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Having curled myself, I can assure you it does not...and if it did make a difference, it would almost certainly be negative, since you're giving up any semblance of control that you had on the actual throw. There's not going to be some "precision poke" that magically steers it where it needs to go. But don't take my word for it.

Does it make any difference?

"No. The double-touching that I've seen has been incidental contact, and that's fingers brushing or hand brushing on a 40-pound piece of granite," said Eugene Hritzuk, a Canadian curler based in Saskatoon who has been involved in competitive curling and coaching for more than 60 years.

"What can fingers brushing against a 40-pound piece of granite do in any event? You need the palm on your hand against that stone to do anything."

Delivering a stone entails acute skills to slide on line and on pace, he said.

Once sliding on target and at the right speed, releasing the stone and then touching it with any force would cause it to veer off its intended line and speed, Hritzuk said. "That would not be advantageous to good execution."

Canadian curling commentator John Cullen, who hosted the CBC podcast Broomgate: A Curling Scandal, said most top curlers will say that double-touching has no effect on the stone.

As well, most top curlers will double-touch at times and don't think it's a foul, he said.

"The idea that a top curler would let a rock go and then want to try to adjust it with their finger —it doesn't seem like there's any way you could get an advantage from that. It feels like it would be worse."

But as I said, the rules are the rules, and I don't think it's wrong to enforce them.

...if said billiard ball weighed 40 lbs.

A little finger poke ain't gonna do shit.

But, the rules are the rules.

This is probably as good as you're likely to get.

It's interesting that they know that, since it's not in the official release - I suppose they may have seen the screener already.

As our cadets return home for their first school holiday, they must choose between what their families expect of them and their own dreams for the future — including an aspiring captain who’s secretly willing to risk everything to re-write her own past, and an aristocratic cadet called to serve his planet way before he’s ready.

So, definitely a Darem episode, and maybe Genesis as well?

I can't help but wonder what Caleb's going to do for a "home for the holidays" episode. Staying at the school is possible, but it would be interesting to see him connect with B'Avi's family.

For the record, if anyone reading this is that sort of person, you can save us a lot of time and just go away now.

The Academy is a fully-functional starship, so she's both the captain and the chancellor. She's 500 years old, is a bit of a hippy, and is happy to lounge around when they're not facing a crisis.

The implication is that the portrayal of bad things is somehow an endorsement of bad things, so it most certainly is not.

The one that bumps me most is the Totally-Not-Ten-Forward Office of the Federation President.

That's a good question. I found this on Memory Alpha:

A desperate scramble among the creative staff ensued to trim as much as possible of the budget as possible; the entire prologue was (albeit painfully) scrapped, scenes were trimmed, all planned set construction for new starship interiors was abandoned (though a new Kronos One corridor set did get build ultimately), the planned live-action shoots in Alaska for the Rura Penthe scenes were scrapped as were plans for new studio models and other visual effects elements. Starship sets were to be entirely recycled from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was concurrently in production, but was slated for its summer hiatus, when filming of The Undiscovered Country was planned to start, and only existing studio models were to be used.

I'm guessing this set was simply not built to hold up under feature film-level resolution.

Edit: elsewhere on the page, it says the galley was a redress of Troi's office.

The way I see it, if there's a big moment and you lost the nuance of what happened with the puck, there'll probably be a replay and I can catch it then.

Jettisoning the nacelles was considered in TOS' "The Apple" and "The Savage Curtain", but in both cases they never actually did it.

Another, more Olympics-related thought: keep in mind that the rink is shorter. The smaller neutral zone seems to be leading to more offside calls.

My tip for watching hockey on TV in general is to not focus too much on the puck, and focus on the bigger-picture movements of the players instead.

You'll know where the puck is, since everyone's swarming toward it, so it's more interesting to see what's going on around it, if that makes sense.

I've always been a heretic.

Oh man, I couldn't agree less. Detach everything!

She also did an episode of "Enterprise" so I guess it's all Trek canon.

That's why Marissa isn't in season four.