Which science fiction novels or short stories would make the best low budget crowdfunded movies? http://www.quora.com/Which-sci...

For me, the economist is a bastion of capitalism (the title should be a clue here) and despite high standards of writing, very biased in many areas. Since I left the UK more than twenty years ago, I have come to see that the BBC is usually a mouthpiece for the older, wealthier generations, and that their Asian bureaus are keen to overblow every small thing to justify their huge expat salaries. The Beeb is great for nature documentaries but its news is extremely biased. I would settle for financially supporting smaller entrants such as Democracy Now and Link TV. Sure they have an agenda, but at least they are up front and honest about it.

So Nahmias aka Dizingof suddenly becomes famous from companies like Stratasys showcasing his designs as some of the best in the field, showing the capabilities of the top end machines, and so he turns round and in return for all this free publicity, decides to sue. What a wanker. If it were not for Stratasys, we would never have heard of the guy. Crawl back into your fucking hole you miserable little ingrate.

I do not get chance to get to go to the cinema very often except when I visit HK, but I have to say i really enjoyed the effects in Pacific Rim even if the story was written by a three year old. Even so, I am bored of endless violence and pessimistic future scenarios. When can we have some movies that take a more optimistic approach to the future. Let's see some Bucky Fuller, Bill Mollison type scenarios. The other thing, is please stop wasting money an celebrity salaries. The world is full of aspiring young actors with far more talent than Nic Cage or Russell Crowe. Save the money and spend it on interesting plots instead please.

"the electronic version is quickly pirated and easily available around the world each month." Your magazine is not being pirated, it is being made available to those who, due to unfortunate geography or those for whom you do not provide payment options, could not previously have access. This is an opportunity for you to reach out and convert a much larger readership rather than villify them as criminals. This is very good free advertising for and should be embraced and leveraged. It is good thing that you were too cowardly to post the details of your magazine, as you would have had many cancelled subscriptions due to your arrogant attitude, and your accusing filesharers of being pirates.

If you think that Silicon Valley looks like Logan's Run, then you should take a close look at Shenzhen. No end of the government follies look as though they could be the carousel (the stadiums especially have often been used for similar purposes) and most businesses have a very open policy about hiring youngsters only. Terry Gou would look especially good in a Sandman suit.

No countries have ever actually existed. They were all (and still are) figments of some over zealous bureaucrats imagination. National boundaries are usually completely arbitrary lines drawn on map, with little thought given to the people that are actually on the ground. Nationality is nothing more than a coincidence of birth. Neither I nor anybody else chose to a citizen of the locale in which we were born. At best, nationality is just another excuse for vested interests to restrict our travel movements and to curtail our freedoms. In many cases it is also a very profitable source of revenue. It is especially interesting that corporations can become multinational relatively easily, but individuals are subject to more and more restrictions in terms of security and visas every year. At worst, the curse of nationality is the cause of more conflict than any other, including religion. And yet nationality cannot even be strictly defined. A Chinese for example, does not have to be born in China to be Chinese. And it is highly unlikely that a Caucasian born in China could ever be considered Chinese. Nationality is simply a myth, sometimes it is more to do with appearance and culture than anything else. The sooner we dump these backward concepts the better for all of us. I would highly recommend Leopold Kohr's "Breakdown of Nations" as some interesting background reading on this subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr

Can I use a 3d printed gun for that ???

I have searched high and low on where to find a bank without ATM fees but without success. Am I missing something obvious?

This just goes to show that contrary to public opinion the authoritarian regime of China has very little control over the people that it calls its citizens. Whenever there is some kind of problem, they are unable to fix at grass roots level, usually because nearly all kinds of civil society is completely banned. The education system is so worthless that trying to instil civilized behavior in people from an early age, is in direct conflict with all the other propaganda messages. Rather than try to fix preventable problems before they occur, their only solution is to wade in, in a very heavy handed fashion and start killing people. This is the sign of a desperate, unstable regime. In other places, incentives would be offered, education would be used and the media would be co-opted, but this is China so only death threats are the perceived solution. No wonder that everybody wants to leave.

I really like the idea of Tivo, but it does sound very US centric. What would be a good alternative for use in Asia? Are there DVRs available at reasonable that can match TIVO's abilities? Is it possible to just cobble together a couple of cap cards or should I be looking for a specific manufactured device?

I looked at the author's bio, but it did not say anything about him spending any time in China. Does anybody know his in country experience?

Social apps have seen their peak and the next cycle of growth will come from what we currently term 3D printing. Perhaps the most indepth review of this is Kevin Carson's 'The Homebrew Industrial Revolution.' Combined with the sustainability and maker movements, the changes in global fabrication will make the likes of Facebook and Apple seem about as historically pertinent as Betamax and pet rocks.

I can see this doing well for those that have a small aquaponics home set up. A few bugs every now and then would be a great treat for your tilapia or pike. Insects generally form a very important part of the food chain, so why not culture them and then transfer that protein up into a more palatable form. Here is a useful excerpt from permaculture guru Bill Mollison. Bill Mollison: "Yes, well sometimes you walk on the land and you have the crop. People say, “I’ve just bought some land I want to develop a crop.” I’ll give you and example. I had a young bulldozer operator in Australia. He’d just bought some really run-down cattle land. He had a bulldozer and he put some dams in. Then he said, “Will you come onto my farm and tell me what I ought to do here?” He had nice dams there which he had stocked with trout. ”How are they going?,” I asked him. ”Fine,” he said. ”I got some eight pounders out of them.” ”When did you put them in?,” I inquired. ”Last year,” he replied. And the place was swarming with grasshoppers; it was overgrazed. I said, “You’ve got your crop; your crop is grasshoppers!” On a 1.8 to 1 conversion ratio you can get a pound of trout for every pound and a bit of grasshoppers. You can trawl those grasshoppers just like you trawl fish. So, the other thing is, grasshoppers go for yellow, so if you float yellow balloons on the dams, you get a rain of grasshoppers into the water. So that’s what he did, and he had his crop. The land might already have its crop on it, and yet you might want to change that crop, and you will come out worse off. For instance, we have a pasture grub that runs at 20 ton to the acre living in the first four inches of the soil. If you covert it into turkey, you’re talking 5 ton of turkey to the acre, just for a small soil-skimming operation daily. But they’re still trying to get rid of the pasture grub! And yet that land can barely sustain a sheep on four or five acres. So where’s the trade off between a 120 tons of protein and 40 pounds of protein as sheep? So, wherever we see that the crop is already there we’ve come out on top. And we have nothing to do." I also heard him say that anacondas have the highest protein conversion rate in the world, if you are looking for a more exciting crop.

Also, just because it is a Chinese address, does not necessarily mean that it is a Chinese citizen. Shanghai, Shenzhen and dozens of other Chinese cities are filled with entrepreneurial expats at the moment, who understand that the best business opportunities are now in places like the Pearl River Delta and not Paolo Alto. Many of these guys are very computer literate, and it only takes one disgruntled individual trying to get back at those responsible for flushing their home county's prospects down the toilet.