Looper, a time travel thriller from Rian Johnson, comes out this Friday. It is being hailed as an "uncommonly smart, bravely original blend of futuristic sci-fi and good old-fashioned action." [more inside]
posted by mysticreferee on Sep 26, 2012 - 81 comments

Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents. Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity. For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.
posted by Blasdelb on May 11, 2012 - 57 comments

"From a couple of miles up, all trace of humanity has vanished." "Air travel requires an escape from gravity, an escape from distance, and ultimately an escape from our bodies." Courtesy of loudpaper.
posted by protocool on Jun 3, 2002 - 2 comments

Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies discusses time travel concept discrepancies in popular movies, such as Back to the Future, 12 Monkeys, and Flight of the Navigator. Although they're really just movies, and time travel isn't real (as far as we know), author M. Joseph Young provides very logical arguments for why those things couldn't really happen.
posted by lnicole on Mar 18, 2002 - 25 comments