T-1001

I totally preferred Moriarty over Sam Waterston and stopped watching it soon after the change. There seemed to be a shift in the politics in the show then; Waterston's DA seemed less worried about moral and ethical questions than Moriartys.

Wow, homo habilis has really gone downhill.

Lem *was* a fan of British sf, though. It was one notorious essay of his that said, if I remember correctly, "British SF is good, and all American SF other than Dick is crap". All the drama came from this one essay - it was an era before trolling was well understood.

Tommy, Lem thought all American sf was Hubbardish crap (not far from true, really). The greats far outnumbered by the hacks and Lem only had a very narrow view of American sf from eastern europe.

Hubbard is the pulp baseline, the crap that lets gems like Dick shine.

Increases in efficiency only have a short-term affect on consumption, the amount saved is normally wiped out by new methods of wasting the saved energy. For instance, look at car engine efficiency - the gains in efficiency since the 70s were completely offset by replacing cars with SUVs.

Bester's "The Demolished Man" is still one of my favourite sci fi novels, like Dick in that it's simultaneously pulpy and ridiculously psychedelic.

I particularly like his ideas of what is alien. Lem's aliens weren't humans with crinkly noses, they were things so utterly strange that it was impossible to say if they were intelligent or even if they could be considered living. All this anthropomorphizing of the universe in most sci fi always pissed me off.

I have an egg salad recipe so good you'll plotz.

He's a favourite of mine, too, even if he did try and lure Dick across the Iron Curtain so that soviet scientists could brainwash him and turn him into a commie subversive.

The problem wasn't him as a writer, I would say. I'd say it was more an issue of the cheap publishers not having any editors for him to work with.

Wait - is there something interesting on these days?

They only did it 'cause of fame.

I *hated* them back in the day, though now I can't even see their names written down without getting "whoa here she comes/watch out boys, she'll chew you up" stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Like them or not, they could craft the high-quality pop. They're like Abba in that, really.

I want to see the ZMF/Horsefellow musical number. I'm seeing the "Putting on the Ritz" scene in Young Frankenstein, except that Peter Boyle is a pantomime horse and Gene Wilder is on meth and Mountain Dew.

@wildcard, they are "professional" in that they get paid for cooking, they aren't "professional" in that they behave in a professional way. I've been in enough kitchens to not be surprised at those nimrods.

Wait - does this mean that the story of Orpheus was just a metaphor for the mining industry?

That is the new This.

System Shock II messed with my head. Playing at night with the headphones on I would frequently have to get up and walk around - hearing the monsters shuffling around the hallways was unnerving.