... which leads straight into the XKCD cartoon about just his phenomenon.

A few books which might be useful:

To Rise from Earth is an account of the basic physics of space travel. A few years since I've read it, but as I recall it goes over the basic concepts and destinations quite well.

Robert Zubrin has written two books which would be worth a look - The Case for Mars about a practical scheme for mounting expeditions to Mars in the near term, and Entering Space which takes a wider view within our solar system. Finally, John S Lewis' Mining the Sky gives the rationale and practicalities for mining asteroids - how you might do it, and what sorts of materials you would profitably extract from them.

There are any number of other books out there, but these should get you started. Good luck!

This must be why I couldn't use an ATM last Thursday.

I'm with the CBA, and twice in the last few years I've had my card cancelled and reissued. The first time it was because of a data breach like this one - a card skimmer had been used on one of the ATMs in my area and all people who had used ATMs in the vicinity had cards cancelled & reissued. The more recent time it was just me - someone had skimmed my card and used it to make a purchase in London.

Both times the bank was very efficient, and while there was the inconvenience of waiting for a new card and, in the second instance, waiting for the stolen money to be recovered there was otherwise no problem.

This one is also on Itunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/inbiz-watch-this-space-21/id73330642?i=93335899

Thanks for the heads up.

I work for the Tax Office.

The only more certain profession would be an undertaker.

The other thing is to exploit the resources at your destination. This is basically the approach advocated by Robert Zubrin in his Mars Direct mission design. The basic scenario is:

• Send an (unmanned) return rocket to Mars. It lands with empty fuel tanks.
• On board is a small amount of hydrogen, a nuclear power source, and a chemical processing plant. This is used in combination with CO2 from the Martian atmosphere to manufacture methane and oxygen to fuel the rocket for the return trip.
• Next launch opportunity (26 months later), send a manned crew vehicle. This lands next to the return vehicle waiting on the Martian surface.
• Crew explore Mars, perform research etc, and at the end of their mission hop in the return rocket and head home.

By manufacturing fuel on Mars for the return trip, most of the objections in the original article are dispensed with.

Much more detail is given in the Wikipedia article, and also in Zubrin's book, The Case for Mars (available here). Excellent book.

I'm a Doctor Who fan from way back - I watched the Jon Pertwee (third doctor) episodes when they were first broadcast in the 19070s - but I would more or less agree with the this.

Doctor Who has gone on for a long time, and can be picked up more or less anywhere. So long as you have the basic idea - the Doctor is an alien (a Time Lord) who wanders time and space in his TARDIS, having a series of adventures and accompanied by a changing gaggle of assistants - then you can pick it up more or less anywhere. Because the series changes its main characters on a regular basis most of the stories are pretty much self contained and it is not expected that you follow the whole thing from the beginning. That said, it would be a good idea to start with the debut of a particular Doctor, or a particular assitant, and go in order from there. In the older series you might start with the debut of the third or fourth Doctors, or an assistant like Sarah Jane Smith (who debuted in The Time Warrior in season 11).

Part of the folklore of the series is that everyone's favourite Doctor is whichever one was on air when they were growing up. In my case it's Pertwee (the third doctor), though I also like Tom Baker (the fourth). An older friend of mine prefers Thoughton (the second doctor). That said, some Doctors are better than others and some less good - I would not recommend the Trial of a Timelord series. In the older series I'd recommend either the third or fourth Doctors, but that's my preference.

Do be warned, though - quality does vary somewhat, with some stories more absurd than others, and bear in mind that the older series are somewhat different in character to the newer ones.

Speaking as an older fan, though, I have been (mostly) enjoying the newer series (2005 onwards) and think that's as good a place to start as any.

I second that. At present my local library charges 80c to reserve a book. This is not much more than that, and you get to read the book again later.

Oh, there's a policy all right, and a comprehensive system of filtering of content. Without having a copy of the policy in front of me (I'm not browsing Slashdot at work :-), sites such as online email and social media are are prohibited outright and will display a "Blocked" message if you try to access them, others are questionable in some way and will display a "Coached" message, meaning that you can still click through, but be warned that your access is being monitored and you may be called on to justify accessing that site. Other sites, such as online banking & news sites, are specifically allowed in the policy, so long as access is infrequent and brief and does not interfere with regular work.

This occasionally pops up a few unintentional ironies. Last year there was an article in the weekly internal newsletter about the ATO's new Facebook Fan page which included a helpful link. But when you clicked on the link - Blocked! Another time a work related email list I subscribed to posted a link to an XKCD cartoon (this one I think: http://xkcd.com/552/ - I'm a statistician), but clicking on the link brought up the message: Blocked: Category Humour not permitted.

Occasionally it is even useful - is is not uncommon to browse a news site and see the article text just fine, but have many of the ads replaced by Blocked messages.

I can't get the kids off the console long enough to play games, you insensitive clod!

While the number of books I read electronically is steadily rising, I still prefer the dead tree version.

Apart from the advantages of look and feel, robustness and convenience, freedom from DRM & such that others have commented on, there is also the very big environmental benefit dead trees represent.

Just stop and think of all the carbon sequestered in a large library. All that paper represents carbon locked down and not returned to the atmosphere, a huge carbon sink.

Want to save the environment? Buy more books!

Well, I don't have a dedicated ebook reader, but I do read a lot of books on my mobile phone using the Mobipocket reader (http://www.mobipocket.com/). Free software is available for download for your phone & PC, which can convert books from many common formats (txt, doc, pdf) and load them onto your phone for easy reading.

The text size is small but I figured since I'm carrying the phone about anyway it was worth doing.

As for the books - well, there's plenty of free stuff from the likes of Project Gutenberg, and more recent stuff at many other places.

I always write the current year correctly as soon as it changes and keep this up for a couple of months. Then around March or April I stop thinking about it and start writing the old year again by mistake, until the new year gets properly drummed into my subconscious.

Most of my letters these days are birthday- and Christmas- cards. Like you, my wife sends most of the Christmas cards and is very good for keeping up with what is happening with my family and telling me what I need to know. The part of the exercise I like is writing the annual what-we-did-in-the-twelve-months-since-we-last-communicated Christmas letter. Somehow this falls to me (the math major) rather than my wife (the english major), but it's a good way to review the year.

Curiously, the main theme of the I, Robot movie was a pinch from a different set of robot stories - Jack Williamson's Humanoids, which take over all aspects of life in order to "serve and obey and guard men from harm".