Recommended reading: "The Worst Journey in the World", by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the expedition members who Scott didn't manage to get killed. Reading between the lines, you can often see Cherry-Garrard struggling not to say anything negative about Scott, because gentlemen do not speak ill of the dead. He…

I want Hugo Weaving to play a villain in "The Hobbit", just because I want to hear him say: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here ... Hobbits are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague, and we are the cure."

As the years went by, he grew. When he had first gone in, when the ice had first opened up under the blades of his skates, he had been ten years old and small for his age. His clothes - woolen trousers, winter jacket, heavy wool sweater - dragged him under, sodden with water and heavy as a suit of armor, pulling him…

I am now picturing the world's smallest serial killer, dissolving the bodies of his mouse victims in teeny-tiny bathtubs filled with Mountain Dew ...

"In the blue corner, Darth "Noooo!" Vader, right-hand cyborg of the sinister Dark Emperor. And in the red corner, Lieut. John "Pepper-Spray" Pike. Let the battle of champions begin. Seconds out, round one!"

So ... you think my cycle of stories about Sookie Stark, a heavily-bearded Southern girl who hunts monsters in the basements of a giant medieval kingdom full of castles covered in Spanish moss has a chance of publication? I'll start drafting my cover letters now ...

Turn up at your next political demo with a sign reading "I am the 44%!" (or 36%, depending), and wait for the knowing looks from the public health wonks in the crowd.

This isn't the only use of pink for camouflage. During WWII, some warships were experimentally painted in 'Mountbatten Pink' [[en.wikipedia.org]], because a pinkish color performed well during dawn and dusk hours (but was less effective during full daylight).

@CodenameV writes: "What would the *psychological* impact be on those few that survived? Literally 9 out of every 10 persons dead? That's the apocalypse."

That sounds just horrid. I'm going to go back to reading cheery, uplifting apocalypse stories like "On the Beach" and "The Road".

There's nothing like contemplating the Heat Death of the universe to give you a much-needed feeling of complete and utter futility.

Makes it sound as if getting tangled up in red tape could be a good thing.

Nice point. I hadn't thought of that. Eventually, it will merge into one giant series called "The Chronicles of Ripley", with Vin Diesel playing the part of Sigourney Weaver.

Mr Scott? "Chronicles of Riddick" called. They want their "running desperately to escape being crushed by a falling spaceship" sequence back. Said they even used it in _their_ trailer, and they think you've even stolen their camera angles. Pls call them.

"Waiting for someone to die to receive an organ transplant" is arguably less barbaric than the alternative: not waiting for them to die.

This confirms the hypothesis put forward in a recent io9 post that you can improve anything by adding "... in space!" to the end.

Well, duh. What do you think _caused_ the American Civil War of 2013?

And so, by sending food aid to famine-ravaged parts of the developing world, we are inadvertently cheating the people there out of their chance to become immortal geniuses. How's that for irony?

You had me at "Blake's Seven". Of course, you pretty much un-had me with most of the rest, but I'd kill (or at least maim very severely) to see B7 get reworked with better production values, better acting, and all the darkness, ambiguity and dystopianism turned up to 11.

Ducks do this on ice too. I remember seeing an RSPB film years ago of mallards trying to land on a frozen pond. Very funny to watch, unless you happen to be a mallard.