Re: ***SPAM*** Re: Battlestar Galactica
On 11 Apr 2008, at 03:52, Curtis Burisch wrote: I have read almost all science fiction ever published, and my biggest gripe with the genre is that there are not enough authors publishing enough works to satisfy my appetite. There have been between two- and three-hundred new sf novels published in English every year since the seventies, and probably the sixties when the paperback boom began. SF as a recognisable genre has been published since the nineteenth century with Wells and Verne. SF magazines began in the 1920s and are still published today. That's around 10,000 SF novels published just since 1960 and another 5000 or so before, and 5000 or so issues of SF magazines. That's about 20,000 books worth of reading. I've read around 15% of that and I think I've read a great deal of science fiction :) There have been a few slow episodes, whose lack of compelling content has been attributed to excessively long story arcs (as a result of the producers overextending the story arc) however for the most part BSG have seldom disappointed me. The fairly powerful love/hate relationship between Kara Thrace and Captain Adama (the junior) enthralled me for some time. Personally I experienced a powerful attraction to Kara! I thought the worst episodes were the stand-alones in season 3 which were requested by the network in an attempt to attract new viewers unfamiliar with the complicated story. I've heard there is no filler in the fourth season though! -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time. - Bill Gates, 1987 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: ***SPAM*** Re: Battlestar Galactica
There have been between two- and three-hundred new sf novels published in English every year since the seventies, and probably the sixties when the paperback boom began. SF as a recognisable genre has been published since the nineteenth century with Wells and Verne. SF magazines began in the 1920s and are still published today. That's around 10,000 SF novels published just since 1960 and another 5000 or so before, and 5000 or so issues of SF magazines. That's about 20,000 books worth of reading. I've read around 15% of that and I think I've read a great deal of science fiction :) Oops. Appears I overestimated my own coverage by a large margin. I've probably only read somewhere in the region of 5%, if your stats are accurate! But, this is the vast majority of SF I've ever come across or been able to get hold of. I've heard there is no filler in the fourth season though! Yay! Bring on the space battles! ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Ohio: Bill requires parents to volunteer
On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Dave Land [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Apr 10, 2008, at 3:29 PM, Gary Nunn wrote: COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 9 (UPI) -- An Ohio lawmaker has proposed a bill requiring parents of public school children to volunteer at the schools or pay a $100 fine. This was the policy at the private school Ryan attended through 4th grade: if you didn't volunteer for at least one of the two parent work days, you were fined $100. Actually, it was the other way around: you were charged $100, which would be refunded if you volunteered. As you point out, those were called work days, not volunteer days. Did anyone pretend it was a volunteer activity? Seems more reasonable than the Ohio way... but there's no reasonable way to force parents to be involved in their childrens' lives, is there? (I suppose it's only fair to disclose that my wife worked (for 17 years) at the school Dave's son went to... but had little or nothing to do with the policy.) This seems to be an economic solution to a non-economic problem. A stick instead of a carrot, perhaps. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Battlestar Galactica
On 11/04/2008, at 12:09 PM, Curtis Burisch wrote: Interesting premise, reasonably executed. What makes it stand out are the long long (long) takes, 4 and 5 minute action sequences done with steadycam. Great stuff. I noticed that take, Takes, dude. More than once in the movie. Over and over, long takes. OK, no single one of them quite as special as the first chunk of Snake Eyes, but a collection of great sequences. Yes, you're talking about the sequence near the end in your post, but there were others. C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Battlestar Galactica
On 4/11/08, Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I noticed that take, Takes, dude. More than once in the movie. Over and over, long takes. OK, no single one of them quite as special as the first chunk of Snake Eyes, but a collection of great sequences. The thing is the Snake Eyes take is done just because De Palma can. It is hollow spectacle. The long takes in Children Of Men really immerse you in the world. Yes, you're talking about the sequence near the end in your post, but there were others. Yeah, the long shot from inside of the car is brilliant. Martin ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Battlestar Galactica
On 12/04/2008, at 2:24 AM, Martin Lewis wrote: On 4/11/08, Charlie Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I noticed that take, Takes, dude. More than once in the movie. Over and over, long takes. OK, no single one of them quite as special as the first chunk of Snake Eyes, but a collection of great sequences. The thing is the Snake Eyes take is done just because De Palma can. Yes. It is hollow spectacle. The long takes in Children Of Men really immerse you in the world. Sure. You'll agree with me that the long takes in Children of Men were very carefully thought out, and designed to suck you in to the scene, rather than the cinematic wanking of De Palma. (And yes, De Palma was just out to slap Altman about...). But the start of Snake Eyes, and the start of The Player were still very cool. Yes, you're talking about the sequence near the end in your post, but there were others. Yeah, the long shot from inside of the car is brilliant. That was fantastic. C. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Micr*s*ft causes tornados?
The cold front which has caused storms in other parts of the country is entering the state and one of the local weather guys was just on TV with severe weather safety tips, including a repeated warning to stay away from Windows . . . . . . ronn! :) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
SF Market
10,000 sf/fantasy novels published since 1960 and at least 5000 before? i was a pretty heavy sf reader back then and running out of quality sf, so that i was driven to reading heroic doc smith, lensmen, and robert e. howard, conan the conqueror series. today there is much more quality sf to read, but much of what is published are series commissioned by publishers targeting the adolescent sci-fi and fantasy market - authors like anne mccaffrey, terry pratchet, j.j. rowling, and piers anthony et al, that pander to formula character, and plot driven scenarios (just my opinion). even authors like s.m. stirling (author of stand alone novel. conquistador) are writing linked series - island in the sea of time, dies the fire and sunrise lands, and george rr martin - on the ny times bestselling list with his fantasy series, a song of ice and fire. i don't know about the rest of you, but i weary of recycled plots and characters, whether written, or in dramatic form. still, i prefer the new st and bsg, to the old, by far... i even enjoy drooling over all the cleavage in the sarah conner and bionic woman episodes... i know i shouldn't complain because it is getting some kids to read media sci-fi spin-offs and graphic novels, instead of playing violent video games all day... back in the fifties, when i was a kid, i would play baseball until it was too dark to see, and at night, read heinlein and norton (under the bed covers with a flashlight). __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: SF Market
On 4/11/08, jon louis mann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: today there is much more quality sf to read, but much of what is published are series commissioned by publishers targeting the adolescent sci-fi and fantasy market - authors like anne mccaffrey, terry pratchet, j.j. rowling, and piers anthony et al, that pander to formula character, and plot driven scenarios (just my opinion). None of those series were commissioned by publishers. They also cover a span of, what, thirty years? So not exactly recent. There has been an increase in Young Adult SF and fantasy but you would have to be pretty churlish to think this was a bad thing. I really doubt it is to the exclusion of adult fiction either. even authors like s.m. stirling (author of stand alone novel. conquistador) are writing linked series - island in the sea of time, dies the fire and sunrise lands, and george rr martin - on the ny times bestselling list with his fantasy series, a song of ice and fire. Er, yes, authors do write series. This has been going on for some time. Like you I prefer standalone books but there are still more than enough them to satisfy me i don't know about the rest of you, but i weary of recycled plots and characters, whether written, or in dramatic form. still, i prefer the new st and bsg, to the old, by far... Yes, the general quality of genre writing - literary or visual - has undoubtably increased. i even enjoy drooling over all the cleavage in the sarah conner and bionic woman episodes... That's nice. i know i shouldn't complain because it is getting some kids to read media sci-fi spin-offs and graphic novels, instead of playing violent video games all day... Oh noes! Violent video games! Martin ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: An interesting response
At 12:00 PM 4/11/2008, Dan M wrote: (Keith wrote) Takes 10 200 ton payload rockets each flying once a day to do it and with a blank check perhaps under 5 years to work up to this production rate and 6-7 years from start to get to a $50 billion a year revenue stream increasing at $25 billion a year. OK, let's do the math on that. At the present time, the cost of lift to geosynchronous orbit is $20,000 per kg or $20M per metric ton. Ten 200 ton payloads would be about 40 billion per day or 14.6 trillion per year. That's roughly the GDP of the US. And the analogy would be how impossible it is to build a dam sending all the contents in Fed Ex envelopes. The trick is, as it always has been, to lower launch costs. Unfortunately, even in inflation adjusted dollars, launch costs haven't dropped much over the past 40 years. I agree with you. The question is why? It's not the cost of energy. A nearly hundred percent efficient space elevator lifts about 2400 mt a day to GEO on an input of about a GW. That's 2.4 million kg/24 million kWh. At ten cents a kWh that's a dollar a kg. At the target sales price of a penny a kWh it's ten cents a kg. Of course you have the cost of the elevator and cleaning up the space junk as capital costs. It can't be done at all now because we don't have the cable, but just for analysis put a $1000 billion price tag on it. Since it is going to be used at least ten years, write it off at $100 billion a year. 2.4 million kg x 365 is close enough to a billion kg. So the capital cost would be around $100 a kg. Done with rockets of this sort http://www.ilr.tu-berlin.de/koelle/Neptun/NEP2015.pdf the energy input is about 15 times that high, or from $15 /kg down to $1.50 as you get less and less expensive energy. The rockets are only assumed to make 200 trips before being junked. At 200 tons payload, they deliver 40,000 mt or 40 million kg. The mass of one of them is about 3 times a 747. If they cost a billion dollars each (produced at 20 a year), $1000 million/ 40 million is $25 a kg. I.e., there is no reason for large volume space travel to cost more than $100 a kg even with rockets. What we need is a transcontinental railroad. What we have in NASA is the Pony Express. Incidentally, the energy returned from a kg of power sat is 4000 kWh. At a penny a kwh that's $40 a year, at ten cents, $400. The income stream (which you estimate at 25 billion/year) Actually it was rising at $25 billion a year from selling power. If you sold the satellites for ten years power production the income stream would be $250 billion a year. would also have to support ground receivers, Rectennas are (from a cost standpoint) installed chicken wire over farmland and inverters (the diodes are almost free). Collecting 1/4 kW from 400 square meters would give you a hundred kW. At pc power supply prices, the inverters are $60 a kW. Counting the chicken wire, poles, diodes and power collecting grid, a 5 GW rectenna would cost $500 million or less and deliver $400 million to $2 billion a year at the bus bars. It would take decades to saturate the market, which for oil alone is about $3 trillion a year. safety mechanisms, Can you be specific about what you mean here? transmission lines, etc. At least for a while you could site the rectennas near existing transmission lines. Plus, it costs money to build the actual arrays. That's true, but with just mild concentration you can get at least 10 times more power out of a solar cell in space. If you can find a way to drop launch costs a factor of 100 to 500, then space based solar becomes a player. There is nothing like that on the horizon. There doesn't seem to be any reason a really huge throughput transport system should not be able to give you that much reduction. However, I don't thing NASA is the right organization to do it. Keith Keith ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin-l Digest, Vol 376, Issue 5
At 12:00 PM 4/11/2008, Alberto wrote: snip Maybe even if launch costs were _zero_, orbital power satellites could still have a negative energy net production. Last time I heard (when I was working in the Space Industry, and not in the Oil Industry), solar arrays required more energy to be built than the energy they produced during their lifetimes. It's under a decade now. But if you take the same cells into space and just do a mild 3 to one concentration, you get more than a factor of ten more energy out than you do on the ground. Alberto 'oil rulez, fsck space!' Monteiro Completely correct. But what do you do when you run out of oil? Try this web site. http://www.drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm The part on what it takes to replace the cubic mile of oil per year we are now using is instructive as well as the concept of net energy which you mention. Keith ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
SF Market
--- None of those series were commissioned by publishers. They also cover a span of, what, thirty years? So not exactly recent. There has been an increase in Young Adult SF and fantasy but you would have to be pretty churlish to think this was a bad thing. I really doubt it is to the exclusion of adult fiction either. Er, yes, authors do write series. This has been going on for some time. Like you I prefer standalone books but there are still more than enough them to satisfy me Yes, the general quality of genre writing - literary or visual - has undoubtedly increased. Oh noes! Violent video games! Martin it is rude of you, martin, to suggest that i am saying the increase in young adult sf and fantasy is a bad thing. especially when i clearly applaud anything that prompts children to read. i am not suggesting that all genre series are commissioned by publishers, nor should it be suggested that none are. i DO say that publishers and editors recognize market forces, and i personally consider it a lamentable trend if it tempts more writers like geo rr martin and sm stirling to write series. having said that, i still enjoyed reading philip jose farmer's riverworld series. it is true that this has been going on for some time. it is also true that pandering to the mass market is increasingly profitable in 21st century mega-capitalist global commerce, which emphasizes quantity over quality even more than in the past. hopefully, the increase in quality is keeping up with the increase in quantity, according to sturgeons's law... this is of course just my opinion, but i believe there are enough authors who write genre series, without publishers and editors encouraging established authors, like niven, herbert, clarke, and asimov, et al... (yes, i am aware the latter three of are deceased) to continue mass producing more ringworld, dune, 2001, and foundation franchises... i make an exception for the killer bees' versions commissioned by the foundation shared universe. sometimes a remake is better than the original version, for example, the 1978 version of invasion of the body snatchers, but often authors and scriptwriters should quit when they're ahead, instead of adding prequels, sequels and parallelquels (although, not all the ender series were bad) as for violent video games, i make no apologies for that statement!~) jon __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Peak Oil [was: Brin-l Digest, Vol 376, Issue 5]
Keith wrote: Alberto 'oil rulez, fsck space!' Monteiro Completely correct. But what do you do when you run out of oil? Try this web site. http://www.drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm We will *never* run out of oil. It's more likely that we will run out of oxygen in the air :-P The part on what it takes to replace the cubic mile of oil per year we are now using is instructive as well as the concept of net energy which you mention. Cubic mile? Someone must be utterly insane to use those weird units in any serious study. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Micr*s*ft causes tornados?
On 11 Apr 2008, at 19:36, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: The cold front which has caused storms in other parts of the country is entering the state and one of the local weather guys was just on TV with severe weather safety tips, including a repeated warning to stay away from Windows . . . Always good advice. UNIX everywhere Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If so, then Microsoft would have great products. - Steve Jobs ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: SF Market
On 11 Apr 2008, at 20:19, jon louis mann wrote: 10,000 sf/fantasy novels published since 1960 and at least 5000 before? Just SF. Probably the same again for fantasy. In 1990, according to the figures from Locus quoted by Gardner Dozois in his summation of the year, there were 281 new SF novels, 204 new fantasy novels, and 168 new horror novels. In 2006 the corresponding figures were 223, 463 and 271 (showing the continuing rise in popularity of fantasy compared to SF). Without looking up all the years I'd estimate about 4000 new SF novels published just since 1990. If you go to the MIT SF library at http://stuff.mit.edu/activities/mitsfs/homepage.html which contains both fantasy and high-tech sf, including sf horror and includes some foreign-language material and over 90% of all science fiction ever published in English it appears to contain about 30,000 titles and a quick check showed it missing some that I have in my collection. i was a pretty heavy sf reader back then and running out of quality sf, so that i was driven to reading heroic doc smith, lensmen, and robert e. howard, conan the conqueror series. Most books are out of print at any time. Most only ever appear in one edition and are never reprinted. Taking DAW as an example - their publications constitute only a small proportion of my sf collection and they have published over 1400 titles since they started in 1972 of which the majority are original SF titles (not reprints, fantasy or horror). Most of them are out of print. Collectables Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Most people have more than the average number of legs. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
