A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.

Note however the valid criticism of the essay (see the wikipedia entry).

And personally, I want artists and engineers thanks. I prefer my engines to be beautiful---most especially my engines of mass destruction :)

It's a valid point. Death is a great, scary taboo. So we avert our eyes and say he "passed away", or even "passed".

Fred Pohl has died. Mincing words does not help. My sadness at this is not helped by such euphemisms. In fact, like the AC OP, I, personally, find "passed away" slightly offensive---and "passed" more so.

So, let's accept that Fred has died. Let's rejoice in the life he led, the books he wrote, the pleasure he gave to so many. Let's celebrate him living a ling life, and being productive to the very end.

I read his latest blog post, and then, the next day. saw he'd died. Way to go!

I believe that all life is one. Thoughts take definite forms. Tigers and snakes have kinship with us. They are a warning to us to avoid harbouring evil, wicked, lustful thoughts. If I want to rid the earth of venomous beasts and reptiles, I must rid myself of all venomous thoughts. I shall not do so if, in my impatient ignorance and in my desire to prolong the existence of the body, I seek to kill the so-called venomous beasts and reptiles. If in not seeking to defend myself against such noxious animals I die, I should rise again a better and fuller man. With that faith in me, how should I seek to kill a fellow-being in a snake?

As for civil disobedience against the Nazis:

In a post-war interview in 1946, he said, "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions."

There's always Titus Andronicus if that's what you like.

A scottish schoolmaster called Adam McNaughtan took on the challenge of summarizing the whole play in one song. If you need a translation from Scots to English, then you might prefer Martin Carthy's version.

I love the bit towards the end. "Fortinbras, knee-deep in Danes, lived happily ever after."

this one did

• Box Jellyfish
• salties
• sea snakes
• blue ringed octopus
• stonefish

• Note that of this list of the 10 most dangerous animals in Australia, five are marine.

Do I detect a new game show here? "Survivor: Great White".

This.

I never used Google Reader. However, I do use an RSS reader. And to keep in sync across the devices, my reader uses Google Reader infrastructure---as do most readers. That is, I keep my reading history "in the cloud", this being one of the things the cloud is good at.

So, Google did the RSS sync thing well, so well that everyone else used the infrastructure. Google Reader itself though was, at best, meh. Everyone else used the Google Reader infrastructure invisibly, so there was no contribution to Google's coffers.

Google could have competed with a better RSS client, but they didn't. Instead, they have killed their poor client and also their pretty good infrastructure. As far as I can tell, that's the reason people are upset. They don't care about Google Reader, but the loss of the syncing infrastructure is a problem.

Is it going to be quiet, or sound like an unmuffled hovercraft like the original XBOX 360?

If you have the volume turned up to 11 for FPS then the loudness of the console is not so much of an issue, but as an STB replacement, it needs to be silent.