I know you're joking, but just ask Woody, he knows what to be scared of.

Myan calendar needs a new digit in 2012, not 2018.

Hey now, Dr. Who was reversing polarity years before Star Trek! Besides Jon Pertwee pronounced it better, also his ship was a small box made of wood.

Oh, obviously there is a ton of physics laws they bent and broke. But you also have to look at it from the point of view of someone in 1987-1994 not someone in 2009.

Besides, they TRIED to make it more scientific. That alone skews it drastically towards sci-fi.

I am curious as to why you're implying space elevators are impossible.

A space elevator at ground level is most likely impossible with current technology, and would certainly be unfeasible (the center would have to be very large in order to keep the whole thing together). A space elevator that can be reached by standard aircraft, however, might just be possible, and with stronger material a ground level one might be as well.

Why would you say Star Trek is fantasy?

Cell phones are a reality that did not exist when TOS aired, yet they imagined mobile, hand-held communication devices. Is that fantasy?

There are far more examples in TNG, especially when it comes to physics ideas. The fact that it explored how and why, or at the very least attempted to explain it makes it Science Fiction to me.

Star Wars, on the other hand, is about as far from Science Fiction as The Lord of The Rings.

Only on slashdot would such a post be modded insightful. Not that I disagree.

I hate you for making me say this as I'm usually a critic of the way corporations misuse capitalism. However I don't think this would be considered price gouging. There's a limited supply and a high demand, this means that higher prices are not only acceptable, they're required.

Now if they were artificially limiting supply (like what oil companies do) I might have a problem with it. Unfortunately it does cost a lot to deploy cellular systems. Now, if we could have an extremely high capacity satellite communication network we might be able to deploy high speed wireless Internet much cheaper and faster. Of course this would need a huge amount of initial investment, cellular networks, while expensive, can be deployed in tiny sections, satellites have a lower area/$ cost, but cover a much larger area. Also it would require a major change in technology. You probably couldn't use standard cell phones and would probably require higher powered handsets, causing more cancer causing brain frizzle.

Hear hear!

Although, I was just thinking, wouldn't it be possible for the carbon to come from a source other than the atmosphere? Not CO2, but some carbon locked up in the soil or somesuch? Combined with oxygen and some chemical shenanigans you'll get brand new CO2 that hasn't been in the atmosphere for a while.

Though I don't think that's very likely.

Barring that, which probably would not make up much of a plant's overall carbon intake, burning an entire field of corn or rape (canola) can't release any more CO2 than it absorbed originally. If you don't produce any more bio-fuel than you consume (or vice versa) the net CO2 impact is negligible.

Of course, there's still the problem of distribution. The place the emissions occur (cities) is usually far from the place the fuel is grown (farms). This means that farms will have a much lower level of ground level CO2 than cities. Not that that's particularly different from how it is now...

You mean, like, most of it? Absolute best staple: brown rice.

Really any whole grain will do, but brown rice has the nice added advantage of not making you fat. Plus it tastes so damn good and you can do almost anything with it. Cheese and rice is a good, if not particularly healthy, snack. Especially if you've been hitting the bong... speaking of...

I think a particular They Might Be Giants Song might fit here...

I'll take back my pinata, it's wasted on you
Just spinning that pool cue all over the room
And give back the blindfold that's under your shoe

Let's drink, drink, this town is so great
Drink, drink, 'cause it's never too late
To drink, drink, to no big surprise
But what words rhyme with "buried alive"?
What words rhyme with "buried alive"?

You could be a float for the Fourth of July
Based on your theme of "Wallflowers Grown Wild"
Look through your peephole, you've won every prize

Let's Drink, drink, this town is so great
Drink, drink, 'cause it's never too late
To drink, drink, to no big surprise
But what words rhyme with "buried alive"?
What words rhyme with "buried alive"?

In your monkey suit on a cigarette break
The lunchtime crowd, they won't even blink
But you'd be sad if they did
But you'll be sad

Let's drink, drink, this town is so great
Drink, drink, 'cause it's never too late
To drink, drink, to no big surprise
But what words rhyme with "buried alive"?
What words rhyme with "buried alive"?

Why is it that worms and viruses have better security than legitimate programs?

Oh dang, you're right. Still, despite not being able to think of any real examples off the top of my head, the point stands.

While I disagree on the reason I do think it reflects badly on Ellison. He needed to compromise more than he was willing to (he was willing to make quite a lot of changes, just not enough).

Unfortunately the producers, while maybe willing to compromise, were already annoyed that Ellison took so long to finish the script so they rewrote it a second time without his input (the first rewrite was by Ellison, IIRC).

So yeah, Ellison's an uncompromising jerk, but Roddenberry and the rest of the ST peoples were unappreciative of genius (understandable, when you consider the package it comes in).

The great thing is that Ellison really is a genius*, the problem is that he knows it.

* Go read his article on Superman, Lois Lane, and Kryptonite condoms if you don't believe me.

s/midsummer's/midsummer