When we start building a trillion dollar security apparatus, reducing civil rights, and physically changing our transportation infrastructure and procedures to catch serial killers, we'll talk. Hunting them is different from restructuring our entire civil and military force structure around them. We don't really fund…

I think a lot of people also conflate "stomach flu" aka norovirus, with the flu because it involves fever and vomiting. But it's not related and it isn't even close.

Also, I'd imagine payphones would be the way to go in a space station - probably pretty hard to get 5 bars way out there, and the interstellar calling plan is probably a huge ripoff.

I've always been a bit of a PD fan; to me, the basic idea is that you don't want to risk a bunch of religious fundamentalists blowing up planets with antimatter bombs, or triggering a civilization-ending civil war. Basically until the culture is ready for advancement, don't mess with it. And it's absolutist to avoid…

Though "Look to Windward" is the story of how one of those interventions resulted in a massive civilization-smashing civil war. Which is sort of why the Federation has the Prime Directive in the first place. And the Culture has much better event modelling then the Feds.

I think if the Amazon thing happened, I'd go out and buy a 20-gauge specifically for drones. Why bother with hacking? Free skeet shooting!

It's only The Dirty Dozen if there is a rapist Telly Savalas.

Just remove parking space requirements from a lot of zoning laws, and you get a lot more walkable density. The worst development is the dense-suburban, with nothing walkable, but nothing really drivable either due to traffic. Rip out the parking and you're looking at nice livable development. I don't think anyone…

You don't need to have everyone in a manhattan-like space to have an efficient urban settlement pattern. Just take out the driveways and parking lots and things become a lot more walkable with more mass transit options, and much more dense. You can still have a backyard!

The first two seasons were indeed fairly terrible, so I don't blame you there - bad writing, very preachy, etc. There was even an episode with Space Pirates where they ended up taking the pirates' side! But the 3rd season is mostly watchable, and much of the 4th is very good. I'd put many 4th season episodes way above…

Cities are by far the best for the environment. If everyone moves to Montana, then Montana will become like the cities. Unless you're talking about lowering the population by exponential amounts, which would be another interesting puzzle.

Yes, way too much Voyager. Perhaps not quite enough Enterprise... the decent 4th season may be a little underrepresented.

There should also be a lot of head puns, eg "we'll never get a-HEAD if we keep going on like this!"

When you say "explode" I'm assuming you're referring to Olestra?

Hmmm, I may have to postpone that Hawaiian snorkeling vacation a bit longer, then.

And let's not forget the oodles of grant money! And the sun! Everyone always forgets about the sun!

You're actually travelling in a hollowed-out asteroid generation ship that spins to create artificial gravity, and no one told you. Like "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky."

Would you, could you, with a knife?

I think this question and the comments underscore one of our larger problems when dealing with pedophiles as a society. We simply don't want them to exist, period, so we're not very good at coming up with strategies for dealing with them other than locking them up and throwing away the key. Because of this, we don't…

Timothy Q Mouse takes a long drag on a cigarette. "Ever see an elephant tear a man in two? That's how my story begins..."