You sure you didn't want to pick Starbuck or Tigh?

Man, it would have been so awesome if they had done what Apollo 13 did and filmed the zero-g close-ups on the Vomit Comet. You can always tell that the motion isn't *quite* right when it's wirework.

Definitely. So many more people went into this movie than Card - I'm more than happy to support them all.

The Hobbit doesn't need 3, either. It needs about....1.

Not if they have any sense of pragmatism. Metal inserts would be exactly what an enemy would punch to cause lots of damage.

Once you really get thinking about it, "but the version on Elementary is better" is a good way to end any statement about those two shows.

Ah, yes. The clip where we establish the evil villain's evilness by showing him unnecessarily killing one of his own men, in the most outlandish and implausible way the director could imagine.

Looks like a radar tracking antenna, similar to the US Space Fence.

Educators in technical fields also often encourage bad writing. They place a premium on the passive voice, for example, which can unnecessarily complicate a statement. And don't even get me started on acronyms and abbreviations.

Please excuse the lame photoshoppery...but it's all I can think of.

This just about nailed the experience of going out to eat with half a dozen other aerospace engineering grad students.

It's only a short step from here to...

How about the Genesis probe? It collected solar wind particles, with the aim of returning them to Earth.

That landing system was actually the least risky landing that would accomplish the mission. They evaluated and rejected many other architectures before settling on the SkyCrane, and then they tested the crap out of it before it went to Mars.

Unless they have a purpose: for instance, if the author has developed an actual language (instead of coming up with random "cool-sounding" combinations of sounds) and it stands for a glottal stop. Compare and contrast the "words" in Eragon with Klingon, for example.

Oh, man! Ozzie and Tochee for the win. Good call.

I'm okay with that.

Character's don't trump plot - characters are integral to the plot. That's why the first 2.5 seasons of BSG are far superior to the last 1.5.

And regarding Pluto -