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"Hollywood Is Lazy, Unoriginal and Risk-Averse", whines yet another critic.

These columns crop up all the time, and nine out of ten of them give the impression that this is some horrible slide into the abyss from some mythical golden age.

The irony, of course, is that they been appearing since the film industry began.1

These guys forget2 that, ( Read more... )

This is a link to someone else being smart:

Don’t worry guys, everything isn’t a Mary Sue, by Kelly "Coelasquid" Turnbull.

Kelly is a professional animator who also does the invariably-entertaining webcomic, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. This essay not only deconstructs the currently-hip notion that any protagonist who bears any resemblance to ( Read more... )

Evidence Emerges That Laws of Physics Are Not Fine-Tuned For Life

I admit it: even the weak versions of the Anthropic Principle make me twitch. Yes, if we're observing the universe, its physical conditions must allow us to exist; fine, that's kind of a "duh". Stronger versions get increasingly ... problematic ... as their proponents start dwelling ( Read more... )

Those who just read my pearls of wisdom via their friends lists may not be aware that the topmost entry on LJ page is a mash-up of a CAPTCHA test and the Voight-Kampf test from the opening scene of Blade RunnerOn 18 January 2011, that entry got a word-salad comment that looked like a random text generator used a series of metaphysical screeds as a ( Read more... )

You know you need it.

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What happens if the Doctor picks up a party of first-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons player characters? It's guaranteed that at least one will have a Bag of Holding, and there might be a Portable Hole in the party, as well.

By the Narrative Causality Conventions of AD&D1*, bringing either of those into the TARDIS will result in some kind of ( Read more... )

... I'm also going to give up The TV Tropes Wiki for the duration of Lent.

It tends to be my default time sink when I don't feel like doing anything useful.

Apparently, there's a group out there encouraging people to red shirts on Fridays to "support our troops".

Here's a link to their site, which plays really, really cheesy music. You've been warned.)

Yes, let's wear red shirts on Friday to underscore how nameless and expendable our troops are.

I know that not everyone is a Star Trek fan, but even ( Read more... )