vger

One big element of ant behavior somehow got overlooked here. Not that I would say it implies civilization (at least by our standards, since we tend to refer to any such people who do this as the opposite of civilized ), but... slavery. Ants fricking enslave captives. And ants who are enslaved, will sabotage the nest of their captors. And more relevant to the OT and signs of old civilization: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/09-archaeologists-find-earliest-evidence-of-humans-cooking-with-fire

^^^ In addition, I'd rather not be walking around in 400 degree weather, and suddenly finding out that I can't even try to get back to the lander because of a servo malfunction.

Yeah, but 300+ kilometers? Yowza. And the terrain of the English countryside isn't exactly friendly to that sort of thing.

If you want to start scratching your head at something, it's more worth it to look at Stonehenge. Yeah, I know that it was found to actually be at the center of a major hub that only turned up recently, but the fact remains those multi-ton stones were apparently carted from VERY far away. Those stones are twice the weight of the pyramid blocks, which were made locally. Such a feat would make the pyramids look easy, even if they were built using tons of slaves bulldozing their way to completion ala The Ten Commandments.

I think the idea was that the phones would become more power efficient, eventually requiring so little energy that it could soak up enough power from the user to keep it running. Hard to say now, it was one of those things I read in an article about an awesome new breakthrough in development, that you never hear another peep about until another ten years have passed. Though, I might be mixing human body energy with other bio-tech I read about for the same purpose, such as batteries 'powered' by microorganisms.

Isn't there already a phone in development that runs off bio-electric impulses and body motion, just by being handled or stored in the pocket?

Seriously, just let it go. We'd have less to contend with from going to fricking Mercury.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Hilarious. Wouldn't shock me either if every person who buys that game automatically winds up on some NSA list. (hopefully that one doesn't count as conspiracy theory... *shifty eyes*) If hard copies of that game have been distributed with that (ARE there hard copies?), this is going to be Hell for them to fix.

In case anyone here didn't know, he almost wasn't...

No, that's what happens when you throw your hands in the air and say, "Screw the author."

Different films handle ambiguity quite well to a certain degree. Perhaps nowhere near as high of a degree as 2001, but the withholding of information can give a film great longevity. An example more contemporary: Star Wars. Original Trilogy, I mean. There's a saga that didn't need to go out of its way to explain every little nuance. It left so much to our imaginations, that fans were able to keep the fire going for decade and a half. Nobody knew how the war got started, but we could use what information we had to make an educated guess. People bickered about whether or not the Alliance was even the definitive 'good guy' in the whole ordeal. What exactly was "The Force?" Was it an intelligent entity like some kind of 'heartbeat of the universe?' A collective unconscious? Did it have "a plan?" How did Vader get hurt? How did Luke and Leia get hidden from him? People were gathering as much data as they could about the capabilities of Star Destroyers and the Death Star, trying to guess at what kind of resources and power would be required. Even how powerful a "death ray" would need to be in order to nuke a planet. There's what you get when you leave things to the imagination. Or you could then surrender your intellectual property to the "insta-gratification" movement of modern society and, "Oh, by the way, it's because of Midichlorians." 2001 doesn't spell everything out for you because you're expected to analyze it yourself. Instead of just having you sit back and watch explorers do their science, Kubrick is inviting you to BE an explorer. Observe, hypothesize, and have fun doing it. You're even granted ample time

Total... nerdgasm. I'm a fan of blocky designs too, but... meh. Whatever. Time for a test drive!

CO2 mining will have to be very first on that list. Nobody is going to terraform anything with an atmosphere that thick. And we'd be better off learning how to mine the excess CO2 in our OWN atmosphere before we bother with Venus.

More or less. Were life support not a factor, NASA would've done the same thing. Minmus is both cheaper and safer.

A manned mission to Venus is just begging for death. At least with our current tech. Mars is more than sufficient a challenge for now. To go to Venus you need to build something that not only likes being in a vacuum, but is just as happy being at the bottom of the ocean... while that ocean is boiling. If Hell were a planet in our solar system, it would be Venus. The planet is so dark and forboding, that it even conspires with Earth to do this, as an ominous warning to anyone who dares set foot there. As an aside, thanks for that video link. I need to see this TV series now.

Anyone ever seen enough of "The World Without Us" to know how long it would take for all evidence of our current civilization to go poof? 'course, I have yet to even find any criticisms about how accurate it may or may not be.

What I meant was Superman wrestling with his conscience, when it comes to working with Godzilla. Their solutions to solving problems are somewhat... different. And alright... we need a comic book expert in here. What's the biggest brute the Hulk has ever been up against?

I sure hope we're not living in the quantum model of the atom then. All that unpredictable bouncing would give me a nasty headache.

In this battle, it doesn't matter. It's even taking place in an alien 'arena' of sorts. All you really need to know is the kind of tech that those soldiers have had at their disposal. That said... First question: While you're allying these massive forces with Civil War era armies, what are the armies going to do here? IMO, just distribute popcorn to the human troops while the big guys do all the fighting. Even if you were to just pit Mordor against a unified America from that era, Mordor wins hands down. The humans are either here to watch, or to be fodder. Ignoring that, I give this win to the South. Superman or Godzilla would easily slaughter a Civil War army, and probably Sauron's forces. Both of them working together, plus two deities? Hulk has his work cut out for him. The only problem I see here is how Superman is going to deal with being allied to a giant napalm-spitting lizard laying waste to thousands of people in a single blast. ... unless it's Tristar Zilla. I think even soldiers from that age might be able to take him down.

I think the only way to ensure a thread with more replies than this, would be to post a thread with the title: "Space sucks" One of the reasons I like Alien and Aliens, but can't stand Alien3 and Resurrection. Not just the plot elements, but the complete lack of disregard for the feel of the universe. The first two felt like "real space" to me. It pushed the envelope of believability in places, but still felt like what I would expect being in space to feel like. Even hyper-sleep and terraforming are given some extra love so that they feel more like speculative technology instead of 'magic.' Then after Aliens, everything turns into Syfy, and you have penal prison planets and a testbed for the Firefly series.

There's a big difference between a Journalist doing hours of research on a candidate AFTER a debate is already over. Watson could pull up the information immediately. What I'm talking about would happen LIVE, during the debate, and broadcast for the whole country to see. Effectively, Watson would serve as a co-moderator, and could directly address a candidate when it caught them in a lie.

Rock and Roll... http://news.yahoo.com/virgin-galactic-gets-faa-approval-hopes-start-space-153559999.html We're not quite 'there' yet, but we're making progress.

That echo be the voice of a KRAKEN!!!!!!!

Yep. In other words, it can never happen. Not surprisingly though, its already causing a lot of buzz.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1137095 This is already trending on Yahoo. It's about an asteroid that will hit the earth on... March 35th.