The omission of Bill the Pony makes more sense when you remember that he was introduced, and became important, in the Bombadil / Barrow Wight sequence.
It would have been more . . . continuity friendly just to leave him out, given that we didn't see how Sam and he became friends on the trip to Bree.
Game addiction is real and sad. I knew more than a few folks who dropped out of school because of an obsession with olde fashionede Role Playing Games, and have seen good, creative people get sucked into MUDs and never do a damn thing in the real world again.
I've been pretty successful at keeping a Civilization-like-game addiction under control. When I fall off the wagon (Masters of Orion II, Civilization III) I spend a few weeks playing until 1:00 am and obsessing about the game during the day. Then I get embarassed and ashamed at the time I'm wasting on a persuit that leads nowhere. I'm a writer for cripes sake; I've been published in lots of places and I could produce and sell more if I put my mind to it. The time I spend in front of a computer gaming could be productive as well as enjoyable.
Prototypes were depicted as using sealed, pen-sized cartridges. No filling necessary. I imagine that screwing them into the fuel cell would break a seal allowing a controlled stream of methanol to be fed into the reformer.
I suppose that the manufacturer would initially charge a lot for these, but refill kits would appear shortly.
I liked Babylon 5 well enough. Another "movie" wouldn't be a bad thing. But I'd really like to see MJS go on to other things rather than do another series.
As for Battlestar Galactica . . . oh, please! This show stunk to high heaven. Bad science, old cliches, cardboard characters, endlessly recycled special effect sequences . . . ugh.
The only reason it's being considered for revival is nostalgia of folks who were undemanding kids in the late 70s. Even with new special effects and the looser standards of the Aughts, it won't be the same, kiddies! You're grown-ups now. You should want, and deserve, something better.
There are so many possibilities in SF . . . why dredge up this stinkbomb? Babylon 5 proved we can do better. I'm sure we can do better still.
There's an old truism that advocates of the homeless are fond of: "We're all one paycheck away from sleeping in the streets!"
My response: "What do you mean WE?"
You need to have to burn a lot of bridges to actually end up in the street. You have to lose your income, your savings, your friends (or the goodwill of your friends) and what might be called Social Capital.
The trick is to have a lot of bridges to begin with, and to keep them from catching on fire.
Most of this will sound utterly obvious to nearly all of you, but you've got to reserve money (for upcoming bills and insurance payments), save money (for no particular purpose . . . a rainy day fund), be absolutely fanatical about paying off your debts, and stay in good with friends and family.
Short of a natural disaster or major crash, someone who does this won't end up on the street or "car camping."
And if there is a major crash, think of the great blues songs you can write! "Once I built a network, made it run, . .."
Journalist / Game Designer Allen Varney wrote the following for the Austin Chronicle:
http://www.allenvarney.com/av_brit.html
(The rest of Varney's site is worth looking over too...)
I suspect Grucci has lots of friends amoung the developers who want to fill Suffolk County with condos, strip malls, and McMansions from shore to shore, water and traffic problems bedamned.
Environmentalists must give these folks the night sweats. They're probably getting the night shits from the hot-head enviro-punks who are torching construction sites.
Never mind drugs, hate groups, and pederasts . . . fight the environmentalists!
It takes a lot of delta V to send someone to the sun. Also, unless you encase them in a life support system, they won't live long enough to feel the heat. Even at $500 per spam, the fines would not pay for punishment.
I suggest something equally gruesome, and much cheaper. Weld the spammers into 55 gallon drums weighted down with cinder blocks and drop them into the sea above the Marianas Trench. For a little more, you could add a little window through which the spammer could watch the sunlight diminish and die and they plummet into the icy depths.
Commentators here could have fun speculating as to whether the pressure or asphixya kill the spammers first.
Heinlein wrote some good SF, but this does not make a person immune from being wrong, or sloppy, or ignorant.
Until recently Science Fiction's take on evolution has been unbelievably . . . well, stunningly dumb.
Yeah, you need a source of mutation, but there's the immense and convoluted matter of selection.
Evolution is not a force; it is not a law of nature; it does not have a tendency or a direction or a "destiny." It isn't "driven" by anything as simple as radiation.
Evolution is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the interaction of complex, changeable organisms with a complex, changeable environment which includes other complex, changeable organisms.
Boiling down to "ongoing low-level doses of radiation as the cause of evolution" is way goofy. That model won't float.
Well, I could go on and on about this. Go read _Darwin's Century_ by Eiseley, and Full House and Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould, and The Origin of Life and Disturbing the Universe by Freeman Dyson.
Taking those in should go a long way to cleaning out the gunk that build up in your head after reading Niven or Heinlein.
Guy's 9/10ths blind, but he's still popping out light, literate SF and fantasy.
Vance doesn't write cutting-edge incisive SF. He is often deliberately archaic. It's just good reading, wonderfully written.
Also recommended:
_Emphyrio_: Perhaps his best novel. Sad story about a boy growing up and rebelling against a highly structured society.
The "Demon Princes" novels: Assassin/detective tracks down the bizarro criminals who headed a raid on his home town. Some of the later books are incredibly funny.
Wow, what a concept! Nostalgia for a company that's still around, sort of. Even if you considered WOTC to have up n' died when Hasbro bought them out, the corpse would still be warm and you should be in Denial.
I can't help thinking of WOTC as a brash newcomer. I mean, they weren't even around when I more or less burned out on gaming.
Me, I'm nostalgic for companies like Metagaming Concepts and Eon, which barely made it into the 80s.
True Story
About 94, maybe 93, I'm wandering around C.E.S. The two head WOTC guys are at the Microprose (?) booth, looking like they're setting up for a demo of the card game.
"You guys!" I say, shaking my head and wagging my finger, "Are pushers!"
They exchange glances, then say, in unison:
"We're not pushers. We're just giving people something to do while they're waiting to die."
Somebody came up with an analog video disk system in the late 40s/early 50s, but surprisingly it went nowhere.
There's something cool and anachronistic and vaguely eerie about the idea. I envision an alternate reality where the Ministry of Information distributes hit movies to Oceania's Inner Party members via big albums of vinyl disks.
Stefan
I guess the Geek won . . .
on
D&D Trailer
·
· Score: 2
Man . ..
I remember taping paper covers over my D&D books* in high school-- circa 1977 -- so no one would know what I was carrying around.
It wasn't a matter of getting beat up for being such a geek . . . it was having to explain what the hell the things were. I think there was one other guy in school who knew about gaming, and he was too busy trying to get into M.I.T. to start a campaign.
Now . . . movies? D&D appearing in sitcoms? Geekdom is really in yer face these days.
Stefan
* Second printing of the original three-book set, now signed by Gygax hisself!
I saw the brit-import version of Junkyard Wars on TLC last winter. That was enough.
IMHO:
I thought it was really dumb. I didn't like the Mad Max / Judge Dredd spin, and the pretense that the parts are all "found" is annoying. The little informational bits they insert are less educational than yer average "Schoolhouse Rock" cartoon.
Maybe they count on the audiance being drunk, and thus unable to actually notice how lame it all is.
The pulp-age SF writer Raymond Z. Gallun wrote about a mercury-mirror'ed telescope in his 1930s-vintage story "Old Faithful." It was used by a dissident martian scientist to observe Earth.
Gallun, who died about eight years back, recounts doing a lot of his work after shifts as a watchman at a factory that had a hemp-fueled furnace...
Stefan
Journalism, history of sci & tech, comp sci
on
Computer Historian?
·
· Score: 2
If you're serious about this:
* Get a good general education. Learn to WRITE. Being a historian is an academic job, and you're going to have to write papers. Even if you avoid that horror, you're going to have to write grant proposals and such.
* Take some journalism classes. Learn to write for a popular audiance. If the history thing doesn't work out, you can become a pundit.
* Learn the history of science and technology. It's fascinating stuff, and it will put the history of computers and related technologies into perspective.
* And take some computer science courses! Programming I and Programming II (or their equivalents), data structures, and most importantly a Operating Systems course. Both of the OS courses I took had a LOT of history built in.
"d) this system pisses away power like crazy- throwing exhaust away at 30km/s is actually too fast... very little of the energy ends up in the spacecraft almost all of it goes into the exhaust. Unless you have energy to burn you probably don't need the speed."
This comment is totally without merit.
The whole point of advanced propulsion systems is to have faster exaust.
A high-velocity exhaust means you need less reaction mass to achieve the same change in spacecraft velocity. Or put another way, you can go faster with the same amount of reaction mass.
Slashdot Mirror
It would have been more . . . continuity friendly just to leave him out, given that we didn't see how Sam and he became friends on the trip to Bree.
Stefan
Stefan
I've been pretty successful at keeping a Civilization-like-game addiction under control. When I fall off the wagon (Masters of Orion II, Civilization III) I spend a few weeks playing until 1:00 am and obsessing about the game during the day. Then I get embarassed and ashamed at the time I'm wasting on a persuit that leads nowhere. I'm a writer for cripes sake; I've been published in lots of places and I could produce and sell more if I put my mind to it. The time I spend in front of a computer gaming could be productive as well as enjoyable.
Stefan
I suppose that the manufacturer would initially charge a lot for these, but refill kits would appear shortly.
Stefan
Go browse through old copies of Science Fiction Eye
Stefan
http://www.see_what_my_stupid_mutt_ate_today.info
Stefan
As for Battlestar Galactica . . . oh, please! This show stunk to high heaven. Bad science, old cliches, cardboard characters, endlessly recycled special effect sequences . . . ugh.
The only reason it's being considered for revival is nostalgia of folks who were undemanding kids in the late 70s. Even with new special effects and the looser standards of the Aughts, it won't be the same, kiddies! You're grown-ups now. You should want, and deserve, something better.
There are so many possibilities in SF . . . why dredge up this stinkbomb? Babylon 5 proved we can do better. I'm sure we can do better still.
Stefan
My response: "What do you mean WE?"
You need to have to burn a lot of bridges to actually end up in the street. You have to lose your income, your savings, your friends (or the goodwill of your friends) and what might be called Social Capital.
The trick is to have a lot of bridges to begin with, and to keep them from catching on fire.
Most of this will sound utterly obvious to nearly all of you, but you've got to reserve money (for upcoming bills and insurance payments), save money (for no particular purpose . . . a rainy day fund), be absolutely fanatical about paying off your debts, and stay in good with friends and family.
Short of a natural disaster or major crash, someone who does this won't end up on the street or "car camping."
And if there is a major crash, think of the great blues songs you can write! "Once I built a network, made it run, . . ."
Stefan
Mmm, yes, total shame about the countless billions the government spends on Astrology.
Dork.
Stefan
Screw advertising, f**k mass media, and start treatng commercial culture for the lowest common denominator, compromised crap it is.
Stick with Do It Yourself media:
Read a book. Travel. Get together with friends and trade stories. Stalk squirrels in the park. Get a border collie and train it to herd Aibo bots.
And then enjoy a 16 Oz. bottle of cool, refreshing Moxie.
Stefan
** You see?
Journalist / Game Designer Allen Varney wrote the following for the Austin Chronicle: http://www.allenvarney.com/av_brit.html (The rest of Varney's site is worth looking over too...)
Environmentalists must give these folks the night sweats. They're probably getting the night shits from the hot-head enviro-punks who are torching construction sites.
Never mind drugs, hate groups, and pederasts . . . fight the environmentalists!
I suggest something equally gruesome, and much cheaper. Weld the spammers into 55 gallon drums weighted down with cinder blocks and drop them into the sea above the Marianas Trench. For a little more, you could add a little window through which the spammer could watch the sunlight diminish and die and they plummet into the icy depths.
Commentators here could have fun speculating as to whether the pressure or asphixya kill the spammers first.
Stefan
Until recently Science Fiction's take on evolution has been unbelievably . . . well, stunningly dumb.
Yeah, you need a source of mutation, but there's the immense and convoluted matter of selection.
Evolution is not a force; it is not a law of nature; it does not have a tendency or a direction or a "destiny." It isn't "driven" by anything as simple as radiation.
Evolution is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the interaction of complex, changeable organisms with a complex, changeable environment which includes other complex, changeable organisms.
Boiling down to "ongoing low-level doses of radiation as the cause of evolution" is way goofy. That model won't float.
Well, I could go on and on about this. Go read _Darwin's Century_ by Eiseley, and Full House and Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould, and The Origin of Life and Disturbing the Universe by Freeman Dyson.
Taking those in should go a long way to cleaning out the gunk that build up in your head after reading Niven or Heinlein.
Stefan
Guy's 9/10ths blind, but he's still popping out light, literate SF and fantasy. Vance doesn't write cutting-edge incisive SF. He is often deliberately archaic. It's just good reading, wonderfully written. Also recommended: _Emphyrio_: Perhaps his best novel. Sad story about a boy growing up and rebelling against a highly structured society. The "Demon Princes" novels: Assassin/detective tracks down the bizarro criminals who headed a raid on his home town. Some of the later books are incredibly funny.
I can't help thinking of WOTC as a brash newcomer. I mean, they weren't even around when I more or less burned out on gaming.
Me, I'm nostalgic for companies like Metagaming Concepts and Eon, which barely made it into the 80s.
True Story
About 94, maybe 93, I'm wandering around C.E.S. The two head WOTC guys are at the Microprose (?) booth, looking like they're setting up for a demo of the card game.
"You guys!" I say, shaking my head and wagging my finger, "Are pushers!"
They exchange glances, then say, in unison:
"We're not pushers. We're just giving people something to do while they're waiting to die."
Honest!
Stefan
Somebody came up with an analog video disk system in the late 40s/early 50s, but surprisingly it went nowhere.
There's something cool and anachronistic and vaguely eerie about the idea. I envision an alternate reality where the Ministry of Information distributes hit movies to Oceania's Inner Party members via big albums of vinyl disks.
Stefan
I remember taping paper covers over my D&D books* in high school-- circa 1977 -- so no one would know what I was carrying around.
It wasn't a matter of getting beat up for being such a geek . . . it was having to explain what the hell the things were. I think there was one other guy in school who knew about gaming, and he was too busy trying to get into M.I.T. to start a campaign.
Now . . . movies? D&D appearing in sitcoms? Geekdom is really in yer face these days.
Stefan
* Second printing of the original three-book set, now signed by Gygax hisself!
He was not reponsible for the script. In fact, DB was a bit miffed at not being given a chance for any input beyond selling the option.
Agree or disagree with Dave's rants, but base them on their own merits and not what Costner did with his short story!
Stefan
IMHO:
I thought it was really dumb. I didn't like the Mad Max / Judge Dredd spin, and the pretense that the parts are all "found" is annoying. The little informational bits they insert are less educational than yer average "Schoolhouse Rock" cartoon.
Maybe they count on the audiance being drunk, and thus unable to actually notice how lame it all is.
The pulp-age SF writer Raymond Z. Gallun wrote about a mercury-mirror'ed telescope in his 1930s-vintage story "Old Faithful." It was used by a dissident martian scientist to observe Earth.
Gallun, who died about eight years back, recounts doing a lot of his work after shifts as a watchman at a factory that had a hemp-fueled furnace...
Stefan
* Get a good general education. Learn to WRITE. Being a historian is an academic job, and you're going to have to write papers. Even if you avoid that horror, you're going to have to write grant proposals and such.
* Take some journalism classes. Learn to write for a popular audiance. If the history thing doesn't work out, you can become a pundit.
* Learn the history of science and technology. It's fascinating stuff, and it will put the history of computers and related technologies into perspective.
* And take some computer science courses! Programming I and Programming II (or their equivalents), data structures, and most importantly a Operating Systems course. Both of the OS courses I took had a LOT of history built in.
Stefan
This comment is totally without merit.
The whole point of advanced propulsion systems is to have faster exaust.
A high-velocity exhaust means you need less reaction mass to achieve the same change in spacecraft velocity. Or put another way, you can go faster with the same amount of reaction mass.