I was one of probably about 10 people in the country who saw the "Spoiler Alert" sketch from Portlandia when I was at the exact point in The Wire where it was a huge spoiler. I wouldn't say my viewing experience was "ruined," but it did suck all the suspense out of that subplot to know how it was going to end.

Eh, the premise of your original comment was that the profit motive can't be trusted to supply "essential human needs," which is plainly and easily shown to be nonsense. Whatever price controls Canada sets on basic foodstuffs (well above the market-clearing price, or otherwise made viable through subsidies, I'm sure)…

@avclub-beb03303ab8f72f9975ac7de4fc65ee3:disqus "I can't imagine living in a country where a for-profit business had anything to do with my most essential human needs."

I'm in the process of rereading all of them. I'm only just starting Heretics but I will make a pretty strong case for CoD and GEoD. I think CoD adds a lot of depth to Herbert's treatment of the problems with prescience, and GEoD is probably one of the best examinations of hyper-longevity that has yet been written.…

@LurkyMcLurkerson:disqus  Now I feel like I threw around the term "deconstruction" with DS9 a bit too casually. For the most part I agree with your take on the series. I do think there is a *bit* of a corrective issued to Roddenberry's vision with DS9, in the form of injecting a little humility into it. There's a sort…

Um, have you never watched any DS9? It did Star Trek deconstruction before it was cool, certainly to a much greater extent than TNG.

I've had the good fortune never to have read the Brian Herbert / Kevin J. Anderson tag team Dune novels, and I plan to keep it that way. The die-hard Dune fans at the Jacurutu forum swear that once you've read them it becomes very difficult to keep the BH-KJA schlock separate from Frank Herbert's original canon in…

@avclub-9ff7c9eb9d37f434db778f59178012da:disqus

"… you can't even talk about gun control after dozens of kindergartners get massacred."

Eh, their argument with the secondhand smoke episode didn't really hinge on whether it's all that dangerous anyway. Their broader point about the bullshit of public smoking bans is still a perfectly valid one.

How about Jeremy Irons? Here's some of his work in Dungeons & Dragons: http://www.youtube.com/watc…

The audience I saw it with was terrible. Took them about 100 lines from Samuel L. Jackson to realize he was one of the villains and stop giggling at every thing he said.

"How do I act so well? What I do is I *pretend* to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play … How did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me."

"Wall Street reform", LOL. From the guy who promoted Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to his Treasury Department. Dodd-Frank is a show bill that will be easily gamed. Obama's thoroughly in Wall Street's pocket and helped neuter the drive for regulatory reform post-crisis, mostly because most of his supporters can be…

@avclub-94d231f11cdc1fae024849f33f7a7156:disqus

@avclub-94d231f11cdc1fae024849f33f7a7156:disqus

@AHyperkineticLagomorph:disqus 
Even granting Rawls' lottery outlook, I'm not so sure that his conclusion — make everything as equal as possible via government redistribution of income & wealth — necessarily and immediately follows. Only a utopian would say that the government will be able to eliminate *all* unfairness…

@AHyperkineticLagomorph:disqus 
Even granting Rawls' lottery outlook, I'm not so sure that his conclusion — make everything as equal as possible via government redistribution of income & wealth — necessarily and immediately follows. Only a utopian would say that the government will be able to eliminate *all* unfairness…

@avclub-f6f154417c4665861583f9b9c4afafa2:disqus 
I specifically mentioned that there are people for whom luck plays a huge, even predominant role. Kudos to your bro for being one of the ones fate smiled upon. (I've worked in the Sears Tower myself, it's an interesting, sometimes unpredictable building.) That doesn't…

@avclub-f6f154417c4665861583f9b9c4afafa2:disqus 
I specifically mentioned that there are people for whom luck plays a huge, even predominant role. Kudos to your bro for being one of the ones fate smiled upon. (I've worked in the Sears Tower myself, it's an interesting, sometimes unpredictable building.) That doesn't…