"Unlike trannies (no offense intended to any TG folk reading this), we intersexed people do not choose to be in the situation we are in."

I'm not sure if you're using those phrases to refer to just cross dressers or to transsexuals as well... but I can tell you for a fact that transsexuals don't choose to be in the situation they're in. (I gather cross dressers don't either, but the main difference here is that with transsexuals, your brian and body actually don't match, so it's to do with your gender and your physical sex, not at all about your sexuality. A better analogy might actually be comparing transsexuals to people who feel they should be amputees. It's all about the brain's genuine self-image.)

I'm probably not that articulate about this right now, but I've written a personal piece about this, Transitioning, and a story about it, Identity.

In addition to names of the people themselves, can anybody recommend any good science documentaries/talks/books? I'd recommend the following:

• David Attenborough
  • Life In... series (TV shows, 1979 - 2008)
  • Planet Earth (TV show, 2006)
• J. Bronowski
  • The Ascent of Man (TV show, 1973)
• Bill Bryson
  • A short History of Nearly Everything (book and audiobook, 2003)
• Brian Cox
  • [Various documentaries] (TV shows, 2005 - present)
• Richard Dawkins
  • The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Growing Up in the Universe (TV show, 1991 - 1992)
  • Root of All Evil? (TV show, 2006)
  • The Enemies of Reason (TV show, 2007)
  • The Genius of Charles Darwin (TV show, 2008)
• Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Death by Black Hole (book and audiobook, 2007)
• Michio Kaku
  • Visions of the Future AKA 2057 (TV show, 2007)
• Carl Sagan
  • Cosmos (TV show and book, 1980)
  • Pale Blue Dot (book, 1994)
  • The Demon-Haunted World (book, 1996)
• Various
  • The Amaz!ng Meeting (symposium, 2003 - current)
  • Beyond Belief (symposium, 2006 - current)

  If anyone can add to this list, I'd appreciate it. It'd be nice to seek out more science shows and related things.

  I'd also recommend the following on YouTube:

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson - Stupid Design
  • Tim Minchin - Storm
  • Dawkins vs. Tyson

  (And now I need to ramble on for ages because Slashdot's software claims I have too few characters per line... A curious requirement. Just ignore this paragraph, it contains absolutely no meaningful information at all. Seriously, though, check out the above YouTube clips if nothing else. Really, Cosmos and A Short History of Nearly Everything should be given to everyone at birth...)

Seeing as everyone else has Adam Savage, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins pretty well covered, and you already know about Carl Sagan and presumably Richard Feynman and J. Bronowski, I should probably add Brian Cox to the list.

He's a particle physicist at CERN, and has an unrealistic level of enthusiasm for absolutely everything. It seems a good bet that the physicist in Sunshine was based on him, especially considering that he was the science consultant for the film. He's in a whole bunch of documentaries enthusing about how great the latest scientific discoveries are.