Sternhammer

I think it’s pretty good for what it’s trying to do, which is relay scientific data to non-technical readers.

I read this to my partner; we both said, “that’s us!”

Judging by their ships, they have gravity generators which are small enough and have a small enough ratio of energy consumption to energy generation to be used in something like the Millenium Falcon.

Indeed and it’s quite clear that the Falcon has two gravity planes perpendicular to each other: 1. the plane that supports everyone on the main deck (cockpit, crew lounge, etc.) and 2. the gun battery gravity plane at 90 degrees. This is easiest to see in A New Hope during the TIE Fighter battle in the escape from the Death Star. Han and Luke are sitting back-to-back, separated by a short corridor that sits perpendicular to the main deck. I don’t think most people notice this because it’s not obvious.

This is an insightful observation.
I was raised Catholic as well, stopped going to Mass when I left home in my early 20s, and just never missed it. As a child I think I believed but as an adult religious belief seems completely unnecessary.
My son, who was raised an atheist, is now deeply religious—he’s a Benedictine monk (no, we didn’t see that coming!)—but even when visiting him religion seems like a lot of nonsense to me. (He’s happy and we accept his choice despite not sharing his beliefs.)

Some Australian cockroaches definitely fly but don’t seem to do it very often. They’re quite noisy when they fly—kind of like the propeller sound you make if you trill your tongue—and there’s nothing worse than hearing that sound suddenly stop very close to you. ‘Oh fuck! Have I got a cockroach on me?’ I hate them.

Still, the world’s most successful African American. /s

Technically not ‘convicted’ until sentenced but that day is coming.

Indeed. Apple always gets criticised for the 30% ‘Apple Tax’ but the console manufacturers get a free pass for the same thing. Bizarre.

Yes, additive colour theory is based on red, green and blue (RGB). These are the colours you see if you look at your TV screen very closely.

Subtractive colour theory uses cyan, magenta and yellow. In printing black, abbreviated ‘K’, is added for contrast—CMYK. These are the inks used to print the dots you see if you look closely at a magazine photo.

I think people are confused by this because they’re taught a bastardised version of subtractive colour theory, using red, blue and yellow, at a very early age.

I think the Easter Billy thing may have been a fund raiser for the Save the Bilby Fund, though I’m not sure. Did some work with them in Charleville some time back, as part of a student field trip looking at design concepts for what eventually became the Bilby Experience. Great people.

From what I can remember they’ve had good success in rebuilding the bilby population.

Tower Bridge has its own website which has a little information about what’s inside (though it’s mostly trying to get you to do a tour).

Yes, they’re good books. Ripping yarns. Their charm lies in seeing the underdog earthlings (humans and cetaceans) fight against the odds. There’s a strong vein of what you might call earthling exceptionalism running through the series.

I managed to get through the first book but it was embedded cultural mores like that that made it tough going for me. That’s probably a shortcoming in me more than any fault of the book—science fiction should take you to places that challenge you—but it wasn’t worth it for me personally.

Re: dickie for car boot (what Americans would call the ‘trunk’); some old two-seater cars had a third seat in the boot, known as a ‘dickie-seat’, at least in the UK, so perhaps it’s an old term that still survives in Indian English.

I wonder if doing the Moon Walk would get you burnt at the stake for witchcraft a few hundred years ago.

I re-read the trilogy and progressed through them at a good pace but got bogged down on the later books (which I haven’t read before). I think the writing shows its age and are a little longwinded at times.

Groundbreaking story in concept and scope, that hasn’t changed for me.

I’m not a coffee drinker but my partner is. She says she had two decent cups of coffee in Italy (two weeks in Rome, Bolzano, and Venice) but every day in Australia she has better. Australians are complete coffee snobs.

Nah, your just use your increased intellect to get other people to push the button for themselves, increasing the pool of intelligent potential friends available to you.

Actually this reminds me of a story I read last year where two people are in a race to massively increase their intelligence. Neither can tolerate the potential threat the existence of another hyper-intelligent person holds so it’s a struggle to the death. If I remember correctly they gain there ability to effectively read people’s minds by reading body language, micro expressions, etc., develop new systems of logic and hyper-efficient language to think in and have an entirely mental showdown at the end.

Unfortunately I’m too stupid to remember the title.

Well said.

I’d also point out that dehumanising a subgroup is a powerful technique used to manipulate people. Tell people who to hate and you can get them to go along with anything while they’re focused on the scapegoats. Popular scapegoats include:

• immigrants (taking our jobs while, paradoxically, being a welfare burden)
• religious groups (Jews, Muslims, etc.)
• welfare recipients (dole bludgers, a burden on society)
• criminals (war on drugs, tough on crime)

Any time someone is demonising a group theres a good chance they’re just trying to manipulate you.

I use Reeder on iOS and have for yonks. I was using it with Feed Wrangler (for synchronisation) until it folded and then I just imported my feeds into Reeder directly so it syncs across all of my devices.

The loss of Google Reader was a blow to RSS but it’s never gone away and a great way of getting your news and information.