in her current fantasy series, the Bad Guys can use dark magic to inhabit the bodies of Good Guys (or, well, anyone). so maybe we _really_ need to barcode the soul!

Actually, some of her sf books are great. Hunting Party is one of the most terrible things ever written, though, so either skip it or slog your way through it. Serrano gets good from Winning Colors (book #3) onwards, the Vatta stuff is pretty good all the way through.

One little detail? The suit doesn't fit him, neither does the shirt, his top button's undone, and that tie is hideous. And you shouldn't wear a blue suit with a black tie for a wedding in the first place; if you're not going to wear a morning coat at _least_ wear the correct colors, i.e. light grey for the suit and grey/silver for the tie.

The guy's a freaking gazillionaire and he can't even be bothered to dress nice for his wedding? Yeesh. All he'd have to do is give a flunky a few thousand and tell him to take care of the details and leave it lying on his bed. At least she looks good.

Weather prediction
Political polling
E-voting
Advertising science-y parts
Sports statistics

Boy, the list is endless!

It meant something in BASIC. Which gives you an idea.

2: not just tourism, transits. I take great care never to connect through the U.S. any more.

So what you're saying is, we still have vaguely functional labour laws? Good.

A law which says 'you can shoot anyone you claim to feel threatened by, without being obliged to prove you made any attempt at all to avoid the situation in any other way' is reasonable?

Only an American.

"a penchant for fine cheese, cigars, and port"

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is it just me, or is a patent champagne bottle opener a wonderful example of humanity at its most absurd?

Let's face it, the correct solution to the problem of 'making it possible to efficiently open a bottle of fizzy liquid' is 'put a bloody screw cap on the thing'.

but no, because it's only a proper bottle of champagne if it comes with a thoroughly impractical stopper covered in entirely pointless shiny foil, we have to invent and fight over the rights to the proceeds from a complex device for removing said entirely unnecessarily impractical stopper.

sigh...