genuine_jon

and what ever became of him?

(Don't think this one's been asked before:)

What does it mean when, say, you read a question, and the asker is shown as a top contributor, and you attempt to view their profile in order so see what category they are a top contributor in, and all you get an "Oops The information you are looking for is not available" message instead?

AKA The Star Wars Padmé Amidala Conspiracy Theory

According to Star Wars lore

/QUOTE/

... a medical team attempted to save Amidala's life. However, they discovered that she was dying, having apparently lost the will to live. Her autopsy reports later suggested that she died after heavy larynx damage caused by Vader's force choke, though because there was no visible external trauma, this cause of death was initially overlooked. This interpretation of the postmortem findings was widely believed to be true even though it did not tell the whole story.

/UN-QUOTE/

So basically either she was strangled or she just willed herself to death, which would make her's unique in the history of obstetrical deaths.

Now, even in the absence of visible external trauma, no medical attendant is going to ever miss the signs of acute laryngeal or bronchial obstruction - the patient turns blue. And the cure is simple to effect requiring nothing more complicated than a shape blade, a bic biro pen (or some similar tube) and steady nerves. And, I don't care how heart broken she was after losing Anakin to the dark side, no otherwise healthy young woman can just will herself dead.

So, either she was allowed to die, or there was some underlying medical reason for her death that Obi-Wan, Yoda or Bail Organa decided to conceal.

Either way, it was a conspiracy.

Maybe it had something to do with hiding the newborn pair that survived her? Maybe Obi-Wan and Yoda reasoned that if Vader ever managed to track Amidala down, she would not be able to keep the existence of his children a secret from him? But that would be callous in the extreme, even if it was in the wider interests of the Republic.

So, why was Padmé Amidala allowed to die by those attending her?

Source(s):

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Padm%C3%A9_Amidala#...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death#Major_...

How is it possible to flag up a problem with an author who you have already reported for abuse, if they continue to edit their reported answer to make it more abusive?

Is the system of abuse reporting able to detect when a reported answer is edited, and therefore might need a further review?

If I delete the question, will that mean that the mounting abuse will go undetected?

Help!

In picking up the baton that Joanne "Jo" Murray (J. K. Rowling) dropped, when she announced that there would be no eighth Harry Potter book, did Stephenie Meyer manage to pull off the greatest heist in publishing history by capturing the audience that Rowling was abandoning?

The subject matter of the Twilight and Potter series are of course completely different. But the target audience of the former dovetails perfectly with that of the latter. So that the mass of young readers, especially those female readers who had grown up with Hermione Granger, had a ready target on which to transfer their attention.

Whether or not you agree with the likes of Stephen King's assessment of her talents, there is no denying that by writing vampire-romance novels for young-adults Meyer has managed to tap into a market that had been primed for exploitation, by Rowling.

So, is Stephenie Meyer the cleverest author alive, or just the luckiest? Please don't feel you need to write a book in order to answer;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenie_Meyer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_%28novel%29

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29001524

How did that happen?

I just don't get it?

Why isn't it The Tonight Show with David Letterman?

I mean Jay's Ok, but Letterman's the better man. ;)

Plus he's got Paul and the CBS Orchestra - who could want for more? Buttafuoco!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Show_with_David_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tonight_Show_with...

Answers can be rated either positively or negatively (thumbs up / thumbs down).

In contrast, questions can only be rated positively (starred as interesting).

Why the asymmetry?

Why not either be able to rate both questions and answers either positively and negatively, or be able to rate the both only positively?

Often, it's not the fault of the answerers that they have given a poor answer, it's because they've been given a poor question to answer by the asker.

In other word's why is it only possible to get a good reputation as a poser of questions? Why can someone not equally well get a reputation as a poor asker of questions?

Why do so many contributors to movie discussion forums feel the need to defend the "steward of cool breezes" from the abuse of critics.

By and large, critics (who make a living from criticism) freely acknowledge that an actor who has held his own against the likes of Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Charlize Theron, Gene Hackman, Patrick Swayze and Gary Oldman, who has worked for such greats as Francis Ford Coppola, Bernardo Bertolucci, Stephen Frears, Gus Van Sant and Kathryn Bigelow, in films ranging from Parenthood (1989), through Point Break (1991), My Private Idaho (1991), all the way to Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and The Devil's Advocate (1997), is by no means short of talent.

Which is not to say that the films in which he has starred haven't received their fair share of critical panning. Rarely though have they sought to write Reeves off because of a poorly cast or written part that he has undertaken. But you wouldn't think so if you only paid attention to the forums, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa... , where the need to provide evidence in support of statements is rarely felt.

Consider the career of Sir Michael Caine, not only a movie superstar, but considered to be one of the best actors of his generation. He too has had his fair share of critically derided film roles. But you never hear the phrase "the critically under-rated" linked to his name.

So, where is the evidence that Keanu Reeves is critically under-rated as an actor? If possible, please provide sources to support your contribution.

Allen Barra, writing in the Salon.com http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/feature/2002... , is not alone in thinking that the producers of the series of films based on the books of Thomas Harris demonstrated Hollywood's awful habit of fixing something that's not broken, by recasting the role of Harris's most famous character, Hannibal Lecter.

/QUOTE/ Cox suavely underplays Hannibal Lecter, attempting to hide him behind a screen of nonthreatening banality. He would never be capable of the "Senator, love your outfit" or fava-beans-and-Chianti lines delivered by Hopkins that were written for the movie. /UN-QUOTE/

Of course, there is no argument that Hopkins has made the role his own, and the movies featuring his performances have achieved success well beyond that achieved by Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986).

However, is it really possible that the pantomime villain personality that Hopkins portrays Lecter to be, could have gotten away with his crimes for so long, without raising suspicions in the minds of the psychopath hunting detectives with whom he had regular contact? How did he not stand out as stranger than the criminals he was supposed to be dealing with?

As Barra points out /QUOTE/ Cox lures you in a bit, then deadpans the kicker. Looking over the files of the serial killer he has agreed to help Graham catch, he asks, almost as an afterthought, "Would you like to leave me your home phone number, Will?" The way Cox delivers that makes it the most chilling line in all four Hannibal Lecter movies. /UN-QUOTE/

So, who is more convincing as Hannibal Lecktor/Lecter, Brian Cox or Anthony Hopkins? Support you position if possible.

The Wikipedia plot summary for the 2009 David Twohy movie "A Perfect Getaway" includes the phrase "at some point on the island, Kale and Cleo are arrested by the police." Does this suggest that the author fell asleep during the performance?

In other words, is it possible to provide the answer to a question that hasn't already been asked on Yahoo!Answers, without breaking the Community Guidelines?

To explain: my motive for joining the community was based on a sudden moment of inspiration, when I realised that a problem, that had at first seemed practically impossible to solve, actually had an almost trivial solution.

So the first thing I did was Google, to see if anyone else had considered the problem and come up with a solution. And when it turned up nothing, I really thought that I might be onto something.

Yahoo!Answers appeared pretty high up the list of "non-hits" though. So I thought it would be the ideal place to share my knowledge.

Unfortunately, I discovered almost immediately that in order for me to provide my answer to the problem, I needed for someone else to have asked the related question before me.

And that's the problem. Because in order to get someone else to ask the question, I'd have to break the Community Guidelines.

And there's the irony. Because the solution to the problem isn't really any good to me. But I can't share my knowledge on Yahoo!Answers because of the Community Guidelines, even though it might transform somebody else's life for the good.

What I am to do?

How can I answer a question on Yahoo!Answers that no one has sought to ask?

I was wondering what sort of questions would be worth asking and answering in order to improve my points score. So I thought I would take a look at what sort of questions the top answerers in my category of interest were dealing with. And, do you know, I found that I couldn't tell. But in the process I discovered something rather unusual.

I have a percentage of Best Answer scores somewhere in the mid teens, of which I am quite proud. Of course, I wouldn't offer an answer that I didn't think was worthy of a Best Answer award. Nevertheless I accept that I wont always win, because no one's perfect, and there are always more than one way of choosing a Best Answer. What I found out though, was that some Yahoo!Answers members are more perfect than others.

In my category of interest, almost without exception, the top scorers had Best Answer percentages in excess of 50%. And some were managing much higher success rates than that. So I wondered was this typical? And that's when a rather unusual coincidence revealed itself to me. Because looking at the top scorers' Best Answer percentages across the main Yahoo!Answers categories confirmed that, almost without exception, they were unusually high. But that wasn't the most unusual thing that I discovered.

I was curious about what type of genius knowledge such rates must result from? So I thought I would take a look at what sorts of questions and answers they tackle. And that's when I discovered something that was an amazing coincidence. That across the major categories, with the exception of only two top scorers (ONLY TWO!) everyone with a Best Answer success rate in excess of 30% kept their lists of questions and answers secret. So it was impossible to tell how the vast majority of these community members achieved their phenomenal success rate.

And that's the problem, because if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

So, is points cheating common amongst top answerers?

What are the odds of this down-to-earth Hollywood stalwart pulling off the double? In-spite of her sometimes reckless acceptance of put-bread-on-the-table parts, Bullock has more than once demonstrated talent to raise her to the top of the acting pile. Let's hope that Members of the Academy make amends for previously overlooking her outstanding contribution to Crash, by this time doing the right thing.