@driso: "So unless a storyline requires a character to be Asian, there’s no reason to cast an Asian person to begin with. And people should stop being so butt-hurt, and be totally grateful for those rare times when Asians do catch parts, because the stereotypical portrayals we often see are totally awesome, right?!"

@akira_jonez: You can say "Gee, isn't it nice to see more diverse representation?" and I'd have no problem. Sure, that's nice.

"Changing her race would be a dreadful idea — but Hollywood has made terrible decisions before."

@kylenalepa: Yes, you should give it another chance. It took me a bit to figure out _how_ to enjoy it, but it's worth it. Think more MST3K and less X-Files.

I completely agree with you in almost every respect. However: "and religion in blockbuster SF films is almost always the opposite of science and thus bad"? I think you have that backwards. Outside of a few very specific periods/subgenres of written sci-fi, religion/faith/hooha is usually the triumphal partner to…

@The Curse of Millhaven: Eh, that's P&T's SOP — they're VERY good at understanding illogic and human perceptual fallibility (hence their awesome magic skills), but they're really quite bad at constructing a _logical_ argument. It's like asking a tight-assed mathematician to be a con-man and it jsut doesn't work well.

@ArmyofJuan: No, Voltron was ok, for what it was. But come on. Let's be honest about our geekdoms here — this was pretty bad.

This is something I've been arguing for for years: we gotta rope a rock. Besides precious metals and rare earths, asteroids have a few other plusses going for them. There's a significant amount of hydrocarbon/hydrocarbon-precursors in them rocks (especially in a C-type). There's billions of tons of copper, titanium,…

@Valrose: Let's look at this one piece at a time:

_Really_? Have we sunk THIS low? I mean, it was one of the crappiest cartoons ever made. Jesus christ I hope they get some decent voice actors at least.

@Dr. What?: No, he's actually pretty damned good about about such things. My beef is that "Pastwatch" is a particularly bad example of damned near everything. Sorry, Bud, but this one's a loser.

@BoxOfScraps: "Why are you so concerned with defending Apple's image?"

@Dr. What?: No, I'm sorry but I have to take issue with the terms "excellent" and "interesting". This excreble abortion of a novel is everything you can hate about Card distilled into one convenient package. It's preachy, predictable, pedantic, and PC-by-way-of-Mormonism. The timebending aspects may work ok, but…

Wow. Gotta say, I got kinda blindsided by the intertextuality here. I knew a movie was coming out, but not a movie and a... whatever you call what syfy makes coming out first.

Hrm. I think Kaufman is kinda glazing over some important points with his characterizations of consciousness and internal struggle PO artificial intelligence. That struggle might be intrinsic to human experience without being intrinsic to consciousness. Likeways, if it is intrinsic to consciousness, it will be in AI.…