I for one welcome our new movie-maker overlords.

I didn't much like Avatar as a movie, but I really liked that they came up with a plausible starship design. (Heck, even the 'mechs in the movie were plausible, if only because they were actually shown doing useful work aside from fighting, thus justifying their vaguely anthropomorphic appearance.)

In the short run, I think there would definitely be lots of people displaced by automation who simply don't have the skills to do anything else. It's unrealistic to think that every individual human worker will benefit from robots taking over our jobs. Many people will only be hurt.

But the Star Wars program was named after the movie. So really, someone should resurrect Zombie Reagan just so he can be sued by Disney. :P

Not word-for-word, but it's obviously pretty similar.

I think a really, really good story teller can make anything work, if it's approached the right way, including all-powerful heroes and villains.

As soon as I saw the article's title I thought "huh... I think I read something about this just recently, but where?"

I bet there's a way to turn that into a fascinating question on what it really means for matter to be "liquid" vs. "solid," on how molecular bonds hold an object together, and maybe something about surface tension thrown in for good measure. :P

Did the bacteria *survive* under these conditions, or did they *spread*? If the bacteria can withstand the conditions but can't actually replicate until it's brought into a more favourable environment, it may limit the extent of the contamination.

Minority Report was neither a really bad nor a really good film! It was pretty okay.

Meh. That 75-80% probably beats *my* personal ability to recognize faces. :P

Well I appreciate the long list of citations (though I'd raise an eyebrow on ones from the '70s and '80s on a topic like this — this is one subject where stuff from a couple of decades ago would be sorely outdated), but meh. Kids need two PARENTS to be healthy is what studies show, presumably because it's hard for one…

Couldn't there be some way to replicate the "mirror box" approach for phantom pain in the missing eye, assuming the sufferer still has one functioning eye left? For example, set up a camera to watch the person, and send the image to a screen in front of them, imitating a mirror. Use some digital tricks on the video…

Sadly, suicidal tendencies are frighteningly common. Depression is very, very common. It'd be an epidemic if anyone cared enough to call it an epidemic.

Maybe you could send Penabler $5 for one? :P

Uh, what? So your cousin was in a very bad situation as a kid, and a gay couple adopted him and gave him a home? Oh, how awful of them. Have those gay people no shame at all?

Merry friggin' Christmas, everyone.

I had to work hard to get into "Left Hand of Darkness," but it was worth it in the end. I guess what you say is generally true, though.

This has not been my experience. If anything, in my life I'd say I've seen men be on average far more emotional and irrational, and women be much more logical and practical, in just about everything — from careers to interpersonal relationships. But of course that's all anecdotal evidence either way. The social psych…

No. Not even remotely. The particular way that hierarchies work in our society in practice certainly is a construct of men, thanks to patriarchy, certainly. But I have absolutely no doubt that even if we achieved absolute gender equality, hierarchies of many forms would still remain. Perhaps they would look different.…