voidampersand

Recent Actions

• Commented on Spoiler Thread
  Cats and dangling plot threads seem like they would go together. I would worry only if Bob started giving occult "enhancements" to Spooky......
• Commented on Competition Time!
  $EMPLOYEE left controlled material ("PLOKTI: The Journal of Sorcerous Technology") in plain view on desk. Should have been locked away or returned to the library. Addendum (in the same hand): $EMPLOYEE claims that PLOKTI is not controlled material but a...
• Commented on The ticking clock
  "Or do you try and use the time you've got left to change the world, and if so how?" We all have a certain amount of time left. What are we doing?...
• Commented on The ticking clock
  That's a tough one. I know someone who is trying to write as much as he can, inbetween the surgeries and the chemo sessions. He takes joy in his writing and has many friendships because of it. He is doing...
• Commented on Death: A Pantomime
  This is not a boating scenario; it is a boat maintenance scenario. Don't do this lightly — someone close to me watched a friend of his die this way for real. Simply pick up a power tool on an extension...
• Commented on Potato Salad Battle
  This is my great-grandmother's potato salad recipe, via my mom, who lightened it up a bit (less oil, no mayonnaise): Add per 1 cup of potato cubes: 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/2 T. tarragon vinegar, and 1/2 T. olive oil. Grate...
• Commented on Rudy #3: Looking For The Big Aha.
  Quantum thinkers will be awesome at finding parking places....
• Commented on Brief absence
  So Bob is actually a simulation on a starwisp headed toward the brown dwarf Hyundai +4904/-56? And he meets a nice mechanical girl on the way to the Festival? My, what an evil idea. The first novel would have to...
• Commented on Looking under the street lamp again
  Every approach here seems to be bottlenecked by the need to sustain a biosphere and a society during the journey. That's true about Spaceship Earth too. But I don't think of the biosphere as a bottleneck. It's a feature. And...
• Commented on Five reasons to envy the French
  @90: I think France's HSR system has more to do with national pride and showcasing the nation's technical abilities than with rational transportation policy. It's not just about the trains. France is also proud of Airbus, justifiably. It has a...
• Commented on Five reasons to envy the French
  I highly recommend reading about the Credit Mobilier financial scandal. The American pot makes a nice set with the Japanese and French kettle....
• Commented on Five reasons to envy the French
  Going to France was a revelation. I said to myself "Oh! This is what it's like to live in a civilized country." Going to Japan I had a similar revelation: "Oh! This is what it's like to live in a...
• Commented on Geopolitics in the raw
  Whatever happens next in Afghanistan, the new regime must not be called "Taliban." So what if we can't defeat them. We can rebrand them. We have Madison Ave....
• Commented on We appear to have a hung parliament
  The average voting democrat is far too the left of their representatives. I wouldn't say far to the left, but you're right there is a shift. The representatives have to win in the general election, which means they have to...
• Commented on We appear to have a hung parliament
  I'm a center-left Democrat, and based on questionnaires, I'm a bit to the left of the Liberal-Democrats in the UK. The UK Conservatives are more like the "Blue Dog" Democrats. (The "Blue Dogs" hold conservative districts taken from the Republicans....
• Commented on As You Like It
  Dear Hal, I would like to say, as a straight guy, that I don't feel a movie has to have straight people in it. Just make sure they're pretty (and some are clever or kind) and keep me guessing about...
• Commented on The sound of silence
  Some things you've definitely shown you can do but have not yet done at novel length: Utopian, biologically-oriented, mid-future SF. So let's put them in the blender and see what Earth looks like in the next century. Our civilization managed...