I like subject is math.

Taken (with variations in the final word) from about 95% of the 2nd year junior high school English exams I marked.

In my opinion, any story using telepathy to overcome language barriers was written by either someone with no experience in just how different languages can be (eg, English vs Japanese), or someone with tongue very firmly planted in cheek (an onslaught of terrible bloody warfare). However, I do admit to a third possibility: the characters were lucky and their languages are similar enough that thinking processes readily translate, but different enough that speech doesn't.

Considering the stories I heard from my dad about the drapes fading (back in '89, I think it was), that story is far too plausible to dismiss.

There were, if I remember correctly, also worries about a population explosion due to daylight savings. The stories I hear about Queenslanders just baffle me (can anyone really be that dumb?), and I lived there for about 11 years (during which time, I heard most of the stories).

Yes, CO2 is heavier than either N2 or O2, but it is also bigger. I don't know how well it applies to gas molecules, but large balls in a sea of small balls will float to the top if you vibrate the whole lot.

No, his math is quite correct: M=d*4*pi*r^3, so M(p)/M(e) = (d*4*pi*r(p)^3)/(d*4*pi*r(e)) which simplifies to r(p)^3/r(e)^3, or (r(p)/r(e))^3, thus the ratio is the cube-root of 7: 1.913 (or 7.1: 1.922). Still, 2G would be a cow for us.

You're showing a lack of knowledge of crumpets.

A wide is where the bowler screws up and, if the fielders screw up too (or the bowler really screwed up), the runners might run anyway. There are three ways to get out in cricket: the ball is caught off the bat, the ball hits the stumps (either because the batsman failed to block the ball as thrown by the bowler, or thrown/touched by any other fielder while the batsman is outside the wicket), or the ball (when thrown by the bowler) hits the batsman's leg, but otherwise would have hit the stumps (this is a judgment call by the referee). Otherwise, you can have two batsmen in there all day making life miserable for the fielders (odds are, if their in all day, they're really racking up runs).

Actually, I'd been working as a programmer for about 15 years before I heard of mind maps, and that was in a TESOL training course, so I suspect that not everyone knows what a mind map is.

Two digits would be pretty tough. It was less than 16 hours between "no user ids" and 487.

No need to be careful. You know where your two-week-earlier self went. Don't go there. If you're worried about the stepping in/out of a non-movable time-machine, then yeah, add or subtract an hour or so. As for things: travel light and take them from your now.

That said, if Anne McCaffery got it right, you'll come out of your two week holiday feeling much worse for wear, especially when you consider there'd be 3 of you overlapped: you, one working, one that's been on holiday for one week already followed a week later by one beginning his holiday half way through yours.

There's always Earthdark :)

But yeah, I too twitched when I read that bit.

The answer is simple: why bother?

Resources? Anything down here, there's more of out there, without pesky gravity wells.

Bio-mass? If 500kg of energy isn't a problem, then converting the above resources will be more efficient.

Contact? With friends like us, who needs enemies?

Slaves? What, you think we got to (near) the top of the dung-heap without a fight?

Extermination? Well, ok, but be glad space is big, very big. Obviously nobody capable within a 60ly radius.

Interesting that you bring up stutterwarp: it too had the radiation problem. After about 7.7ly (iirc, may have be pc), the charge built up on the components would collapse producing unshieldable hard-radiation (with what I'Ve since learned, probably just gamma rays at an intensity where sufficient shielding would make for an unmovable lump instead of a ship).

Anybody claiming to be any sort of scientist and then spouting that line is rather suspect in my book. Scientific laws are descriptions of observed behavior: the only reason C is "the law" is because we have yet to observe anything exceeding C.

So this is how Curiosity kills cats? I guess the next mission needs to be called Satisfaction.

Verbing nouns is something English speakers have been doing for a very long time.

doesn't need to be void, even. (I'm sure purists will complain about _t being reserved)

[header file]
typedef struct something_s something_t; ...
something_t *private stuff;

[C file]
struct something_s { ...
};

I use this sort of construct quite a lot.