In ours, there was no "F", it was just "E", all the way through high school. E was failure, a zero grade point, no room to maneuver. People would say it was "E for Excellent", but that was never funny.

Troi's Mom episodes had that feel like they were trying to expand their viewership to demographics that wouldn't normally watch Star Trek (presumably that elusive creature known as "woman" or possibly "girl") but had no real idea how to do it, and just alienated their core audience for no gain. Sort of like BSG being…

My favorite part of Angel One is how clear it was that the planet had maybe 20 people on it - at least that's how I remember it. I know with TV budgets showing a something that looks like a fully-inhabited planet takes actual skill, but in Angel One, it's just comic.

Picard Maneuver
Than one always bugged me - it seemed so obvious and yet we're supposed to think that in the history of Starfleet no one had even considered it? I know it's important to make our heroes be "smarter", but by making something any drunken first-year cadet could spit out proof of genius, it just makes the…

Our school system (Seattle) uses (or used anyway) Es instead of Fs. Rumor was that an E would be less damaging to the kid's psyche than the "harsher" F, but it was still failure.

So like that part of Forrest Gump where they pretend they're about to let him actually say something at the rally, then they cut the mike? I.e., there was nothing to say in the first place.

Wouldn't making a show that showed advanced alien technology deeply integrated into human life, be, well, really expensive to film? Everything thing about this show says "overreach", with hamfisted politics, horrible green-screen, no momentum, unappealing characters, etc. I'm all for ambition, but you need to actually…

Real or Obligatory?
When you dare stupid people to react, it would be pretty unusual for no one to. The question is whether this is some group anyone, anywhere has heard of before, or just a couple of guys in a basement somewhere who took the bait, and now we can have news reports of a threat by nobody that will never…

I can't be sure the me that I think I am when I just typed "e" is the same one when I got to "d", and that it isn't just some endless succession of unique self-aware quantum snapshots endlessly cycling. But for sanity's sake, practically, I have to assume that I maintain a continuous sense of self and animus. Whereas…

Basic point of view, sense of self. If I make an exact copy of me, I can't access their thoughts, make their decisions or see through their eyes . The set of incoming stimuli and resulting awareness is "me", which a copy of me would have no access to, nor would they mine.

My favorite was the episode where they all became children and it was treated like a catastrophic event. They'd just discovered eternal youth via age-based regeneration, and yet no one seemed at all interested in making sure they can replicate the process. Granted, this is Trek, so if they had I'm sure they would've…

To me, the transporter seems totally anti-secular. If a person is just atoms, then destroying them and recreating them creates a copy, and the original POV dies. It's no different from being killed and having some clone wake up somewhere take over - *you* never wake up and *you* find out if you picked the right…

Was Adam West too busy?

Eh, kids don't write screenplays - adults who are glad they aren't kids anymore do. So most of the time it's just little adults talking - kids swear all the time, but usually still do so while talking like kids. Of course if they watch enough movies, they start to ape the "little adults" stuff, and it gets surreal as…

At the core or every modern ideology is a huge chunk of stupid, and once you crawl down to that center, we can all stand united, screaming about things we don't understand, shouting rants that contradict themselves within single sentences and being proudly secure in knowing we're the shining united majority.

Sure, but the same people will complain that this or that icon implies something that causes them a vague unease, so they are afraid to push the button that gives the pellet. Freedom from fear! They've paid into the plan, they've earned that pellet - no more oppressing their beliefs!

Yeah, I pretty much gave up on the show when it stopped being about characters and instead just used them to react to things. Part of it was I found that the reactions were superficial and really didn't have much to say beyond "look at that thing you already dodn't like - we don't like it, too!", but it also stopped…

As ridiculous as it sounds, I found Uma's feet extremely unattractive in Kill Bill 1, and now when I think of her "ugly feet" is always an immediate second thought.

You'd be surprised how many bridge undersides have wi-fi now.

All humans have a gender - to make a robot to be a human, you kind of have to pick one (or make it explicitly hermaphroditic I guess). They can apply that gender how they want, but if you make a "non-functional" robot, you essentially damn it to being a subhuman. The value of making a robot designed to pretend to be a…