To convince me, results are going to have to be more than just a few percentage points better than simple random selection. I can smell the difference between garlic and onions at least 90% of the time. I can tell the difference between red and green nearly 100% of the time. I can tell the difference between a flute…

I think "Washington" would have noticed a Nazi moon base long before sending a manned lunar excursion module to land within a few kilometers of it. I love the pulpy idea behind this movie, but it is idiotic things like this that make me a h8tr before the dang thing even opens in theaters.

Yeah, but unfortunately the social principle of "community standards", at least in the U.S., has allowed words like pornography to take on whatever definition each community feels it needs in order to demonize the content they object to. That is why every town, city, county, and state has potentially different laws…

And then there's astrology. All of these tests strike me as just elaborate variants of determining one's "sign".

It's saddening, but hardly surprising to hear stories like this. In America, parenting seems to be polarizing towards two extremes: non-existant or hyper-overreactive. For every parent who is a little too controlling and sees nothing but a world full of "dangerous and inappropriate" things threatening the well-being…

It all comes down to marketing. You can't blame poor opening box office performance on the film's actual content, because nobody has seen it yet. The only thing the masses know going into opening weekend is what the advertising campaign has told them about it. If the campaign fails to get the public excited, it isn't…

Ok, sure, I'd love a new excuse to watch Kristin Kreuk again every week, but she's going to have to surprise me big time as an actress to pull of the tough cop thing. That would be like asking me to accept Nina Dobrev in the same role (and no, Katherine Pierce is not tough so much as crafty and even a little…

My crapola filter must be working really well because I haven't seen any of the movies listed as examples of tired trends that need to go away for a long, long time.

Without a doubt. I imagine one could easily extend it to include all scientists, not just physicists or biologists. I, for one, didn't mean to make it sound exclusionary. :)

Star Wars is essentially a fairy tale. The opening title card is intentionally vague, meant to do nothing more than put the story into an undefinable place and time. To anchor it to a real time and place within our universe is to deny that opening phrase all of its narrative power and reason for existance in the first…

The nickname makes for attention-grabbing headlines, but it also makes most particle physicists cringe.

Two thoughts:

I think he's wrong because he is apparently oblivious to the fact that RotJ is the narrative finale to an entirely different story than the one Star Wars and Empire were telling. Return is such a catastrophic failure of storytelling, that I question whether Drum (or anyone else who likes RoTJ) even understands what…

Agree on all points pretty much.

A "new music"? Just because of string material? Please.

Not to my mind, no. He is a costumed crimefighter. He has no superpowers and therefore isn't a superhero. However, since he is a founding member of a superhero league and has spent a lot of time adventuring with superheroes, he gets a sort of honorary pass into the superhero category. But strictly speaking, no, he…

You keep missing the point that it isn't about numbers in the minds of the deeply religious. They can't use a statistical argument because they aren't saying it is rare, they are saying it is a form of corruption, the kind that can only afflict humans. They have painted themselves into a rhetorical corner by defining…

This is not a case of a few bonobos exhibiting lesbian behavior, is it? It is, presumably, a common behavior of an entire species. That is significant because we aren't interested in how many separate species express this behavior, but how many individuals do. If it can be shown that bonobos do this sort of thing on a…

What qualifies the Scarlet Pimpernel as a super-hero? Isn't he just a masked freedom fighter during the French Revolution, with normal human traits and skills?

While "only three" is small indeed, it only takes one case to utterly invalidate the absolutist perspectives endemic to religious thought. When their argument is that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice", a character flaw only afflicting humans—because of our unique ability to succumb to corruption by the devil—then…