I'm of two minds... certainly there is something to be said for creating imaginative concepts about the future of science, technology and philosophy that can serve as inspiration, and good sci-fi writers really put in a lot of work into understanding the science behind their work. So, I don't think its entirely fair…

Now, the only thing I'd have to caution about the 'dogs smelling disease' thing is that it should suffer from the same problems that drug tester dogs have. While they certainly have a better nose than humans, the dogs are also highly likely to respond to cues from their owners, so it might make using them as a…

So, the Engineers were really supposed to have made *just* humans, and not a more general start life to on Earth?

Having finally gotten around to seeing it, and recognizing before hand that it was written by the guy that made Lost, I found it to be an enjoyable movie, but it was a good bad movie. All the scientists wandering around while my girlfriend and I told them not to go in there, not to touch those things, please, tell…

And not just that, the 'archaeologists' made terrible, terrible arguments, like what you'd see out of a creationist or a UFO nut (I choose to believe!). I was at least pleased that the other scientists had the decency to boo.

House of Leaves. I think that book is actively trying to drive you insane.

Summer of Night would be my choice.... kind of a nice combo of pod people and Shai-hulud, but most of his horror books are pretty fun. I loved the Terror, but I almost found the environment to be scarier than the being I referred to as the Gigabear.

Lets see... it became a Christian church in 500s.... not quite in the time period when there were a lot of completely unconnected Christian churches, but a long time before the idea of Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodox evolved (the formal split was in the 1070s, but it wasn't necessarily viewed that way by the…

Even if it were scalable, a harpoon and a winch would probably be the safer and cheaper alternative. While not as high tech cool, it at least has a certain pirate charm.

No... this is a just a regular bad movie. SyFy movies are not bad movies... they are an utter black abyss of nothingness. UBAON!

Didn't the Justice League cartoon already do that? I seem to recall Aquaman leading an army of sea creatures against the Elder things, and Hawkwoman saying she doesn't believe in gods before killing a god. I think I may have to watch Justice League again now.

Ah exorcism... the classiest way to dress up the abuse of children, the mentally ill, and people you just don't like. If state governments can outlaw gay conversion therapy, this stuff needs to go too.

There was a time before there was really a Catholic Church and a Greek Orthodox church. There were just a lot of semi connected churches.

The ticket would be finding a way to translate the insane style of the book in the spirit, rather than in the exact manner the book did. I could imagine a man finding a bunch of tapes, from another man, who was making a movie, that may or may not have been real. Though there are a fair number of horror movies that…

Honestly, I think its kind of a lazy mechanism to allow you to have a fantasy world and a main character that is a fish out of water, so that it is easier to explain the world. And there's also a certain amount of imperialist presumptions to portal stories too.... really, most of us, stuck in a high fantasy universe,…

While it is portal fantasy, I don't think its quite the same.... they live in a universe with real magic already, and use their powers help them get there, and succeed when they're there. The distinctions between the fantasy world and the real world are a little more blurred.

I read that article too... and I still kind of get the impression that 'closer than ever to being solved' = 'we scanned these things and are posting them online'. Not quite the same thing, no matter how admirable I find putting ancient primary sources up for free online.

My first thought is that it is such a shame to just abandon a huge complex like that, but then I noticed it was in North Dakota.... it must be pretty hard to re-purpose a large structure like that without having a large population available to use it.

I am still amazed at how good that movie was, for some random thing I found on Netflix Instantview. It was like Ghost Hunters meets House of Leaves.

I think I enjoyed Matter and Surface Detail more than The Hydrogen Sonata.... perhaps I had high hopes for a more in depth exploration of the Sublime and the foundation of the Culture, rather than looking at how a civilization would deal with having an expiration date (which is not to say it was a bad book by any…