Another important ingredient are  the characters. Fiction can get away with some really weird storytelling if the characters respond to it in a realistic manner. Characters on television start out flat, but if they change in time then that counts as a third dimension and gives them depth. You do need this change to keep things fresh after the first couple of episodes. Then you add a good measure of humour and also some nice dialogue – preferably fresh dialogue and not that dried stuff they sell in bottles. Voila, a decent television series, best served with a side dish of advertisement blocks.

As an example of how it’s done I’d like to introduce you to the series Chuck. As is customary with the photographs next to recipes, my example is quite a bit tastier then anything you could achieve by using the above instructions. Still, all the things I like about good television series are there.

Sarah, Chuck and Casey. This is an obligatory promo-picture, attempting to compensate somewhat the nonsensical use of a mouse as the only other graphical feature of this entry.

The series is named after the lead character, Chuck Bartowski, who is accidentally implanted with a CIA-NSA intelligence database in his brain. From that point forward Chuck, helped by two secret agents that have been sent to protect him, thwarts the plans of criminals all operating conveniently close to his home. Yes, the premise is mad enough to facilitate some excellent storytelling and character development.

On top of that, Chuck is pretty damn funny. Not the bad kind of television humour, the kind that involves locking the cast in a room for twenty minutes of joke-tapping each week, but the good kind of humour, where it flows naturally with the story and dialogue.

Currently two approaches to studying the behaviour of humour in a vacuum are being explored. One involves a mouse in a vacuum chamber containing low pressure nitrous oxide gas. The other project is known as The Sitcom.

The music is of the show is done particularly well too. Part of it is previously existing songs, part of it music composed for the series. Both are fun, but I particularly enjoy the latter part because of the way in which it continuously references all kinds of spy films.

What actually amazes me most about this series is that as much as I enjoy watching it, I wasn’t aware of its existence before the second season had already been broadcasted. In fact, finding out I liked it required some serious transatlantic internetting on my part. Where is this Big Brother society when you need it? Universal, next time you produce something that resembles the above recipe, please send me an advertisement!

A representation of a CO2 molecule, scourge of humanity, disguised as a harmless toy. Such is the power of our enemy, that is has managed to spread its disgusting propaganda into most of our schools. We must search those schools and throw these imposters into the fire to show our enemy’s true face: Thick black smoke and the smell of burning plastic.

When you get right down to it, there really aren’t that many ways one can generate electricity. The most common way to do it, burning stuff, is part of a tradition that goes back all the way to the beginning of the human race, when our ancestors used fire for warmth. Nowadays instead of felling a tree and setting it alight in our living room, we pump oil out of the depths of the earth, burn it, use the warmth this generates to evaporate water which in turn drives a turbine connected to an electrical generator, transport the electricity hundreds of kilometres to its destination where it is converted back into heat using large resistors. Clearly, technology has made our lives much simpler.

A far more recent arrival on the energy market is wind energy, traditionally used in places where mechanical energy of some sort was need. However, with the invention of the steam engine and the realization that mechanical energy too could be extracted from the better understood process of burning stuff, wind energy fell out of grace. Recently however, it has been working on a comeback.

It will lie still, waiting, for as long as it needs to. It will come for you when you least expect it. It is a windmill, plotting its revenge.

In wind energy’s absence a new form of energy made its entrance; nuclear power or fission to be precise. Nuclear fission and humanity got off on a bad start. A period in which humanity slowly figured out that the nice glowing quality of radium actually meant it was a supremely unsuitable material for use in paints, toothpaste and food supplements made sure radioactivity was omitted in the top ten most popular physical processes of the day.

Three nuclear explosions, two detonated by America and one by Russia, didn’t help matters either. And then there is the matter of nuclear waste, which will continue to glow long after humanity’s last light bulb has been extinguished.

However, most of these arguments are already pretty old, and are ageing further at a rapid pace. We are getting better and better at storing nuclear waste, and newer reactors produce less and less of the stuff, where older reactors never produced a lot of it to begin with. Also, modern reactors don’t do a Chernobyl, but rather sabotage their own nuclear reaction when they overheat.

This is white smoke, it fights on the side of good in the epic battle for our atmosphere.

So nuclear power has already grown to be quite a mature piece of technology, with more progress on the horizon still. Meanwhile, in the atmosphere, CO2 molecules are joined by more and more of their brethren each year in their holy quest to drive humans of the face of the Earth. Facing this environmental problem already is extremely challenging without placing additional restrictions on possible solutions.

Yes, ‘green power’ has made a lot of progress as well, but it is by no means perfect. Nuclear power and various forms of ‘green’ electricity all have their strengths and weaknesses, and anyone claiming some of these beat others on all counts is lying plain and simple. Also it’s notoriously difficult to predict with any accuracy what new technologies the future will bring. Nuclear power and different forms of ‘green’ power all promise a bright future filled with breakthroughs. Which of these will become reality and which will turn out to be mirages is something only time can tell.

If there ever was a point at which ending nuclear research made sense, then it lies in the past. Killing nuclear power now isn’t good for anything and, more importantly, will needlessly make our attempts at finding a solution to our climate troubles even harder than it already is. Lets get through this climate crisis on normal difficulty first, then when the next crisis comes round we can try hard.

My nomination for ‘best invention since 1800’ would be the internet. Yes, I know, it does lean on a number of other great inventions, like the computer or electricity. Then again, arguably the primary function of computers these days is the internet, and furthermore, electricity was invented by God way before the year 1800, so it does not qualify.

Apart from electricity, God invented life, the universe and pretty much everything. Civilization could start only after his patents expired. Meanwhile God abandoned his creations, angered by the fact that his investments never saw a return value.

Why do I pick the internet? Because it is the ultimate form of communication. We can use it to communicate, instantly, and in whichever way suits us best. We can talk to one person, or several at once. Some keep the entire world up to date on their day to day activities. A popular feature of the internet is the possibility to ignore these people.

Another check on the ‘ultimate form of communication’ checklist, is the possibility to take the internet with us wherever we go. Having a connection on our phones is becoming commonplace, and considering the internet can do everything, you’d think that would make ‘traditional mobile products’, including calling and texting, obsolete. Mobile operators seem to think differently, and try to prohibit the use of internet applications that substitute functionality offered by their own services.

Why do mobile operators try to preserve those obsolete services? Because there is more money to be made that way. The internet is an all-in-one package that can only be sold once. In contrast, there are more mobile products than there are species of insects, and several new ones are discovered every day. I’m confident that soon we’ll see plans giving discounts on calling the person on the exact opposite end of the world, using the internet whilst the constellation Orion is visible or texting from under the shower.

Ants can carry loads several times their own weight. Also, they use Vodafone. Why? We asked an ant: “Well, we kill insects several times our own size and need some way to bring them back to our colony … oh, about Vodafone, sorry … ahem … Because Vodafone is the best mobile operator for strong and good looking insects like ourselves. That okay?”

The possibility to put together your personal perfect mobile plan might seem a big money-saver, but don’t be fooled; calls, texts, internet, it’s all just bytes hitching a ride from A to B. By selling one product as ten different products, mobile operators greatly increase their profit margins.

Nothing illustrates this better, than the fact that a single text message costs about the same as one minute of telephone conversation, while the amount of data transferred is more than a factor thousand smaller. Those are the better profit margins; I suspect every mobile operator has a department, the sole job of which it is to provide maniacal laughter every time a text message is sent.

It seems to me that at this point, telephony is the last, large form of day-to-day communication still functioning more or less separated from the internet. It won’t last. Ideas tying the internet and telephony together are already knocking on the door, and no matter how hard mobile operators try to block it; at some point in the next couple of years a company like Google will code a storm ram big enough to knock it down. Then the internet will be our de-facto standard and only form of communication.

I don’t usually see the internet as something that’s still busy defining its place in our lives, but it’s developments like the ones in the mobile market, that show us there’s still a number of big milestones ahead of us. So if you’re not yet convinced the internet is the best invention since the year 1800, you might still change your mind.

Then again, the bicycle too might prove itself in new ways in the future. Maybe the next economic crisis will bankrupt the entire car industry, making the bicycle our primary form of transportation. Maybe the first atlantic crossing on a bike will forever change people’s perception of the size of the globe. Maybe the great bicycle charge of 2034 will be instrumental in ending World War III. You know, one of those things shampoos claim to do.

Firstly, the film can focus too much on the main plot of the book. These films follow the plot around every corner, and as a result don’t get around spending a lot of time on that which is most fun; the day to day happenings at Hogwarts, school for witchcraft and wizardry. We get a very nice summary of the book, but summaries tend to less good then the works they are based on.

The opposite can also happen. The film spends the bare minimum of attention on key plot points, and invests the rest of its running time in some excellent visual recreations of our favourite scenes from the book. Thus we get a very nice soap opera, enjoyable due to familiarity to those who read the book, but others might wonder what exactly they should be watching for.

Sadly John Williams left the franchise after the third (and best) film, and we are stuck with annoying sounds produced by Nicholas Hooper. At the cinema, all my attempts to do something about this – ‘Accio John Williams’, ‘Silencio’ and ‘Finite crappy music’ – only resulted in an agitated audience.

The sixth Harry Potter film falls firmly in the latter category. I enjoyed it a lot because, having read the book, I prefer spending an hour or two in the company of those lovely characters over a rehash of a plot I already know. On the other hand, though the books do a pretty good job steering around clichés, the films seem positively determined to hit every single one. Overall though, we were presented some of the very best and funniest scenes from the book, in a way that stayed true to the book, which made me a very happy fan.

That said, the plot could hardly have carried less weight, and this is best illustrated by some key plot points. The audience doesn’t get a lot of time to be shocked by Harry seriously injuring a classmate, for a minute later he is rewarded with a kiss from his new girlfriend. The seriousness of Draco bringing deadly Death Eaters into Hogwarts doesn’t leave too much of an impression either, when these known killers merely inflict some minor vandalism to the great hall, the magical equivalent of trashing a bus stop.

Then there is a pointless intermission in the Burrow. Ginny ties Harry’s shoes as a testament of her love for him, and the Weasly’s house gets blown to pieces. That didn’t happen in the book (both the shoelaces and the explosion), but it was shocking (only the explosion), so that was nicely done. Now how does this tragic event affect the characters in the rest of the film? Not at all is how.

Exactly what kind of knot Ginny used to tie Harry’s shoes remains a subject of fierce debate amongst fans. Several camps, called ‘knotters’, all believe a different knot was made. You can be sure these camps will closely watch the last two films, where Harry’s shoelaces will have to hold while he runs, apparates and apparently even rides a dragon. It is clear that these films will raise the bar for shoe tying higher than cinema has dared to do so far.

However, the ultimate example of a marginalized plot line is the one concerning the Half-Blood Prince. Considering that the character of the half-blood prince doesn’t enjoy the obsession in the film it does in the book, Snape telling Harry at the end of the film, that it is in fact him who is the Half-Blood prince can hardly be called a revelation. No; taking into account that Snape just killed Dumbledore, a proper term for that piece of dialogue would be ‘spectacular anticlimax’ or ‘shitty ending’. A braver person than I would have ignored the title of the book, cut the entire Half-Blood Prince plot strand out and apply for government protection from millions of angry fans. The film would have been better for it.

And to top it off that simply horrific ending line; I myself could have done a better job than “I never realized how beautiful this place was.”

First of all, you’re reading this from the screen of a larger piece of equipment, like a computer. Secondly, you need to fetch this piece of text, and the lovely pictures of course, over the internet from the place I stored them. To be honest I haven’t got a clue where that is, somewhere in the Netherlands I’m sure, but regardless of that: if you enter www.polyplural.com into your address bar, your computer will manage to find my blog. Lastly you need some software. Communicating directly with a computer is hard work for us non-computers, so we gladly pay a couple hundred units of our favourite currency to hire a translator.

Most people know only one such translator, Microsoft Windows. Various iterations of this omnipresent piece of software, accompany millions of people in their diverse and daily computer adventures. And those adventures include regular expeditions into the World Wide Web, just click that little blue internet icon and you’re on your way. Be sure to equip yourself properly before diving into the wild though, there are all sorts of nasties out there you don’t want in your system. Like mosquitoes; the credit card stealing kind.

You would not guess it from looking at it, but behind this logo lies both fact and fiction, knowledge and opinion, badly referenced Wikipedia entries and several generations worth of human stupidity.

At this point a small fraction of the adventurers will protest. Windows alone, you see, isn’t enough to let you enjoy the internet. You need an additional piece of kit for that, something called a browser. Luckily you get one for free with Windows, and it’s called Internet Explorer. There are many others however, well known among them Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. I use the term well known quite lightly here, because compared to Internet Explorer these otherwise fine pieces of software are about as well known as zebras are to penguins.

Obviously the companies behind these browsers aren’t too happy with the status quo. They argue that by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, Microsoft is using its monopoly in the operating system market (in other words: Windows) to get a monopoly in the browser market. This practice is forbidden in most parts of the world, among them Europe, and so the companies behind Firefox, Chrome and Opera have asked the European Commission to do something about it.

Fierce debate about the issues shows us that this might not be as easy as it sounds. Some argue that Firefox managing to gain a good 20 percent share in the browser market, proves that market is more competitive than ever. This might be true, but considering over 50 percent of the internet users don’t even know of the existence of a thing called a browser, even though they’re using one, I’d say Microsoft’s hold on the market is still pretty solid. No, I think there can hardly be any doubt that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows has been hurting other browsers. How could it not?

At this point a lot of people get confused. What about Volkswagen, they say, should it be forced to sell the car engines separately? Sure! After all, the engine industry has suffered greatly from Volkswagen’s dominance in the car market. Then take Paint and WordPad, surely what applies to Internet Explorer applies to them too? Spot on! Let’s not forget that picture and document editing software developers are having a hard time, because everyone is using Paint for poster design and photo editing, and WordPad for writing essays and books.

Perhaps the most convincing argument in defence of Microsoft is that a browser is unmistakably a part of an operating system. I think this very much depends on your definition of an operating system. But let’s not forget that with Windows being pretty much the only operating system people use, it automatically defines what an operating system is. What came first? The chicken or the egg? The operating system or the definition of an operating system?

A short explanation of the chicken or the egg paradox: Consider an egg. After some time it hatches and a chicken is born. If we accept time travel is possible, the chicken can go back in time and turn the egg into an omelette. This, however, would prevent the chicken from being born, and so someone else would have to make the omelette. This tells us time travel is possible, but only in a universe where people like omelettes.

An often heard claim is that if Internet Explorer shouldn’t be bundled with Windows, then the same could be said for a large number of other bundled applications. Paint and Wordpad are obviously stupid examples, but what about Media Player, Movie Maker or Media Center? I agree we have a problem here, but one that stretches in two directions: What about pieces of software that aren’t bundled with Windows yet, but might be in the future? By simply bundling new applications with Windows, Microsoft has the power to conquer pretty much any software market, and has in fact done exactly that repeatedly in the past. Not only with browsers, but also with media players, email clients, instant messaging software and virtualization software. Currently it looks like anti-virus software will be next in line.

I don’t claim to have a solution to this problem. I do believe that responding to the situation by saying that a browser is simply a part of an operating system, is extremely short sighted, and ignorant of the way Microsoft is throwing its weight around in pretty much any software market. Somehow, somewhere, a line must be drawn between what an operating system is and isn’t, and it shouldn’t be Microsoft doing the drawing.

One reviewer wrote: “This last season was mostly a repetition of what we have already seen in earlier seasons. The producers seem unable to either take the series to a new level, or bring it to an end. Though I hope I’m wrong, this series seems to turn out another one of the variety that keeps on going until the audience has lost interest.”

He goes on to note that the plot line is, at times, hard to follow: “Even though it was used to fuel some great political drama, the concept of the Israeli now killing more civilians than Hamas was a little far-fetched. Lets consider here, that Hamas had already been established as a terrorist organization, one that actively seeks out to cause as much civilian casualties as possible.”

Fans were also disappointed. Among other things, large numbers complained that the absence of the popular Lebanese in this season was a turn for the worse.

Therein however lies the problem. Watching all these series will take an awful lot of time. And by an awful lot I mean approximately 240 hours. That’s two weeks of watching television, where you can either take the weekends of or get 5 hours of sleep a day. I understand that most people don’t have that much time on their hands. Taking a week of might be possible, but two weeks is really pushing it.

So that confronts us with the following question: In the company of which moving pictures should you spend your time? That’s where I come in. After approximately 240 hours of industrious researching I’m now able to decide for you! In two rounds, I’m going to bring the amount of series you have to watch down from four to two. Your homework for the next entry: Watch two television series.

Round 1: That ’70s Show versus Firefly

It’s the first round and we’re starting strong. In one corner of the ring we have the popular That ’70s Show. A show centered on a group of teenagers living in, you would never have guessed, the ’70s. These teenagers are constantly making jokes, presumably for the entertainment of the large group of people that follow them around and laugh at these jokes. By what can only be called a miraculous coincidence, this group of people, supposedly a significant part of the cast, continuously manages to stay just out of frame.

In the other corner of ring we have the mighty Firefly, an entry in the Science-Fiction-Western genre. Staying close to the roots of the genre it features the usual ‘people being thrown out of holographic bar windows’, ‘levitating train robberies by spaceships’ and ‘horse-hovercraft chases’. The cast of this series too, spends a lot of time being funny. However, unlike That ’70s Show, there is no group of out-of-frame-people providing visual or audible cues to mark the points where a joke is made. Recognizing these points in an episode is thus left an exercise for the viewer.

These two series have a couple of things in common. Both series have a lot of humor and both series consist of small episode-long stories playing in front of their aforementioned backdrops. There isn’t a lot of season-arching storytelling going on, no big picture unless you’re referring to the logo.

The logo’s of both shows. The Firefly logo has the clear advantage, being sharp and flamey, whereas the That ’70s Show logo has rounded corners and no apparent special powers.

So who wins? I admit that it’s a difficult choice. Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly captains a spaceship, which is of course cool. But Eric, the main character in That ’70s Show, has his own car, which is pretty awesome too. Captain Reynolds and his crew don’t back away from the occasional shady jobs, like smuggling or stealing. Then again Eric and his friends drink beer. Furthermore both Firefly and That ’70s Show feature alien monsters (called ‘Reavers’ and ‘Parents’ respectively), so no help there either.

My advice: divide your time between the series and watch a season each. If afterwards you want to see more Firefly you’re out of luck: The series only lasted a single season. A follow-up movie called Serenity was made though, which gives some closure to the series. If you’re interested in a higher dose of That ’70s Show, then there is no less than 7 more seasons left; enough to feed a long and probably not so healthy addiction.

Round 2: Buffy the Vampire Slayer versus Battlestar Galactica

To our left: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The title is a pretty succinct description of the show: It’s about a girl, called Buffy, who slays vampires. Closer inspection reveals that there are more characters involved with the slaying, most prominent among them a computer-geek-witch, a British librarian and an ordinary boy who mostly provides moral support. On the ‘being slayed’ side we can also add some elements. Although a colourful collection of vampires does provide most of the evil Buffy and her friends have to fight, the audience learns early on that vampires are merely one type of demon, many others exist. The show features some ‘apocalyptic drama’, mixed with ‘teenage high school drama’.

To our right: Battlestar Galactica! In short: Evil robots wipe out all of humanity. One small fleet of refugees under the command of Commander William Adama manages to escape. This fleet sets course for the mythical planet Earth, hoping to finally find some rest, nice weather and, one supposes, favourable immigration policies. Both the lack of sunshine on board the fleet’s ships and the plot give this piece of television a very dark tone. Furthermore, in contrast to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show features only ‘apocalyptic drama’, no ‘teenage high school drama’. It is however constantly supported by Taiko drums.

Battlestar Galactica, the ship that gave the series it’s name. The ship is able to cover huge distances quickly by making faster than light jumps. In between those jumps it can use those huge engines to cover comparatively minuscule distances. This movement is necessary to make the ship appear cooler on television.

Both these series have names that make a lot of people want to run the other way. The title Buffy the Vampire Slayer can only be appreciated with a strong dose of irony, irony you should keep within arm’s reach whenever you watch an episode. Battlestar Galactica inherited its title from its predecessor, a series that quite unlike this new Battlestar Galactica does provide the cheesy science fiction one would expect from the title. Furthermore both series offer storylines unfolding over several episodes or even seasons; in this respect Battlestar Galactica in particular delivers some dramatic origami.

As for the winner? Well, in the ring Buffy would beat the crap out of Adama I’m afraid. But the odds are that after the fight is over, a crippled Adama would step forward to address the masses with a cool speech. It’s your choice.

The entertainment industry had its chance to nip the problem in the bud several years ago, and threw it away. Had the industry moved along with the times, and launched digital distribution services when people started asking for them, odds are we’d never have seen the rise of a generation that downloads without any moral reservations.

The existence of the “everything is free, piracy is okay” morale amongst the general population, makes the continuous attempts of the industry to stop piracy by lobbying for new legislature look ridiculous. Laws are meaningless when they aren’t supported by the population, and governments know this. Laws are also meaningless when they are without a way to enforce them, and detecting copyright infringement simply isn’t as straightforward as detecting speeding, theft or murder: There is no fast car, no missing property and no blood; only bits that might or might not belong to an illegal download.

A pirate ship. Back in the days when the Internet did not yet exist, films, music and games had to be transported from one continent to the other over sea (rather than under it), and by wooden boats (rather than glass fibre). Pirating involved entering those boats and killing its crews. The popularity of modern piracy is largely attributed to the fact that it involves less killing than used to be the case.

Back in the present, the industry’s approach to the problem has improved a bit, but not much. A lot of content, mostly music and games, is now available through download channels, but there is a forest of regional restrictions that shields content from entire continents filled with potential customers. Meanwhile piracy is still hugely popular, not only because it’s cheapest, but also because it’s simply the best service out there: You can get anything you want, whenever you want, in the format you want, wherever you are and without being tied to any software or hardware. It is ironic that this amount of customer service is only available through illegal channels.

So it’s two factors that make piracy popular; the price and the service. The industry tends to talk only about the first factor; goes on to conclude there is no way it can compete on price and then basically throws the towel into the ring. That’s entirely their loss, because in competing on the second factor lays not only the one way in which piracy rates can be brought down, but also the possibility of great market expansion.

Several reports show that the average media consumption is growing rapidly. Piracy has a large hand in this, but not only because it makes entertainment cheaper. Being able to watch a new episode of your favourite show whenever you want, being able to buy an album the minute you get the urge to listen to a particular artist, being able to watch a particular movie on an evening you feel like it; these are all scenario’s where people can consume more content, can pay for more content, but only if they can get to that content in a quick and hassle free way. Currently, it’s only piracy that offers that amount of service.

There isn’t a lot of AB to go around, only one in two hundred people in America has it, so all seems lost. Then the son steps forward. He doesn’t care about the odds, and insists that he be tested. And by a small miracle he has the right blood-type. The patient survives.

Great fiction? Possibly. Well, not really to be honest, there is better television out there. The Science? Disastrous; because a small miracle is not nearly enough for a woman with blood-type O to have a child with blood-type AB. It simply can’t happen.

Sarah Connor and her son Jon. Do they even look alike?

What amazes me is that apparently no one, from the scriptwriters all the way to the actors, caught up on the mistake. A fix would have been easy; simply give both patient and son blood-type A or B, and everything works out again.

Science gone wrong is a recurring theme on television, and I’m not referring to the popular plot device here, but the way more popular plot ignorance. For all you scriptwriters out there; here follow two areas of science where you make a particularly large number of mistakes, with a focus on how to avoid them.

Electricity

You would think that, given the age we live in, everyone has a basic understanding of electricity. You would be wrong. According to Hollywood, electricity is something that lives in metal. Touching metal filled with electricity will cause pain and sparks. Touching metal filled with a lot of electricity will give you a sparkly death. Even when you don’t touch the metal, enough electricity can still cause sparks. In summary one can conclude electricity has a lot to do with sparks.

Science agrees with the Hollywood stance that electricity ‘lives’ in metal, but takes issue with the view that sparks are the central concept behind it. Rather, so science claims, electricity is something called ‘charge’ that moves from one point to another. If this charge cannot use your body to get in contact with the opposite charge, it won’t go through it. Birds have adopted this view as well, as it allows them to sit comfortably on power cables, without experiencing physical agony and death.

Jump Buffy! Before electricity from the power cable in the bathroom moves through the water on the floor, through your high heels, through your body to … err … somewhere (turns out in the next scene it was her hair). Also, sparks!

One last note to the scriptwriters: you may want to familiarize yourself with the concept of a ‘fuse’. All houses come equipped with them, but in the designs for your fictional houses they are often conveniently forgotten. Convenient for you that is, not so much for your characters – unless they want to use power outlets to kill bad guys (with sparks!).

Momentum

Everyone, even Hollywood, knows that if a fist, foot or bullet goes fast enough, it can blow an enemy through a wall. There is, however, a loophole that is often forgotten: your macho-display with throw you back with the same force, possibly through another wall. This might cause the building to collapse.

Assume for a moment that the building still stands, and that a new, stronger bad guy steps through either hole into the arena. Hollywood dictates that the force that threw the previous bad guy (and you) through a wall, might not be enough to do the same to the new bad guy. This is because this new bad guy is stronger you see, and uses all his strength to stick to the ground.

Science is looking hard for ‘stick-to-the-ground-muscles’ to back up this theory, but so far extensive research has yielded nothing.

However, a third camp, called nerds, offers an alternative explanation: Considering the possibility of a cyborg, genetically mutated to have all the different blood types at once and bio-engineered to use the electric field of the earth as a power source for its quantum-muscles, and accepting the wave-particle duality as true, it should be possible to draw enough power through the flux capacitors to create potential field equal but opposite to the incoming blow!

The nerds eagerly call for experimentation to back up their theory.