Hell, he could take a card from Trump's deck and point out that Superman is a *literal* illegal alien who didn't enter America legally.

That always gets pointed out as a "stupid" line, and while the movie itself is stupid, that line actually encapsulates the whole idea of why we find scenarios like "The Terminator" so scary. Irrationally or not, we feel things we create should have some loyalty to us and betrayal hits hard.

Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci had a murderous clown in the 19th century. I think that counts, as opera was pop culture back then. Plus, you may remember that Sideshow Bob put on a performance of it in the episode where he was married with a family in Italy.

Well, they weren't really "unknown" — Lovecraft was writing in the 1920s and 1930s — Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were certainly known at the time, but they were new enough to be shocking.

I'm a big Lovecraft fan, but yes, Bruce Sterling kind of put it well when he said the problem with Lovecraft is that the scary thing is learning dangerous Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Which kind of lost power after the Manhattan Project where such things became real and a fact of life.

I always thought it was kind of cool how Lovecraft stole that cry from Poe's "Pym" (where it was unexplained).

Not really. PhDs have to demonstrate the ability to generate original work in their field. MDs just have to not flunk out of their program. There are a *lot* of MDs that are creationists and various other sorts of crazy.

Not to forget Thaiphoon near Dupont Circle, if we are on the topic of punny DC Thai restaurants.

No, he isn't arguing that people burned Buddy Holly at the stake, he's saying everything bad that happened afterwords (JFK getting shot, Vietnam, etc.) was a consequence of his death. Basically the modern equivalent would be claiming Cobain's suicide caused 9/11.

Part of the problem is that "classical" in popular parlance includes centuries of music with quite different styles. I prefer Bach and Vivaldi to Mozart myself, but those are technically baroque rather than classical in the literal sense.

I'd say the Spiraling Shape. Nobody knows what it's really like, but everyone says it's great.

Yes, but that doesn't mean the definitions are meaningful. "Scientism" is meaningless because it supposes the idea that there are problems that are outside of science and are better addressed by other methods. The problem is if you could really show that a non-scientific method worked better, *that* would become part…

What exactly were the problems presented that weren't problems you faced? Yes, they weren't third world problems dealing with ability to get enough food not to starve, but they seemed pretty universal problems beyond that,

No, it really doesn't. By definition, a "Fundamentalist" needs a a Fundament that is unchanging. For Christian Fundamentalists, that's the Bible. There isn't any such thing for science. Scientists know that science changes over time. In fact, that's how you become a success in science; by showing that earlier…

"Scientism" is a meaningless term. By definition, if you think science isn't the best way to understand a problem, you need to provide evidence — which science would accept, if valid.

Exactly. At least in the US, the vast majority of atheists grew up in religious households. It isn't that we don't *get* religion — we just grew out of it.

Basically the Koran is just bad Biblical fan-fiction, just like the Book of Morman.

The problem is that "contemplating what other connections between us " isn't very fucking mysterious and can be adressed by science as much as anything else is. That's what science *is* — by definition — the best way to adress any question. If any other method could be shown to be better, *that* would be science.

They did a Go scene in "A Beautiful Mind" that was pretty laughable even to a 10k player like myself.

He seized the whole Southwest from Mexico. Made sure the tariffs fell. And made the English sell the Oregon Territory. He built an independent treasury. Having done all this he sought no second term. But precious few have mourned the passing of Mister James K. Polk, our eleventh president Young Hickory, Napoleon of…