I kind of wanted to be Turlough.

Ha! Like the quote from the Wikipedia article about the group announcing the intention to "secede every Thursday until further notice." Sounds like some absurdists' art project, and/or a political movement with a sense of humor.

OK, some very nifty stuff!

My hazy brain is vague on the details of what we watched together in earlier years - I'm pretty sure we made sure to catch X-files as they aired and he'd join me for Star Trek, Dr. Who, Red Dwarf and science documentaries when they were on.

Ah, the books. Vonnegut, Asimov, Clarke and more were on the shelves around the…

Oh, I've read everything else of his, and Steel Beach is among my favoritest books...

Ooh, I'll have to read that one - the short story it's based upon lands with quite a whallop!

Well if people are required to operate battlebots, the job market might be looking up!

Not so much of a problem about recruits, if you think about it - seek out puppeteers. They should just recruit from, say, the Handspring Puppet company who manipulated the horses in the stage version of War Horse. Those took two or more people per horse, and the puppeteers certainly appeared to be psychically linked!…

In Candide, the Old Woman claims that her right buttock had been cut off to feed the famished Mongols at the siege of Palus-Maoetis (that's in the musical/operetta version, in the book it's guards of the Sultan's harem in Algiers, under siege by the Russians.)

It would be really interesting to have data on rates of occasional use, versus rates of addiction when these items were freely available. Also on rates of serious damage to the person's health, relations and finances...

Well, even for the introverted who `just answer' - they do have to have some idea what they actually want! Which is a lot more insight than many people have.

Indeed some people I approach don't actually know - or can't summon the words even while there in an b/d/s/m supportive environment... possibly they've never…

Oog. Yes, I seem to remember picking up a sequel, perusing the jacket and glancing inside - and putting it down. Thanks for the confirmation to my "nuh uh" impluse!

So it's a misleading title, if dom and sub that was the researcher's qualifying question. That sure doesn't encompass all folks who may consider themselves kinky!

Ehhh... gotta admit, it moves too glacially for me, last time I tried it. I think the essay she wrote about it is more interesting and certainly more economical!

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke - such a sense of wonder grabs me every time.

The delightful Humon has some lovely work on this topic - (among other awesome art)

Will John Varley's screenplay finally get made maybe?!

I think that's "shanked my Jenga Ship."

A bunch of stuff by Jo Clayton comes to my mind - the Skeen series for instance - a thief who who habitually roves the cosmos, reluctantly drawn into leading a motley group of adventures engaging in heroic deeds on a pre-industrial planet. A nifty extra layer is an amusingly wry narrator butting in from time to time.

I see, thanks - just wonder how they arrived at that division of exactly 1/2. Seems too even to be based on actual phone usage statistics, to me.