The problem is, without a specific cited source for his numbers and his characterization of economic and class trends, I have no reason to believe what he says. I can move rocks around and videotape it too. Sure, his claim is simple and direct — but so is the claim "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."

Well played! Now we just need a similar photo of a shark.

I'd suggest also John Crowley's "Engine Summer." It's a short book with an ending that absolutely takes the top of your head off. Every person I've ever spoken to who's read this has had the same experience. What's especially amazing is that the ending really poses a bunch of metafictional questions which, upon…

This is an inspired idea. Honestly, I'd like to see a fancy webpage/app that created slides/movies like this for every surface in the solar system.

Totally agree with all of that. I wonder if, in addition, its appeal has something to do with the dimensions and proportions of the various elements of the vehicle. The shapes and sizes, in relation to one another, of the cockpit, spine, engines, cargo unit, pods, and legs just seem very elegant — there's a kind of…

Lucky devil. I had both of them as a kid too and miss them now. Enjoy!

Excellent! Put working engines on that humongous thing! Sounds like a scene from my own "experimental" (explodey) childhood.

You sure can't beat Space: 1999 for its look. And dreadfully written as it was, when it went for Gothic horror in its first season, it was really on to something. (It's fun to find comment threads elsewhere on the web discussing the episode "Dragon's Domain." Traumatized a whole generation of now-forty-somethings. …

Very nice.

My feelings about this are mixed. But among those mixed feelings, I'm genuinely touched by his shouting "Run!" to whoever might be in the vicinity as he takes off. Now there's the social instinct at work.

I love how it doesn't even go particularly fast — it sort of toys with the riders, like a giant troll holding them in its hands before it suddenly claps and mashes them to a pulp.

Very nice. Kind of an "urban decay meets Andrew Wyeth" type thing.

This article isn't as clear up front as it needs to be. What exact function were these nanoreactors designed to fulfill in the first place? (You can sort of infer this from the later parts of the article, but even there it's pretty indirect.) Are these, like, the *first* nanoreactors, or just a recently developed…

And also a little subliminal suggestion of penetration.

ElectroGremlin didn't say the movie was where they were "getting their spirituality from," they said it was an extremely spiritual movie. Relax.

It's quite all right to hate Vangelis. I, however, love him.

Great call on Vangelis' album "Albedo 0.39." Great commentary, too.

Happy Rhodes, for your consideration. Here's her song "100 Years," from the album "Many Worlds Are Born Tonight," sung by, basically, a defense satellite long after doomsday has come and gone.

It's great. I say that and I'm not particularly a Philip Glass fan; I don't feel that much he did after "Einstein" was very interesting at all. (And that was all the way back in '76.) But everything up to and including "Einstein" is damned good — tingling with energy.