One must admit that guy is brilliant.

From a communication standpoint, I agree. But Antarctic expeditions always had the expectation of water, air, and probably fish, availability, which are valuable and scarce resources in space; the environment is challenging but they could survive. On a Mars exploration not having the ability to survive in the natural environment would be terrifying, and I think that would increase feelings of isolation.

Others have already posted, but from a pragmatic standpoint if you could select 2 or 3 candidate moves and do a quick check on them to see where they would go, it would be a much greater advantage than doing the analysis in your head.

The guy should get the hammer...

I would enjoy Stephenson more if he listened to his editor. There was a five page section in Cryptonomicon where he talks about eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. Five damn pages! Then he spent another four pages on a wisdom tooth extraction... He does spin a good story though.

I mean Paramount, not Universal (oh how I wish we could edit after posting some times...)

Look at it this way, Universal Studios makes the Transformers series. Any serious filmgoer won't even watch them on the plane, but the studio rakes in enough cash to make movies like No Country for Old Men, Watchmen, Up In the Air, Interstellar, and a bunch of other movies you may or may not want to see.

As long as they keep making enough good movies to justify the crap, I don't mind.

Press your space bar, it scrolls down for you.

more detail. http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebo...

This article supports your statement. http://www.scientificamerican....

I'm not saying that. Recruiters prefer to hire people that are already employed as it's perceived as lower risk...the thinking is if someone is good but not employed, is there a personality risk?

Many people that have a job already are seeking another one. Those are the ones you hire; not those that are unemployed. However, there are fresh recruits coming out of school that often have more than one offer...it's like that for the very good talent in the SF Bay Area. I know this for certain because my wife works in recruiting in a Valley company...everyone is competing with Google.

All anyone of sufficient talent will need to do is either go back to their company, or if searching for other jobs get another offer, and reply simply, 'Company X is offering me this amount. If you can't match it, I go there."

If they don't have another offer, are they sure they want that person?

There's the mechanism for recruiting inferior talent.