So... the internet really is a series of tubes?

What, so it's going to be about some special boy who gets picked to go to the Jedi academy, and who discovers that the scar on his face is related to the dark Sith lord who once almost destroyed all the Jedi only to be defeated by trying a force-throw on this very boy when he was a baby and then, with his friends the…

The fact that the idea is comforting is the very reason we should be suspicious of it. This is religious thinking by another name. Unfalsifiable, and thus non-scientific.

Re-read my comments on loving this mundane universe. In fact, I love its wonders so much that I don't have to try to convince myself that non-real crap is real, such as its being a simulation or unicorns made of rainbows. I am quite enamored of this universe, and of your species.

Do you have access to your brain's ctrl-alt-del function? What was your last uncompromised save state?

Except that if that were true, you would have just ruined the experiment by figuring that out. We would be rebooted. The fact that the universe goes on means it's not simulated.

An interesting thought experiment, but I'm sticking with this universe (which, again, I love) being the most mundane possible while still permitting the complexity necessary for sentient life. Thus we are stuck in the real.

Just got 1-5 a couple of weeks ago. It's so much fun, and so inventive that when you're reading it the third time, it feels like you're reading a new issue.

Let's start a pool on when Parker comes back. I've got March of 2014, giving us, at the present rate of publication, fifty issues of Superior. Anyone else?

This seems like a rather unimaginative simulation. Why not have a simulation where magic works, where physical rules are variable, aliens exist, sex happens way more often, cancer tickles, and so forth. The sheer mundanity of this universe (which I love and appreciate) suggests to me that it is more likely to be the…

It's more convenient to believe in a crisis which we did not make and in which we can have no role in preventing or ameliorating.

People who think it's "nukuler" believe that the mnemonic relates to the fact that "nukuler is unkuler than more sustainable forms of generating power."

"At your beckon call" is one of my faves. Which is to say least faves.

I've seen those English dramas too

I'm going to go for the least popular connection between these events: the extinction of the dinosaurs caused the other two. The dinosaurs had technology to fend off meteors that could easily have saved them from the Chicxulub impact, and their geo-engineering was without peer — they had the volcanoes firmly under…

The point is that we need better ways to describe the distinction between "perfectly healthy" tantrums and those that may need treatment. Don't get me wrong: I'm not for the pathologization of childhood, but I don't think that's what this is about. The point here is to fine-tune our diagnostic language to better…

Depends who's writing.

Aaand still Amazon and Google seem to have failed to secure the rights to extend their services to Canada. I check back every few months. I don't want to go with Apple on this one, but if someone else doesn't catch up, I may have to.

In case I invent a time machine, drop me the address of the house you were in then. I'll stop by with a care package for your childhood self. VHS? Comic books? On just an iPad loaded with media?

This is what is called a "beckon calling out," when you correct someone else on grammar and usage and are in fact totally wrong. It's an instance of Muphry's Law. Also: ha ha.