I am always amazed at how much manual labour still remains in agriculture. There are still some things (like picking soft fruits) at which human hands and eyes are currently superior to robot claws. I presume that there will someday be a time when robots exceed humans at these tasks, but the cost of human labour is…

I’d like to believe that you are right, but while I think that they might provide a similar service to small building co-ops or community gardens, they are going to be a niche entity in the world of commercial agriculture. As a comparable model: current shadehouse and greenhouse growth have added thousands of acres to…

It is funny: at the time Gerrold started writing the series, a mindless ecology as parasite/predator and invasive species rather than directed villain was a novel idea. I think that popular perceptions of ecology have finally caught up in the public eye. As to where Gerrold intended to go with humanity’s response? I…

And hey, at least we have enough hints to know that the Chtorran ecology is really a Gaia-type organism. It engages in “sexual reproduction” of a sort by incorporating some of the seeded world’s ecology. I suppose our only questions left are really about how humanity (and the remains of the Uncle Ira group) reacts to…

I have a friend who talked to him briefly at a con a few years ago. Apparently Gerrold just got a kind of writer’s block and wasn’t writing on that story up to what he felt was the level of quality it deserved. So he wrote other things to free up his mind and spirit. He will allegedly come back and finish them Chtorr…

Oh, man. For those of us starved for another book in the series from Gerrold, the “War Against the Chtorr” sourcebook finally started to answer some questions and at least hint at what would appear next in the Red Book.

Do you suppose the ten commandments are read-only on 5.25” floppy discs?

Yes, reporting that a crime has occurred is far worse than the tool who committed the crime.

Nod, smile tiredly, look bored, and walk like you know where you are going.

I have family who worked at DE. They definitely care about personal security, and this sort of nonsense was mentioned during employee orientation, but it appears that individual employees have forgotten the guidelines. That, and the once small company has grown so fast and divided into different work units for…

I once ran a Star Wars themed murder mystery using Casablanca for the basic premise. It translates really well - you have smugglers, gangsters, an evil empire and a rebellion. It is amazing to see just how much hangs on the nature of your Rick/Han Solo figure. Will he betray his principles for love or money?

Yeah, I heard about the “skinjob” ending, too. Connor’s wife wraps his skin around the Terminator armature, and Marcus goes forward as the legendary John Connor. He can beat the machines because he is a machine. One of those little “the enemy plants the seeds of its own destruction” things, and similar in theme to T2.

I’m with you. I want to know when I am getting my government and pharmaceutical-sponsored endorsement checks for being pro-science...

This is a massive misunderstanding of the way vaccines function. Vaccines use either an inert or weakened version of the pathogen. It is injected into your system. Your immune system picks up the bits of the mangled or de-fanged pathogen, and learns to recognize it. Vaccines basically train your immune system to…

My favorite creationist response is when presented with a transitional fossil, they respond that now I have TWO gaps to fill on either side of said transitional critter instead of the one that used to be between the two endpoints. It is Xeno's paradox all over again...

“Nononono - that was my fourth cousin twice removed on my mother’s side, Deadpeu. He’s like me, but French. Artistic. He always wanted to be a mime.”

I find it interesting the number of times you mention that “this female character was created by fans”. You would think the corporation would have caught on by now and offered more female characters with which to expand their fanbase and apparently satisfy their existing fanbase.

And I’m talking about patents on hybrids or trademarks on strains. Laws have been in place prohibiting plant propagation of those classes for more than a century. They’re easier to enforce and to demonstrate violations with modern genetic constructs.

“Bypassing the natural process”?

The really hilarious ones are the folks who insist that organic agriculture doesn’t use pesticides. The follow-up to that one is to point out that Bt-toxin is approved for use in organic agriculture, where it is applied exogenously as a topical drench. That particular pesticide is bad for the larvae of Lepidoptera…