Sorry, clearly you had a really bad day *virtual hug*.

If anyone is in the Seattle area today on Tuesday September 20th, you can go hear Mr. Stephenson do a reading from his latest work at 7:30pm. Seattle's paper, The Stranger, had an article about it (linked below). It seems he lives there. Here's the info:

I'm trying to remain hopeful, we have seen too little yet to despair.

Sadly, this version does not at all look like Barlowe's vision, which is my favorite too.

Perhaps "frozen" in ice isn't the correct way to think of it. This Thing possibly has assimilated many alien organisms over it's existence. It likely absorbs their genome and adds their characteristics to its own abilities. Now, possibly from the many organisms it has been, it could have acquired the ability to…

You are correct in that the events in this film occur just prior to the beginning of the John Carpenter film.

I highly agree with the recomendation by Grey_Area that anyone interested in this should read the short story "The Things" by Peter Watts. If fact I agree so much I'll provide a free link to the story on-line at Clarkesworld Magazine so you can do so:

I actually think you are correct in your interpretation of the Time Lords policing time. I think this was more or less explicitly stated in many classic episodes.

Well, to be correctly stated for Mars, he would be chained to reggolith in a submartian chamber?

This reminds me of a poem by Ogden Nash:

Keep in mind that this "circus clown" is one of the biggest internet celebrities ever, and that the site you are viewing is supported by advertising that is priced via the number of page views. It seems obvious that any such site would gladly run a story about the former, to maximize the latter.

Not that I'm aware of, clearly you've identified a missed business opportunity there. We need to get to talking with these Australian Aborigines!

Apparently, Nicola Tesla was involved in the discovery of the use of vibration to treat constipation. This was an accidental side effect of a vibration platform he had built to study the effects of different frequencies of vibration on objects and/or people. Whenever a person stood on this platform when it was tuned…

It's not currently legally availible to non-Starz subscribers in any form, except for the first episode which Comcast has availible for streaming on the XfinityTV site, and the live streaming via Netflix that has already been mentioned.

Methanol is indeed wood alcohol, however only small amounts of it are normally produced by yeast fermentation. That's apparently the trick in distilling one's own alcohol, you separate the ethanol from the others by carefully measuring the temperature, and only collecting the distillate from the correct temperature…

It would indeed be ethanol (drinking alcohol). That's the primary end result of yeast fermentation. As for flavor, not sure what mulch-whiskey might taste like. I suspect someone would try it though.

One would hope the yeast would be metabolically crippled somehow, so it couldn't exist in the outside world. However, you have a point. If it got loose and started to reproduce uncontrollably, wood and fiber everywhere would start to become alcohol.

There is a lot of genetic engineering solutions that have been proposed. One of my favorite ideas is to genetically engineer yeast to produce cellulase. That way they can break down the fibers, then ferment the resulting sugars.

Sirius is indeed an excellent example of this sub-genre. Like all of Stapeldon's work, it's now in the public domain, and anyone interested can download it for free in e-book form here:

The problem with tallow as a biofuel source is the same as all of the other cellulose-based alternatives, we do not have a large scale means of converting the cellulose to sugars. Tallow-trees could be ground up into woody biomass, but without a industrial scale means of producing the enzyme cellulase you have…