You’d think they’d have given up after a decade.

There weren’t a lot of treasure fleets plying the English Channel at the time, so it was ordinary commerce she was raiding. So it was “low margin” piracy, probably just covering her expenses. I know I’ve raised “business vs. hobby” questions with the IRS regarding my own piracy.

On the other hand, there was a cute girl at my gym, but it was just too awkward to talk to her after her tracheotomy...

I know where that plot’s going... You sonovabitch, I’m in!

However illogical American English may be, the old country has us beat hands down.

The real core of that band was guitarist Kimberley Rew and drummer Alex Cooper, with Rew originally fronting The Waves, until he started writing specifically for back-up singer Katrina Leskanich, and she got featured billing a couple years in.

The “plucky underdog” film spoof Adventures of Power, about the subculture of “competitive air drumming”, has a major plot point about how “Tom Sawyer” is the greatest, potentially career-ending, challenge in the sport. [spoiler] Peart has a great cameo at the end.

I’m not sure how it plays out here, but I’d imagine a bit of intestinal distress. You might hemorrhage from compressed lungs too, but that effect would be largely indistinguishable from drowning.

I’d love to see it. I thought the director’s cut of The Abyss (which I had the good fortune to see in a theater) was a major improvement over the original — it clarified the aliens and their motivation a bit, and I liked the extended sequences with the whole group of “underwater truckers” establishing their characters…

I seem to recall hearing some accounts of human subjects having tried breathing the stuff, and not recommending it, though the Wikipedia article on the subject doesn’t mention it, and implies that mechanical assistance would be required to circulate enough to clear CO2 out of the body over any extended period.

I don’t really have anything “on-file” alas, and as I recall both Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio have been pretty closed-mouthed about working on The Abyss, though they’ve pointedly never worked with Cameron again. This brief article I just found has about as much as I’ve ever heard from them on the subject.

That was an awful lot of underwater thriller names dropped without mentioning The Abyss, especially given the direct Aliens connection.

They’re not drastically different from any other “conspiracy” group — left or right — just a bit more committed to rationalizing around readily available evidence.

Interesting. I’d generally assumed any weird, skeevy sketches on the early SNL were written by Michael “Mr. Mike” O’Donohue, but that apparently wasn’t the case.

All true, but as far as sloppy reporting of science news goes, this is probably the least egregious thing we’re routinely subjected to.

You want to attract spiders from Mars? ‘cause that’s how you attract spiders from Mars.

Given that the prevailing sensibility of such things was once that nobody could follow it, and that such things needed to be dumbed down and spoon-fed, I think they’re both important advances. The films showed that you could could actually appeal to the nerd/fan base without alienating more casual viewers.

Though, whoever put together the DVD was also confident enough in the film to include a line from the San Francisco Chronicle calling it “one of the worst films of the decade.” All press is good press, I suppose. (All press is not good press.)

...beating up slabs of meat in freezers.

At best, it’s an opportunity for believers to martyr themselves. It’s fundamentally as futile as trying to save Jesus from the cross.