(Spartacus Spoilers, continued)

He did get the torch, though.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/u…

He did get the torch, though.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/u…

Possibly I'm just blanking, but what are the other films that "yet another 'regular dudes gaining superpowers' origin story" is referring to?  I really can't pull in anything but X-Men.  Or is it just that this is a pretty common storytelling trope across media?

Possibly I'm just blanking, but what are the other films that "yet another 'regular dudes gaining superpowers' origin story" is referring to?  I really can't pull in anything but X-Men.  Or is it just that this is a pretty common storytelling trope across media?

I guess this is probably more important to you than me.  I wasn't trying to compare them and make a moral judgment of one over the other.  To rephrase, I can see NBC being blatantly biased but wanting to appear neutral, and I guess there is some value in that for Olympians who train in the US and compete for other…

I guess this is probably more important to you than me.  I wasn't trying to compare them and make a moral judgment of one over the other.  To rephrase, I can see NBC being blatantly biased but wanting to appear neutral, and I guess there is some value in that for Olympians who train in the US and compete for other…

NBC certainly isn't neutral but it is true that you'd rarely hear somebody blatantly referring to the US as "we" outside the commercials.  I think it's ok to be completely nationalistic in their book so long as you hide the strings (and a lot of athletes from other countries also live/compete/have friends and family…

NBC certainly isn't neutral but it is true that you'd rarely hear somebody blatantly referring to the US as "we" outside the commercials.  I think it's ok to be completely nationalistic in their book so long as you hide the strings (and a lot of athletes from other countries also live/compete/have friends and family…

Agreed that it's not really a found-footage movie and you make many salient points, but dang, now I'm completely sidetracked by wanting to see a well-done book featuring a first-person narrator slowly developing telepathy. 

Agreed that it's not really a found-footage movie and you make many salient points, but dang, now I'm completely sidetracked by wanting to see a well-done book featuring a first-person narrator slowly developing telepathy. 

That's certainly true, but in this case I think we have an enduring example of just taking stuff that you'd like to have biblical authority and hanging it on an arbitrary part of the text.  Even in the old King James, there's nothing in the actual text that suggests Ham is or became a different race than his…

That's certainly true, but in this case I think we have an enduring example of just taking stuff that you'd like to have biblical authority and hanging it on an arbitrary part of the text.  Even in the old King James, there's nothing in the actual text that suggests Ham is or became a different race than his…

Approximation of like!  http://www.qwantz.com/index…

Approximation of like!  http://www.qwantz.com/index…

Absolutely on the weird masochistic dance of death.  When I realize I'm reading Jezebel, it's usually my signal that it's 3 am, I'm depressed and I need to go to bed.

Absolutely on the weird masochistic dance of death.  When I realize I'm reading Jezebel, it's usually my signal that it's 3 am, I'm depressed and I need to go to bed.

Good night, that is just such a mindblowingly callous thing to do.  I hope but doubt whoever did it got caught.  Glad there was no physical danger, but geez.

Me too.  I felt absolutely sick finding out what happened… I mean, I imagine everybody did, but realizing that something that was a great experience for me was suddenly and retroactively linked with that kind of horror was just such whiplash.  We decided to talk about the movie too, though I have no idea how to do it…

I don't know how this works at all.  It sure seems like they should be able to sell the rights for an obscene amount of money or a percentage of the profits though, and then everyone could become disgustingly rich and I would get to see a good movie.