Haven’t seen it mentioned by anyone else here but, back in the 90s (I think it was) a company was started that made a voice-controlled smart-house system. You’d buy their software and some specialised hardware, install it into a Windows computer in your closet... and the software system was called HAL 1000, followed…

Thing is, the Star Trek New Voyages / Phase II production group also bought a soundstage, too (well, they bought a wharehouse and converted it INTO a soundstage), and far as I can tell that hasn’t made them run afoul of CBS and Paramount. I’m betting there are other fan-film productions that bought/made a soundstage…

I’m told the blue spacesuits used in Babylon5 were actually reused from 2001: A Space Oddyssey (or maybe the recreated ones from 2010?) as an homage. They appeared particularly in Babylon Squared (I think was the episode title) and in Thirdspace.

I’m with HaHaRich on this... I too kept reading it as Big Effing Gun... and I’ve never even PLAYED Doom! :D :D

This one, “The Zygon Inversion,” is especially strange, even by this year’s standards, because of the thing toward the end where the Doctor suddenly reveals that there have been 15 (!) previous incidents where the ceasefire between humans and Zygons has broken down. That reveal changes the whole nature of what we’ve…

Can this “WTF?!?” ruling be appealed and overturned?

I remember an episode of the old Dragnet radio show that had something very like this in it, might even have been based on the same case.

Damages of $750,000 for each $90,000 car? There needs to be a law outlawing damages that exceed the price or profitability of the object being sued over. No exceptions. Damages of $10,000 to $20,000 per car would be a lot more appropriate, or anything that is a ways under the price of the car itself. When you’re…

Example #2, when Jesus overturned the moneychangers’ tables... there’s actually quite a lot more to it than what is described of it in the Bible. The background on this that I’ve heard more than once goes like this:

Of course, it’s also possible “Together we will destroy the Resistance and the last Jedi.” is meant in the sense of “We will keep killing Jedi until we find and kill the last one left...”

I like these sorts of lists. Another list idea I’d love to see would be: books for one to get into the heads of kids, for if you want to write, say, the next Enders Game or, for that matter, the next Lord of the Flies, but set in space. Or come to that, if one were gonna write Flight to the Mushroom Planet: The Next…

Well, when I see the 1910 image, I find myself picturing the Scoopy Crew in a Steampunk adventure, oddly enough. Mystery Airship, maybe? :D

Over all these years, for some reason, I thought The Forbidden City was several miles across. Then I see that short video clip and... instead, it looks the size of a large city block.

I have been saying for a long time that school officials need to start getting fired over damnfool actions like this. Send a message to the whole country that bad school policy will get them in big trouble, possibly even career-ending trouble. Full stop.

Speaking of chess variations, one of my fond memories was playing C-Chess on a unix-based dialup BBS back in the late 80s or so, the C in C-Chess stood for Correspondence, since you’d make ONE move per logged-in session, and the other guy you were playing against would get an email notice telling him you’d played, so…

Howabout:

In one of the virtual worlds I frequent, about once a week they have a 2 hour period where we sit around and listen to old radio shows. This event in one form or another has persisted through at least three different virtual worlds over a period of 4 or 5 years, and has at various points gone through more than one…

Thing about Gene Coon is.... I wonder how things would have been different with how Trek developed later had Coon not died when he did. IIRC, he died young, in the early 1970s.

Ah yes, the cuecat. There was a big promotion going on with these things around 2000 or so, with several magazines sending them out for free to their subscribers, and with Radio Shack giving them away for free. The idea was, companies would stick a barcode in their print ads, someone could swipe the cuecat over it,…

Right now I'm reading the ebook edition of something called WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CAPES OF HEROPA, by Andrez Bergen. It is about a future virtual-reality world that is somewhat Matrix-like in that when you're IN it, its just like being in reality (i.e. you can eat, you get a hangover if you drink too much booze,…