Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:question objectivity (Score 3, Insightful) 497

"evolutionary criticism . . . is completely forbidden in US schools."

Well, unless you go to school in one of those states where the school boards also don't think children should be trusted to learn about puberty, carbon dating, and history that wasn't vetted by the Club for Growth and the Daughters of Confederate Heroes.

Comment Brunner, Dyson, Pohl (Score 1) 293

Any number of novels by John Brunner, but Stand on Zanzibar if you have to choose one.

Fred Pohl's short-short "Day Million," about a cyborg spaceman and a transgendered otter-woman meeting, falling in love, exchanging virtual reality sex profiles and never meetin again.

Freeman Dyson's essay "The Greening of the Galaxy."

Comment The benefits of good cold winters (Score 3, Insightful) 112

I sometimes hear the effects of climate change blown off with glib remarks about longer growing seasons.

The truth is, good hard winters are good for certain types of agriculture. Freezing and thawing churns up the soil. Hard frosts kill off weeds and pests.

Now we have another data point.

Comment Obvious Solution! (Score 4, Interesting) 274

Build ships which vaccuum up jellyfish, puree them, and use the proteins as feed stock for 3D printing of food. The stingers can get filtered out, or just left into the low-grade product used in prisons and orphanages.

I'm sure that Red Lobster can come up with some clever marketing term for this stuff. After the actual lobsters, cod, and king crabs die off they'll have plenty of motivation.

Interesting Geek-culture historical note: In the 1973 movie "Soylent Green," the titular product is supposed to be made from krill scooped from the oceans. The underlying horror of the movie isn't that the crackers are made of dead people, but that the ocean ecosystem has collapsed due to pollution. The movie also has Edward G. Robinson bitching about how the greenhouse effect has made it hot and damp year-round.

Comment Cycle Trooper Losing his Helmet (Score 1) 157

I don't recall if I saw this scene in the theater, during "Jedi's" initial run, or in preview clips shown on TV, but:

There's a scene in Return of the Jedi in which Luke goes mano a mano with a storm trooper riding one of those cycles used to zip around Endor.

Luke knocks the guy's helmet off, revealing a dark haired guy with a rather skinny face.

I do know that this brief reveal was cut out of the sky cycle chase as it was shown on the Laserdisc.

Could it be on this new find?

Comment Unboxing Flickr Set (Score 1, Informative) 47

SF author / design maven Bruce Sterling picked up one at the Maker Faire and posted an Unboxing photo set:

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/brucesterling/sets/72157636182707015/with/10085336073/

Scroll to the bottom for the first picture in the set.

The display box is rigged with a sound chip that plays portentous music when the board is removed.

Slashdot Top Deals

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him." -Arthur C. Clarke

Working...