Being on the station definitely put a huge strain on their marriage, but that made it all the more realistic that they finally decided to move back to Earth in the final episode. It took him seven years, but O'Brien finally figured it out.

On the commentary track to "Back to the Future 3," writer Bob Gale actually talks about the lack of consistent timekeeping in the Old West and says they intentionally incorporated that into one scene. Marty and Doc are planning out their escape, but then Mad Dog Tannen upsets their plans by showing up early for the…

Actually, there was a real Alfred Einstein, who was a shirt-tail relation of Albert. He was a musicologist; I learned about him when working on my music degree.

Exactly. That, and the fact that they felt the need to bring back Khan at all, instead of doing something new. "It's just like Wrath of Khan... but in an alternate reality!"

And then there's the Star Trek corollary to this, which is that every new Trek movie needs to be compared to "Wrath of Khan." On the commentary track to "Generations," Braga and Moore say that they were told to make the villain of the film "like Khan." I think I remember seeing an interview where the makers of…

Agreed. Even most of Shakespeare's "original" dramas were based on pre-existing ancient myths. And lots of great modern works were, in turn, based on Shakespeare. There's really no way to isolate ourselves from our cultural influences.

I agree with you about jumping into the future. Looking back, it was a pretty huge risk in 1987 to start a new series that was set 75 years past TOS—but look at what a success TNG ended up being. I loved the ongoing story that was unfolding from TOS into TNG, DS9, and even Voyager, but then they abandoned that…

Also, of course, a question often explored in science fiction, to which these two guys will readily attest:

I've thought about that too... but I recall a Voyager episode where someone says something like "Well, we *could* go to warp while our inertial dampeners are offline, but unfortunately we'd all just be stains on the back wall."

Pretty cool. I remember seeing a scientist I know who does "Mad Science" shows for schools demonstrate that US paper money is also slightly magnetic (due to something in the ink, as I recall). I've demonstrated this to students myself before; if you have a very crisp dollar bill, it will indeed be attracted to a…

This is clever, but I've always liked the simple version quoted in Michio Kaku's Hyperspace:

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

Yeah, that bothered me too. I know what they mean, of course—seven objects in our solar system besides Earth visible to the naked eye—but even then, it's a stretch to call the moon and sun (or the moon, at least) "stellar" when their naked-eye appearance is completely different than other naked-eye stars.

Having read a few of the books, I found this fascinating as well. In the book version of "Live and Let Die" he gives a speech about how horrible it is that Americans use milk in their scrambled eggs. I do remember that in the movie version of "From Russia with Love" Sean Connery calls room service and gives a fairly…

Regarding #4: One of my favorite examples of this was in Arthur C. Clarke's "3001: The Final Odyssey" (the last book in his "2001" series).

And in the universe of "2001," the vertical format (which everyone complains about when a video is posted to YouTube in that format) apparently did finally catch on.

A friend of mine was fond of pointing out how different the Star Trek communicators actually are from modern cell phones. Sure, your smartphone can take pictures and play .mp3's, but can it call the International Space Station—*without the aid of a cell tower?* Those Star Trek communicators must contain incredibly…

I read all the Oz books as a kid—several times—and now am reading them to my daughter. I wonder if Baum had any idea Oz would still be popular 100 years later. (Though I'm sure every artist/author/composer has wondered that about their work from time to time—J. K. Rowling included!)

An appropriate analogy, given that 100 years ago in 1914 the Oz books were a popular series where readers eagerly anticipated the release of each new story... much as the Harry Potter books were in the early 2000's.

Beautiful! One of my favorite parts is at 1:53, where someone has apparently drawn a giant happy face into the dust of a crater on Iapetus in their spare time. :) I anticipate the day when we will feel so at home on other worlds!