I'm fortunate in having discovered Lem when I was in my 20s.

To be critical, this argument would be fine if history were driven by probability.

I'm not going to go into the several aspects of the series that bug me, since they've already been discussed by others. I do think that X-Files made a lot more sense than Fringe does, although of course they never brought in multiple universes and time travel.

What's the problem there? That sounds like an excellent decision.

When the first promo shots were released, I thought this looked like X-Men: The Breakfast Club. But now it looks more like X-Men: A Separate Peace.

Maybe I'm forgetting something, but it doesn't seem like Spielberg has a great history of racial diversity in his work, as great as a lot of it has been. He's really notable for his ability to work with children and in his WWII-based films, but not diversity.

I know you've seen it and I haven't, but for whatever reasons, Spielberg doesn't have a great history with television, so I'll be going into the series with a little skepticism about how long the show will run.

I was under the impression that the flammability of the Hindenburg was due to the chemical coating of the shell - and hence, the accident was not due to the hydrogen.

I don't necessarily blame Syfy for canceling SGU overall. It does seem like SGU wasn't accepted by SG fans very well. But I agree with you that Syfy made some bad decisions with SGU, maybe because they were assuming that SG fans would pick up SGU without much advertising. If anything, they should have pulled the…

I've enjoyed this series, not having seen anything SG-related since the original movie, which I saw for James Spader. Although SGU has had all the right ingredients for a longer run, it was never as tight as BSG or Fringe. Both of those moved right along. There were also a few too many Gray's Anatomy-style montages…

I was thinking that the writers would give the characters some insight into the drones and the two factions. Maybe find some artifacts or evidence of their civilization, etc. Not unlike the Cylons in BSG: they're there to put constant pressure on the Destiny, ending the season in a cliffhanger, leaving us at the…

I suspect that the writers were going to incorporate the history of the drones into the third season's plot. Kind of like how the Reavers in Firefly got revealed in Serenity.

I've seen more than one Android tablet on Fringe. One was I think a 7" Galaxy Tab, the other you're referring to was possibly a Xoom.

I can't wait to find out what the Ford Focus looks like in 15 years.

Good point. Maybe it helps them identify food and/or predators, or to engage in group-related emergent behavior of other kinds. It's probably this more general idea, about how having more sensory processing capacity is "better" for a species, that makes it seem to be a good analogue for "brain power" in general. …

It seems to me (maybe this is an incorrect assessment) that in this genus of fish, reproduction is dependent upon the weak electrical signals that allow individuals to identify mates, because of the environment in which they live. This identification of conspecifics by signaling in those genera that develop higher…

My suggestion: read more Moorecock. You could also check out Roger Zelazny. I read both of them around the same time.

The one thing that I was wondering: when Sam Weiss was looking through the window, which universe was he standing in, and which was he observing? Were there any indicators at all? At first in that scene, we seemed to be looking at a vortex-event on this side - otherwise, it wouldn't seem to be worth looking at. …

Scientists are no more and no less religious than the general population. In particular, there have been plenty of scientists who regard what they do as a pursuit of understanding God's creation or of grasping the "ideas that lie in the mind of God." Science does not ultimately address questions about the existence…

I think Peter was rejected because the machine was already turned on. Walternate managed to get around Peter's attunement to the machine by using Peter's son's DNA. It seems that only the Observers, and possibly Sam Weiss, know enough about the machine to explain what its original purpose was. Originally, the Peter…