Yeah, I agree about the heat and cold ones.

It's normal to alternate between light and deep sleep during the night, and in the light periods you may actually wake up. The graphic doesn't show this, though.

A good twist is one that changes your interpretation of what you've already seen. Such films are best watched at least twice, to get both interpretations. If you go in spoiled, then the second time you watch is much the same as the first time, and you miss out. It is an objectively lesser experience.

Again with the assumptions. In some stories, zombies are mystical things, and animals avoid them because they are unholy. In some stories, animals can be affected, and even rats may learn to avoid zombies because they don't want to become zombie rats. In many stories there are old zombies, so something prevents them…

It's a fun article, but full of assumptions which may not apply. For example, wild animals may not want to eat zombies. In some stories, what causes zombies is a virus that spreads through the air, not from biting, and all living people are already infected and will inevitably become zombies when they die.

My plan is to be inside our Big Brother house when it happens. I'm sure that will work out just fine.

It is legally enforced, and if this ruling sticks the film won't make any money from the UK.

Without a certificate it cannot legally be sold in British stores or online, or in a cinema without special permission from the local authority. It may still be legal to own and watch, or to import from somewhere outside UK jurisdiction.

You know it's been done? There was a story called "The Three Doctors" in 1972, involving all then-known incarnations, and then another called "The Five Doctors" in 1983, ditto. That was Davidson, Baker, Pertwee, Troughton and Hartnell.

As found on YouTube. A search for "28 Smurfs Later" should find it if the link doesn't work. Still makes me shiver.

I think the Evil Dead reference is not so much to POV in general as the specific door-slamming chase sequence.

I hope that answer is "yes". The show isn't perfect, but a great many people love it.

Arguably we'd be better off if everyone did what he did. Not the gourmet chef part - an ordinary chef will do, or indeed anyone qualified to make sure the animal didn't suffer unduly. The butcher part is just normal - a butcher prepares all the meat I buy from supermarkets.

I certainly wouldn't want to say that entities are persons if and only if they are human. So I don't agree with the argument that says AIs can never be persons because they are not human. It's a bit like saying whether something is music depends on whether it is stored on a vinyl or a CD. What matters is the qualities…

Charlie Brooker has a series called Screenwipe which often has features on how TV is made. One episode in particular sounds similar, although being British it was more about writers than showrunners. Series 4, ep3:

British shows tend to be all written by one person, and the notion of a show-runner who marshals a group of writers is rare. Moffat was known before Dr Who, but he was known as the writer of Coupling et al, not the show-runner for it. Looking at IMDB, Moffat wrote all 28 episodes. Similarly Ben Richards was identified…

Whether an entity is a person depends on its qualities. Early foetuses don't have the required qualities; Pixar toys and fictional AIs do. An early foetus is precious because it can grow into a person, not because it already is one. What's screwed up is rejecting this evidence-driven view in favour of some sentimental…

They had to build a Tardis, which was only possible because (a) they were surrounded with the wreckage of other Tardises and (b) they had Sexy to energise it. They had to get Orange and Pretty to let down the shields before they could board. Then they had to get Sexy into the active control room, which involved…

Yes. So someone else might be simulating us from a universe that has no such time limit, but our ability to simulate other universes is limited. So we might be at, or close to, the bottom of the simulation hierarchy. That the hierarchy does have a bottom undoes the philosophical argument somewhat, because there…

Yes. I have it installed. I hear you can get add-ons for it that will remove the DRM from Mobipocket books, but they aren't provided by Amazon, and aren't legal to use, so they don't let Amazon off the hook.