Ronald Reagan

If Starship Troopers Was Serious, Its Trailer Would Look Like This

Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers is a timeless movie because it works on so many levels. Is it a kick-ass science fiction action film? Yes. Is it a subversive allegory about war? Yes. Does it have complete control of its weirdness? Absolutely. And yet, it can still be more. As a child, editor Tim Gonzales saw…

Trailers Germain Lussier Jun 12

Reagan Thought This 1983 Nuclear Apocalypse Movie Validated His Nuclear Policy

Have you ever seen the 1983 ABC TV-movie The Day After? It’s bleak as hell, to say the least. It was a media event, with untold numbers of American dying in the film after a tit-for-tat nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But curiously, President Ronald Reagan thought that it validated everything about his get-tough…

Tech News Matt Novak Apr 17

How Star Wars Helped Create President Reagan

1. Star Wars starts out in the Wild West, the rough-hewn old frontier, and then it races upwards, soaring and expanding its scope, until at last it becomes World War II. It’s the story of drifters and dreamers, who find their purpose out in the absolute dead middle of nowhere, and end up leading the…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders Dec 7

Reagan’s Star Wars Missile Program Had Its Own Video Game

Remember President Ronald Reagan’s plan for space weapons in the 1980s? Today, it’s little more than a punchline, but it used to be serious business. How serious? Video game serious. Yes, there really was an SDI video game, and thanks to the Internet Archive you can even play it. President Reagan first proposed his space…

Tech News Matt Novak Feb 27

The US government spent $1 billion in the 1980s trying to build Skynet

Believe it or not, the U.S. government actually spent about $1 billion in the 1980s trying to build a program like Skynet from the Terminator movies. DARPA — an agency that’s sometimes called the “mad science” research arm of the Defense Department — worked on developing driverless vehicles, a pilot’s assistant like R2-D2, and advanced…

Tech News Matt Novak Aug 1

Bill Clinton Hopes An Alien Invasion Would Bring Humans Together

The White House gets spectacularly destroyed in Independence Day, one of the most famous movies of Bill Clinton’s presidency — but if that happened in real life, Clinton says it could be a good thing, if it finally ended the huge divisions among the human race. Last night on Jimmy Kimmel, the ex-POTUS was asked…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Apr 3

DARPA Tried to Build Skynet in the 1980s

From 1983 to 1993 DARPA spent over $1 billion on a program called the Strategic Computing Initiative. The agency’s goal was to push the boundaries of computers, artificial intelligence, and robotics to build something that, in hindsight, looks strikingly similar to the dystopian future of the Terminator movies. They wanted to build Skynet. Much like…

Tech News Matt Novak Dec 18

16 Names NASA Considered For The 1980s Space Station That Never Was

During his 1984 State of the Union speech, President Reagan announced that the U.S. would build a new permanently manned space station within a decade. The Space Shuttle program was underway, and a permanent space station seemed like the next logical step in our bold push into the final frontier. It didn’t hurt that the…

Tech News Matt Novak Jul 29

Could super-realistic avatars of dead presidents influence election results?

A new technology called cognitive video regeneration has seemingly brought Ronald Reagan back from the dead — a potential glimpse into how politics might be played in the future — if not the present. The technology was developed by a company called Seyyer, who has created the Reagan “Live From the Other Side” series of…

io9 George Dvorsky Sep 17

1980 Rocky Horror spoof cast Ronald Reagan as Dr. Frank-N-Furter

On a dark and stormy night, two liberal kids named Brad and Janet seek help at a mansion after their car breaks down. But they quickly discover that the occupants want to seduce them — to become conservatives. That’s the premise behind the bizarre Rocky Horror spoof, The Ronnie Horror Picture Show. This video comes…

io9 Lauren Davis Sep 16

What happened when a 7th grader asked Ronald Reagan to declare his bedroom a federal disaster area

In 1984, a young boy named Andy Smith came up with a clever scheme to get his room cleaned with minimal effort: he would convince President Ronald Reagan to have his room declared a federal disaster area and then clean his room with the resulting funds. But the president didn’t exactly send folks in biohazard…

io9 Lauren Davis Jun 30

Now you can buy Ronald Reagan’s blood for $15,000

Or at least $15,000 for the time being — who knows how high this auction for the Gipper’s dried hemoglobin will go? Indeed, someone is selling a sample of Ronald Reagan’s blood collected after John Hinckley Jr.’s 1981 assassination attempt. According to the owner of the blood-stained vial, his deceased mother worked at the laboratory…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar May 22

25 Years of the Other Star Wars

Not so long ago, right here in our Galaxy, Emperor Ronald Reagan announced the other Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative which started the last phase of the Cold War with the Soviet Union (whom, funnily enough, El Presidente called the Evil Empire.) In these 25 years since his March 23 speech, calling the scientific…

Tech News Jesus Diaz Mar 24

If Starship Troopers Was Serious, Its Trailer Would Look Like This

Reagan Thought This 1983 Nuclear Apocalypse Movie Validated His Nuclear Policy

How Star Wars Helped Create President Reagan

Reagan’s Star Wars Missile Program Had Its Own Video Game

The US government spent $1 billion in the 1980s trying to build Skynet

Bill Clinton Hopes An Alien Invasion Would Bring Humans Together

DARPA Tried to Build Skynet in the 1980s

16 Names NASA Considered For The 1980s Space Station That Never Was

Could super-realistic avatars of dead presidents influence election results?

1980 Rocky Horror spoof cast Ronald Reagan as Dr. Frank-N-Furter

What happened when a 7th grader asked Ronald Reagan to declare his bedroom a federal disaster area

Now you can buy Ronald Reagan’s blood for $15,000

25 Years of the Other Star Wars

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