There are some really interesting physical problems time travel presents (conservation of mass/energy is one).

The problem is that it involves a stereotypical character ("I'm gonna BE something!") AND he gets to inspire Chuck Berry and essentially invent rock'n'roll. The first is shorthand, and it's used badly.

The problem is that the comedy isn't about the people rewarding him, necessarily. The jokes are mostly aimed at anti-war people, black people (see the black panther guy) and they end up not being satire, but the kind of jokes your right wing grandpa tells about hippies.

But it's not that gentle.

Haven't watched this yet but now I think I want to.

I see the posters for this movie in the subway all the time and it's bloody disturbing.

Speaking of guns — the other issue is that the temperatures and pressures in one necessitate metals. (There are some ceramic compounds that might work but they are often too brittle). A plastic gun with a plastic barrel and feeder mechanism is likely to blow your hand off.

Printing custom pieces may not be as easy as you think. Even accounting for improvements to the technology, there's a reason no other company in say, China was able to churn out cut-price knockoffs. Lego bricks are all made within micrometer tolerances. The machines they use are the same types they use to make…

The thing I remember — and I could be wrong — was that, to junior-high me, Men At Work sounded like nothing I'd heard before. Coming of age in the 80s, getting the slew of bands from the UK and Australia, was something of an eye-opener for a kid whose peers were mostly into heavy metal. And yeah, the flute riff is…

Worth noting: take a look at where we were 500 years ago. It was 1515. At that point the dress of most well-appointed men was, by modern standards, pretty elaborate and time-consuming. The fashionable guy in 1500 would have had a doublet, linen shirt underneath, and hose by 1510 or so. The codpiece came into fashion a…

Reading this stuff about Michael Caine makes me think the guy is just a hell of an actor, period. That is, there's something to be said for someone that hard-working. Yeah, you need the paycheck, but he never seemed to go all "I'm too good for this." He gave it his all every time.

I think that's an important point to make. I am not a hard-core gamer or anything; I am way, way out of the age group that they traditionally market to. I don't have the hours in a day to devote to Bioshock or Walking Dead or World of Warcraft and let's face it, those require a LOT of hours.

apropos of @avclub-97815cb302c2a984aac3af1ee8f68e8d:disqus — a HUGE misconception about copyright is that whether you make money from it is the criterion. It isn't. To give an example: The Small Street Journal — a children's newspaper that was published in Maine — was hit up by the Wall Street Journal back in '99 for…

I thought of the 'scopes because there is a scene where you can see a couple of Newtonians (also a weird thing to have but whatever) in the background, and aside from that, even if the first few astronomers on board were "in the know" you can't have a mission like that without having any experts in the sciences at…

I haven't plowed through the whole comments list, but welcome to real science in science fiction!

I suspect it was also a reflection of particularly American seasonal patterns. That is, in Europe Jews don't make a big deal of Hanukkah either. But one thing is that both Jews and Christians (being in the same workplaces) will tend to have December days off, and since everyone is off work anyway, it stands to reason…

Also my sense is that Jackson wanted to include a lot of material from the Silmarillion and that was a big part of the reason it got stretched to three movies. But yes, I get the sense that Jackson didn't really get that brevity is a virtue and it's part of what makes The Hobbit work.

Have any of the people you describe ever met a Mexican? Seen the Day of the Dead stuff on TV, even? Eaten at a Taco Bell, for crying out loud?

Other fun fact: the cartoonist who gave us that picture of Santa Claus was none other than Thomas Nast, the bane of Boss Tweed.

I'm going to throw out something about A Charlie Brown Christmas. That show did a lot to make Christmas what it is today.