanship to getting it just right.
This is subjective and easily misperceived. I search for flaws as part of enjoying content; if I didn’t enjoy the content, I’d ignore it entirely. You’ll never see me critiquing Pokemon or Rainbow Brite or professional sports; these aren’t worth my time to bother learning anything about. When I do take an interest in anything, inevitably I find fault with it, wanting to improve it by removing every flaw I perceive. To me, this is the ultimate possible act of benevolence; accepting a thing with all of its flaws is not a kindness to me, but rather proof of a lack of investment, an unwillingness to help the thing you love become the best version of itself. I don’t believe that tolerating any sort of shortcoming is ever a good thing; at best, it’s forgivable, due to a lack of time or other resources necessary to make a thing perfect, and settling for “good enough” quality. But I always think we deserve better than that, and should do everything that is possible, within the limits of our imperfect reality, to continue pursuing perfection, which I believe is indeed achievable, or near enough to make a meaningful effort to devote our lives to.
Sorry, I should probably have stated that more precisely. There is a fine line between critiquing stories and searching for flaws to the point of being obnoxious. If stories are meant to entertain and bring joy, and people are voicing their enjoyment and pleasure from those stories, it is unnecessary and rude to tell them they are wrong in enjoying those things . Especially because enjoyment of content is subjective, and your opinion of “perfection” might be quite different from that of the target audience.
I listen to the podcasts, and stories about comic books in general, because I want them to be ridiculous. And I listen to this podcast in particular because I like hearing how Christopher and Adam tell stories. If I wanted to listen to stories told a different way, I would listen to a different podcast.
Well to the best of my recollection, I never actually said that being ridiculous was bad; if you actively enjoy it, then more power to you.
The earliest mythology and religion were attempts at explaining the world, more akin to science than entertainment.
Of course, we’re discussing the intersections of mythology, religion, science, and entertainment on a thread for a podcast episode about a comic book about a time-traveling robot published by a comic book company that doesn’t exist, well, I feel like there’s some irony here.
For those who are interested, I think that the whole “dragon fire” argument is important to contextualize within Jewish cultural practice, too.
It’s really important to remember that ‘religion’ isn’t a monolith. Critically, Judaism doesn’t have a central religious authority that dictates whether doctrine is accurate or not. That role is taken up by rabbis. All of them. Some are more respected than others, some have arguments that are more long-lasting, but 'rabbis argue about the interpretation and implementation of religious law, how it interacts with weird edge cases, and what that means for your culture and community.
These critical arguments are a big part of what’s kept Judaism alive and intact through a really long period in which they had no central location, authority, or easy way to keep in contact. People could meet up occasionally and discuss their interpretations of law. The idea that there’s a single right answer, something that you can strip away all the falsehood from and just have and no one can argue with you about it any more - that’s anathema. That’s declaring yourself a divine authority. Someone else is always going to come along with a new perspective and new ideas and they’ll add your arguments to the pile, and when they do you need to listen and be thoughtful instead of yelling that you are the authority and you’re trying to fix their mistakes.
There is a very famous story in which a group of rabbis are arguing about whether a new oven is kosher, and one of them disagrees with the others and calls God in to back him up, and God does back him up, and the other rabbis essentially tell God to piss off because this is a terrestrial matter and God explicitly left those in their hands (or, in one version, they say, “Okay, so it’s four against two, God’s still outvoted.”) So God does leave the decision to them, and he’s very proud that they were willing to make the argument against him because they are his children, and children grow up.
Debates about meaningless things have meaning. They teach us that disagreement is allowed, that there’s a framework for conversation, and that we can connect with and listen to each other.
This was an amusing discussion to read through a week late. Happy Passover, everybody, a holiday in which part of the ritual observance is literally discussion over the meanings of various symbols and aspects of the story!
I am catching up on the podcast and, in this episode, Christopher dropped a comment about Justice Comics #500 (?) having an “awful” foil cover for a story “The Death of Emily Parsons.” Wait, Emily dies?