As a pseudo-expert on these matters (har) it's my considered opinion that we should collect all the people willing to make a one-way expedition to Mars together and send them on a one-way expedition to the Sun. This will free subsequent programs from the interference of zealots and morons and enable us to actually do…

This is why, as an aerospace engineer, I loathe Star Trek (especially TNG, fuck every one of those neutered future people and their wrap dresses and their handwringing and their dumbass robot). The prime directive is the stupidest thing ever, why on earth would any organization limit itself like that?

Their inability to tell Shi'a extremist groups from Sunni ones was particularly embarrassing in Seasons 2 and 3. Despite that, I'm hopeful based on season 4.

*clink**clink**clink*
Wayyyyyys and Meeeeans Committee! Come out and Plaaaay-aaaay!

Presidential candidates should close every statement during the debates by holding out their arms and shouting "CAN YOU DIG IT!?" It would make debates so much more fun to watch.

I just wanted to…oh wait, we don't need to wish you luck, you're killing it.

Finally starting in, in earnest, on the first volume of Robert Caro's massive biography of LBJ. I wanted assurances that politics has always been as cynical as it is today, and even within the first few chapters I have been rewarded. We're gonna be okay, guys.

I just want to say that I come here for the pop culture reviews and stay for the mashup jokes about 80s public intellectuals/comic books.

Why would you watch 'Gangster Squad'? Was it part of a clinical trial? Were you at least paid for participating?

Competence in murdering, though?

That new Ghost album tho'

There was a Mexican Armada, of sorts. And two sisters…

Least interesting to whom/in what respect?

And that's the Waaaaaaaaaay the News Goes!

Eh, yeah I mean the whole premise of this is that people are too weak to handle the reality of the situation without being reminded of it in songs, which is silly. But I assume that was the connection, since you were asking.

The hijackers used ceramic boxcutter knives to murder the flight crews. It's a jaunty song about a guy who murders people with a knife. There's a lot of dumb ones on the list but that one kinda makes sense to me.

I was about to mention PJ Harvey's "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea" because I remember listening to it *a lot* in the days afterward, but I looked at the release date and it had come out almost a year before, so I must have just been late to the party. Still, if "This Mess We're In" and "Big Exit" came…

I was really trying to make the opposite point. You can trace the current war in Iraq and Syria back to the military breakdown of the Rashidun Caliphate in 661 after Ali was murdered (okay, not technically a battle). The genocidal wars between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks largely resulted from the conquests of the…

I actually use statistical methods every single day in my career as an aerospace engineer. I have yet to use any linear algebra (except in grad school). All throughout high school and college I never had a single statistics class, either, there was just never room for it in any curriculum (there definitely should have…

This would only be true if the head of the Crips was also due, by custom, to inherit the leadership of the Bloods. Which would be a really cool premise for a movie if street gangs worked that way in America (possibly a war between two triad factions?)