I'd also suggest that the setting and villains that come with the superhero are just as important. One of the smartest things Ironman did was set the movie in a very realistic contemporary universe, rather than having Tony Stark fighting a rather inappropriate Chinese villain with a bunch of magic rings. So many of…

Oryx and Crake is much worse, to be honest. At least The Handmaid's Tale shows that the Christian Taliban will eventually turn on itself and collapse.

In some respects, that's what I like about the Bas-Lag books... sometimes the Powers that Be are just too powerful to be dealt with by a band of plucky heroes, otherwise, they'd have already been dealt with.

It is a very interesting drug, but the big problem is that it is a very strong immunosurpressant. What is perhaps most interesting is not what this drug in particular does (because I don't think people would accept that to get a longer lifespan they have to effectively have AIDS), but how the immune system plays a…

I remember being a little disappointed with Starship troopers when it came out, because it didn't have power armor and such. But now, I don't think it would hold up at all if it were just CGI suits wandering around and getting attacked by big bugs... having them lightly armored at least gave the movie more…

The thing is, that system is based entirely around the military being honest and upright with their power. But the system has *no* outside checks and balances on military power, and military power is inherently hierarchical. The military does something the civilians don't like? Tough, they have all the guns and…

The thing about His Master's Voice, and most of Lem's other works really applies in this situation. Aliens might not just be different from us, they might be fundamentally incomprehensible from us, and vice versa. Lets think about computer code... its a very complex, constantly changing, and huge assemblage of…

I guess my only concern would be the tiger getting exposed to whatever nastiness people had on their hands, since things like onions and garlic can be dangerous to cats, and present on chips, but perhaps you could just insure people wash their hands first. My friend's German Shepard *loves* tug rope, I can't imagine…

I'd also suggest the Apes from Rise of Planet of the Apes should fall under that same banner. Though they're clearly CGI, the design team clearly cared enough to make them move and act like actual apes, and yet still be emotive. They're still not as realistic as the suited Gorillas from Gorillas in the Mist, but…

While, having once been a 8 year old kid, I can totally understand the desire to have a complete dinosaur skeleton, the adult me recognizes that such things should be available for everyone to enjoy, for scientists to research, and most importantly, for professionals to maintain and care for. It should not be in the…

Watching it week by week, the second season could be really frustrating, but I feel like it ended pretty strongly. For me, the main problem isn't so much Carl, cause he's just doing what a kid does, its the fact that Lori is constantly demanding stability, and yet utterly failing to do anything even remotely helpful.…

Or just high velocity lead.

See, you need to sit back realize that 50 years in space is a tremendous amount of time for a terrestrial species. That's a lot of radiation to withstand, resources to recycle and energy to produce, all while not having gravity. And then, when you get to where you're going, there is no guarantee that it will be…

If they find Earth style life on Europa or Mars, I'll certainly change my mind, but it seems kind of a bizarre posture to take when no life has been found on either world, and that unfound life has not been shown go share any similarities to Earthlife. Its a fine postulate, it has a lot of 'ifs' involved with it. …

I'm not sure if I'll come back... pretty much the whole cast managed to maintain that level of combined stupidity and optimism that just makes me angry. Its okay if their stupid, don't make them happy. Its okay if they're happy, just don't make them stupid. But that freaking history teacher walking on the space…

But not all of them have the kind of money to keep shelling out for a full fetal genome sequencing until they get the one the like.

Jeeze, I've seen at least 3 or 4 of these failed Russian rockets in the past two years. They're clearly been doing something wrong over there.

Well, for starters you can get easy C-sections without much lethality to the mother or child. That's got to remove a big part of the selection against really big heads. As for brain capacity being the wiring, sure... I'll by that, but at the same time, having an extra dollop of neruons seems like it would be pretty…

I posted this in the 'are ghosts real' discussion, but I think it bears repeating. We don't have any evidence for an ethereal entity being present in the minds of living people, so why should we expect one to be produced when someone dies. Your memories and personality are so rooted in the components of the brain,…

Chances are its a combination of all of the above. I went out into mountainous, rural Virginia to do a tasting of mead that at a cabin meadery that some people put up there, and they'd been touched by CCD... and I have to imagine that it wasn't pesticides that got all the way out there, since there were no fields for…