History Main / LifeImitatesArt

*** Plus a large proportion is privatly owned by various buisnesses to protect their own premises.

*** So far, using lasers as weapons hasn't managed to get past AwesomeButImpractical. Humans are made primarily of water, and water takes an awful lot of energy to heat up. You can give someone a pretty bad burn with a laser, but it's hard to actually ''kill'' someone with one.

* Four words: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show_delusion The ''Truman Show'' Delusion]].

** Even weirder? Santos' opponent, Arnold Vinick, was based on John McCain. Vinick is a "straight-talking" maverick Republican who has to pick a more conservative VP because he is having trouble with his base. Sound familiar?

* Isaac Asimov's short SF story "The Feeling of Power" is based on the premise that people would completely forget how to do mathematical calculations manually - on paper paper - and end up relying entirely on machines. His "hand computer" predates the calculator.

** Do not forget the two-way radio watches of Midnight, Dick Tracy, and Doc Savage (who debuted after Dick Tracy but used a radio watch before the other two).

* In the episode "Sick" of ''Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'', a woman is discovered to be purposely poisoning her granddaughter to feign sympathy/money/services from charities. The episode aired in 2004. This scenario [[http://www.detnews.com/article/20100930/METRO03/9300382/Warren-mom-accused-of-faking-son-s-cancer-to-raise-money"]] happened in September 2010, although not an exact match, close enough.

** And if that's not enough? Santos officially announces his campaign with a speech about {I Am Not Making This Up) how there is no such thing as false '''hope'''. He also appoints his former rival to be Secretary of State. He picks his VP candidate to back his lack of foreign policy experience. During the "lame duck" phase after the election, there is an armed conflict involving a former Soviet republic. The race gets swung in Santos's direction due to a nuclear accident, which takes place at roughly the same time of year as the credit crunch hit in 2008 and solidified Obama's lead. The list goes on.

** Not to mention all sorts of stories of RealLife celebrities looking up with admiration to NichelleNichols as Uhura]], television's first female African-[[strike:American]] astronaut — such as [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Dr. Mae Jemison, NASA's first female African-American astronaut]].
** On the matter of automatic sliding doors, they're actually OlderThanYouThink: they were first used by the [[OlderThanFeudalism Ancient]] [[AncientEgypt Egyptians]]. Hand-operated, but in such a way that the people who went through the door couldn't see it. (just like the actual sliding doors on the StarTrek set).

** Fans of ''StarTrek'' wrote so many letters to NASA, that eventually, they did name the first full-scale prototype Space Shuttle ''Enterprise''. The shuttle subsequently appeared in a mural in ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' and the opening credits of ''StarTrekEnterprise'', implying that in the Trek universe the ''starship'' was named after the ''shuttle''.

** Not to mention all sorts of stories of RealLife celebrities looking up with admiration to NichelleNichols, television's first female African-[[strike:American]] astronaut?such as [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Dr. Mae Jemison, NASA's first female African-American astronaut]].

* In the episode "Sick" of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a woman is discovered to be purposely poisoning her granddaughter to feign sympathy/money/services from charities. The episode aired in 2004. This scenario <a href="http://www.detnews.com/article/20100930/METRO03/9300382/Warren-mom-accused-of-faking-son-s-cancer-to-raise-money">just happened</a>, although not an exact match, close enough.

** In [[http://xkcd.com/591/ this comic]] [[{{Twilight}} Stephenie Meyer]] beats [[{{Imageboards}} 4chan]] at it's [[{{Troll}} own game]]. Moot (4chan's owner) replied by temporarily replacing /b/'s title by "Twilight appreciation zone"

** On the matter of automatic sliding doors, they're actually OlderThanYouThink: they were first used by the [[OlderThanFeudalism Ancient]] [[AncientEgypt Egyptians]]. Hand-operated, but in such a way that the people who went through the door couldn't see it. (just like the actual sliding doors on the StarTrek set). When the Greeks first saw this, they called it ''Techné'', deceit, because it was the UrExample of hidden technology. So Ancient Egyptian Sliding Doors are the TropeNamer for Technology.