I wonder how people might compare this to In The Flesh, which had a similarly "grounded" take on zombification. In The Flesh was of course considerably darker, and looked at zombies through the lens of discrimination and was often awfully on-the-nose. (Wondering whether a guy kills his zombie son because h is a zombie…

When I was in college some of the foreign students had a funny trick with that (for a few months anyway) to buy booze. Their IDs (passports, sometimes, since they didn't have anything else people in upstate NY would take) had that non-US date convention, so if your birthday was, say, 1st December you could buy beer…

Susan B Anthony (who is on the old dollar coin already) would qualify. Mother Jones for sure. Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Fun mathematical fact: the reason every other nation (or at least the vast majority) have coins and denominations in 1, 2, 5 and then 10, 20, 50, 100, etc. is because that allows any numerical combination with the smallest number of coins.

@fawlty:disqus and @PeterGreyy:disqusI wasn't thinking of total non-comedy about the apocalypse, more the issues of human relationships…

The minimum number is actually about 25 pairs or thereabouts, this has been shown in laboratory mammals and can be worked out mathematically too (first cousins can have kids without major issues most of the time, but genetics is a bit of a crapshoot and you don't want to be the unlucky couple with some rare…

I want to watch this, I haven't yet— but does it go to dark "The Quiet Earth" territory?

I have to say I read the book at about that age and had taken a few wilderness survival courses for kids (kind of like boy scouts but run by hippies) and a part of me wanted to run off and do that. I actually had thought it through a bit — and then realized how hard it would actually be. I will say his city living…

I find it interesting that you reference My Side of the Mountain and The Island of Blue Dolphins. Both were staples of the book-report assignments given when I was in grade school and junior high. I'm a bit older than Ryan Vlastelica, so the first book resonated a bit more, perhaps because Sam Gribley's experience…

A huge problem is that anyone who is an expert can run rings around someone who doesn't know the right questions.

Don't worry, me and my friends still joke with it occasionally — we remember too!

Some of my first copied-from-vinyl cassettes were New Order.

I just find it odd that this is the theme song for the New York Yankees beetwen innings.

Y'know, thinking about this a bit — I was born in 1969, and saw the Monkees in syndication on local UHF stations. (WLVI Channel 56 in Boston, for those interested).

What bothers me is
a) Bill O'Reilly did some good work once. He was a reporter and styles himself as one now. (See his book if you don't believe it).
b) he did more than just "inflate his credentials." You could actually make that case for Williams as well.
c) Williams can at least claim he was in a war zone and be…

Miller had, initially, no reason to think that some of her sources were wrong. My problem with Miller is that she didn't bother checking, because she too was invested in believing it. Con men make use of the fact that people want to believe — and are reluctant to admit they are wrong. It's a classic example of…

No, just that the whole relationship between the news organizations, the reporters, and the way the administration tried to make sure things were reported their way is complicated. But Williams and other people at last made an effort. I don't like the product Williams or for that matter people like Judith Miller put…

I'm not giving him a pass. I am saying that Williams, whatever his faults, wasn't reporting from say, Istanbul. O'Reilly takes it a step further.

Working reporter here.

on that point I don't disagree entirely, I think part of what I was getting at is defining what's unique and not derivative can be a dicey business — even in writing. I mean, nobody would accuse George Lucas of Plagiarism, but Star Wars is a classic hero's journey that has been don before. On the other hand Battlestar…