Sconzey: Incidentally, it’s a really, really good book. And my understanding was that it was the officers and engineers on the colony ship who chose to deny Earth’s advanced technology to the colonists — particularly the technology to move human consciousness between bodies, actual re-incarnation. Whilst those same officers using this technology live thousands of years, a civilisation grows up on the colonised planet, which the officers keep artificially pre-Industrial.
Borepatch: This is the most interesting thing I’ve read about the Olympics in a long, long time.
L. C. Rees: Morality is the annihilation of private space.
Wobbly: Seems to work at our place. My Golden Retriever is mid-speed and maybe 70 lbs. The herd are 1400 lbs. and can run pretty darn fast when they want to. Big Cow Eyes beat Puppy Dog Eyes.
Ken: The gentleman might justifiably have added “Make sure there’s not One. Single. Sympathetic. Character. Anywhere” (unless that was just a side effect). Bitter? Let’s just say I’m still trying to get back the hours I squandered reading Outerbridge Reach.
ICR: A Goy! Somehow I got the impression that comic strip guys were mostly Jewish. I was thinking mainly of the Superman creators and Al Capp. Plus another comic strip guy who had a feud with Capp that led to his suicide. I think that one wrote Joe Palooka.
Mattman: I think mon petit bureau de change actually sounds more like: Bonjour mon petit pierrot de chien. Hello my little clown dog. It’s the chien/change where it doesn’t fit for me when I listen to it.
Buckethead: If HBO offered an Internet subscription, I’d pay it in a heartbeat. Between that, Netflix streaming and Hulu, I’d have absolutely everything I need. Plus maybe MLB if the Indians start doing well. So, HBO, Netflix and Hulu. But the only way to get HBO Go is if you already have a cable TV subscription. Which I don’t want at all. For me, at least, The Oatmeal had it right. Somehow, those episodes of Game of Thrones just keep appearing on my hard drive. Mysterious…
Baduin: Joyce would make a very good fantasy writer — if fantasy had been already invented. He was a master of style; unfortunately, he wanted to be considered a genius by critics, and he was unable to cope with it intellectually. And so he made up for his lack of ideas with bullshit- for which he had a real facility, too. Perhaps he had kissed the Blarney Stone. “I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour,...
L. C. Rees: The only contemporary use the works of Joyce are good for is that (in a right to carry state) you can stop an intruder cold with Ulysses and finish them off with Finnegan’s Wake.
