Okay, I'll bite. Who writes science fiction that you like?

She wrote 'Beggars and Choosers'. It's good enough to get, it's on Amazon as a used book.

If you've ever read 'Beggars in Spain' by Nancy Kress, you'll see the first book is mostly short stories combined. It made for an interesting story told over time. 'Beggars and Choosers' was a novel, and it seemed to hurt the narrative.

The first Foundation novel was eight short stories published together. Foundation and Empire was a complete novel, as was the Second Foundation.

Hamilton or Bear? If I were guessing, Hamilton (although I like his work).

Chisel a bunch of zeros and ones into blocks of concrete with codec instructions in text. For a 1 MB video, you need 8 million bits or so (without audio), giving about 72 square meters of concrete if you use 3 mm cells. They'd love you for it.

Greg Bear had this ability as central plot points in Eon and Eternity, and Peter F. Hamilton took it much deeper in Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.

If you dream it, it will come.

If you RTA linked above, it discusses multiple droughts of durations varying from 10 to 20 years within the last 1,000 years, well within our current 10,000 warm period. These droughts occurred since, for example, the establishment of Heidelberg University, but after the establishment of the Farmer's Almanac.

I remember working at a semiconductor manufacturer that had a flex-time policy. We were allowed to show up before 8:00 and leave after 5:00.

Don't get me wrong, I dream of new standards in time, length, and mass based on the number of fingers we have, but the inertia of the existing standard is massive. Think of all of the constants that have squared seconds, or square root seconds...

Excellent post, one question, obviously people are of similar sizes and proportions, but with some spatial features (everyone has a top of a head and shoulders) along with clothing colors, couldn't you do without the face?

The monitoring of subway stations is probably a direct result of the sarin attack at Tokyo station. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.... Of course the usual Orwellian arguments will apply, but try finding garbage cans in the subways...it really freaked out a lot of people.

The jacket is a good idea (not as many times in the laundry). Wireless power? How? Induction, ultrasonic? They'll have too much attenuation loss.

I don't buy it, you definitely need your reference.

I like daylight savings time because I can go for a bike ride after work and still have enough light so I don't worry about cars not seeing me (for example). However, I recognize that it would be dark until 9:00 in the morning and driving to work would be less safe in the winter if we never changed them. So twice a year I do a five minute task for maximum enjoyment for both seasons. It's not that big of deal.

I go to www.timeanddate.com and I can schedule the meeting without any difficulty.