swordfish - Did Thomas Jefferson really shoot a man for treason?

According to the Jefferson experts at Monticello, no. You can read their response to the claim here. Apart from Swordfish, the only supporting evidence seems to be an Internet post from an untraceable "history professor" who appropriated the name of famous novelist Robert Ludlum.

Realistically, if an American president had ever done such a thing, don't you think you would have heard about it?

(The site that held the "Ludlum" post is gone, but here's a copy courtesy of the Internet archive. Note that no supporting documentation at all is provided, which is not good practice for a historian.)

Word for being biased "towards the other direction"?

Excuse the phrasing of the question, but I'm not sure how to put it.

Example:

Let's say we know for a fact that Smith is working as a police officer and that police officers have very small salaries. We also know that this causes Smith to lead a lesser life than if police officers were to have larger salaries. When we ask Smith if the government should lower salaries for police officers and raise salaries for firemen, he replies that they should.

Question

I don't think it's correct to say that Smith is unbiased in this scenario, but to say he is biased is misleading. If I were to tell someone that Smith thinks the government should lower police salaries and raise firemen salaries and that Smith is biased, the conclusion would probably be that Smith is a fireman.

So, what is Smith?

james bond - Why was Skyfall delayed?

The James Bond franchise is an exceptionally long-lived one. Every few years a new Bond film comes out, although there isn't a set schedule for when they do so. However, looking at a chronology of Bond film release years shows a general pattern of 2-3 years between releases if they're using the same actor as Bond. When there's a change in actor, there are larger gaps.

However, the recent films had a 4 year gap between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. This seems particularly odd given that Quantum of Solace continued a reboot of the franchise started with Casino Royale, so a steady stream of frequent films is a good idea. Indeed, between Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace there's only a 2 year gap. This makes the 4 year gap between Quantum and Skyfall all the stranger.

What's the reason for the delay for making Skyfall?

Why was MacGyver's first name kept a mystery?

The name 'Stacey' was never formally adopted within the show as canon: instead, they went for him just being called 'Mac'. The intention, in the first season, was for the character to have a somewhat mysterious background, with hints of history rather than specifics. This approach was dropped by the end of the first season, partly because it wasn't very successful, partly because it didn't catch the interest of the audience.

Instead, the character was given an increasing amount of backstory (not always consistent). By the fifth season, the absence of a first name had almost become a running joke; a near-reveal (done partly as an audience tease) established that MacGyver disliked his first name, never used it, did not allow its use and would not answer to it.

The full reveal was finally done in the final season, and a big production (a two-part episode with fantasy sequences) was made of it. Other than that episode, the only time the name was ever mentioned was in the series finale: it was revealed that MacGyver's son had been given the name 'Angus' as a middle name, and that he didn't like the name either.

Identify older than 1995 sci-fi movie with an alien referred to as Xenomorph

I watched this as a teen, so it is probably dated before 1995.
If I remember correctly, one of the initial scenes was set on a space-ship and there were some heavy vault-like doors. I believe some kind of accident causes at least one of the sealed doors to open and an alien breaks free. Somehow, the alien (if my memory serves me right it was just referred to as a "Xenomorph" later) gets to Earth and thats where most part of the movie happened. Most likely it was "present" Earth, no future setting.

single word requests - What do you call a person who refuses to do something/certain things?

It really depends what they are refusing to do and the reasons for their refusal. And the point of view of the person describing them.

For example, if someone refuses to go to war because he has moral objections to war in general, we call him a "conscientious objector". If he refuses to go because he's afraid of getting hurt, we call him a "coward". If he refuses to go because he sympathizes with the enemy, we might even call him a "traitor". Etc.

If a man asks a girl to go on a date and she says no, he might say she is "stuck up". She might call herself "discriminating".

I don't think there's a general, commonly-used word for someone who refuses to do an unspecified thing for an unspecified reason. It depends on the circumstances. A couple of folks here mention "refusenik", I've heard that word but I think it's pretty rarely used, and is most definitely a definition number 2, only marginally related to the primary definition. Definition 1 being Jews who were denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union, as @ermanen points out. Note that in the original meaning, a refusenik was not someone who refused to do something, but someone who was denied permission to do something that he wanted to do. Almost the opposite.

Need help identifying a short story about a Subway in the Solar System

I'm trying to identify a story that a friend told me about and Ι have very little info.

Ηe described a short story he read many years ago about a subway rail system throughout space and a guy who finds a robot baby while riding, and others are trying to convince him is a real child, and he continues to make stops along the train line trying to find the person to whom this baby belongs.

has anyone heard of a story like that?