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Access the NY Times article without having to register with this link.

The article is, as is typical of the Times, full of detail about the story in question. Some salient points:

1. Norman Spinrad - who wrote the original script in question - requested Gene Roddenberry not to make the episode, after the comedy he wrote was re-written into what he called "a very unfunny comedy" by Gene L. Coon (TOS producer), and Roddenberry complied with his wishes.
2. Spinrad himself comments on this sequence of events on his blog
3. ST Phase II has already produced an episode based on an unused script from the ST:TNG era called "Blood and Fire" by David "The Trouble with Tribbles" Gerrold (which Gerrold himself directed) without any dissent from CBS.
4. The Star Trek script is called "He Walked Among Us". It should not be confused, however, with Spinrad's non-ST science fiction novel of the same name, which is available in RTF format as shareware.

Spinrad, who's 71 now, was an enfant terrible of SF back in the 1960's. His novels "Bug Jack Barron" and "The Men in the Jungle" broke what at the time was new ground (the former for its use of vulgarity, the latter for its subject matter). He's been one of the most consistently interesting SF writers ever since, and I can't recommend his work highly enough.

Actually The Moon has an owner and his name Dennis Hope. http://www.scifidimensions.com/Feb01/dennishope.htm

Not just Evolution... there are loads of Mars gives us trouble movies.

But science fiction isn't meant to be primarily a prediction method for the future. It's a way of showing the contemporary issues in society, but getting away with being close-to-the-bone by wrapping it in sci-fi. Just look at how Star Trek did it through its history. Kirk kissing Uhura, Dax kissing another woman because her symbiant used to be in a male, countless discussions about greed and drug use and equality given in a setting that doesn't get the easily irritated someting to complain about.

Thank you for the classic evolutionary response - "Oh, you don't like my long shot logic that ties together the origins of man? Well, tough, go find your own hard evidence." Just because you are comfortable with the long shot odds and logic doesn't mean I should be. blah blah blah

So in other words, you are not just guilty as charged, but proud of it.

blah blah blah blah blah I can more easily explain things using ID than you can with evolution.

Oh, you think so? Explain why whales have hip bones then. Or why biped humans have quadruped spines. Or why, in our pain response system, a large paper cut hurts like a mother but you might have extremely malignant cancer and not feel a thing. These things make perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, but not for Intelligent Design, because it's more like Bloody Stupid Design.

ID uses the same tactics as the moon landing conspiracy people: make statements that seem reasonable to laypeople that rest on bad logic or are easily debunked. Moonies demand to know why, in pictures taken on the moon, you can't easily see the stars because there is no atmosphere. Answer: they had to use film with very short exposure times because otherwise the film would be overexposed - there's no way you could see stars with this film even if you took it on the dark side of the moon. Moonies demand to know why you can see footprints close to the lunar lander when the rockets should have pushed the dust away. Answer - because there is no atmosphere to push the dust or carry the force of the rockets.

It's the same for you ID fraudsters. You make arguments that seem reasonable on the face but are hollow. You engage in selective sampling and hand waving misdirection - no wonder you're all Republicans.

First android on film. http://www.scifidimensions.com/Feb01/metropolis.ht m

Altair obviously is not named after some star in Aquila. It is named after the MITS Altair 8800 which was an instant, overwhelming success and its bus became the de facto standard.. and the 8800 was in turn named after a star in Star Trek and not in Aquila. See the emulator. Though these guys think the 8800 was named after the movie Forbidden Planet, but it could also have been Altair sf magazine, which probably was named after a star in Aquila. Of course Altair also means "the flyer" in Arabic which is better than considering it an ill-starred lover. Though any of the above would provide for great mission logos too. Anyway it is difficult to work out who named what since the 8800 was named after the star Altair that the Starship Enterprise was heading for, but the Space Shuttle Enterprise was obviously named after the Star Trek Starship, or maybe after a balloon, or a seafaring ship, and probably not Branson's suborbital.

Maybe they'll finally pass the Mutant Registration Act, and jail freaks like Professor Xavier!

That may be so but most of these lead-ins were not made to be precede Pixar films. Most of them are short films on their own that Pixar has made in the past. Boundin' was made last year and was an Oscar nominated animated short film. I'm not sure what criteria is used to pick these shorts but I think that they are probably Pixar's way of recognizing their employees and their work.

Q: So it is the same Enoch Root in both of the books?

NealStephenson: Yes

Taken from a 2003 interview of Neal. http://www.scifidimensions.com/Oct03/nealstephenso n.htm

Your epistemology conflicts with science, not science fiction. Your epistemology *is* science fiction, when you confuse human mentation with logical positivism, and when you think that uncorroborated talk about "friends" with "ozone lasers" in Antarctica can be taken as fact. That kind of talk must be taken as fiction: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan. You can consider my statements to be the hardest working man in show business, for all I care. I consider your statements to be hot air.

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He's not just doing Sandman: look for the new series "1602" from Marvel out now. Supposedly a "Victorian cyberpunk" series featuring the Marvel Universe characters. Preview here.

Yup! I got mine right here! It's approved by Dennis Hope (the owner of the moon) and all! Wooo!