Ambassador G'kar: Thinker, cook, singer...and babysitter!

Apples and oranges and all, but I think all 12 Nikita fans would disagree!

Social scientists, please! But an image of someone at a computer running R and SPSS just doesn't have the same cachet, I guess. Or a chalkboard showing experimental designs—in color! Maybe we can have a clinical psychologist with a couch, phone, and....oh wait, that's not good either. Maybe a sociologist with....OK,…

Pardon me for sounding partial to one organization/cause, but Audubon has been offering "adoptions" of birds that include plush versions of each bird and a year of membership and magazine subscription. I love the snowy plover one!

May I kindly recommend a recipe that my family and I used this Thanksgiving with success? Here's the link, and you can read my notes on the recipe in another post above. http://vegweb.com/recipes/best-b… I've been almost-vegetarian (only fish/seafood) for three years now, and this was one of the best things I've ever…

Agreed, there are so many vegetarian options nowadays as opposed to 10 years ago, and whatever the reasons (environmental, health, ethics), eating less meat or going veggie altogether is quite manageable. +1 on the tempeh! Have you tried seitan? My family and I made KFC-style seitan for Thanksgiving, and it came out…

Children, gather 'round for I have a tale to tell

Another question, if I may: One of my dreams is to live on a planet where I can see its native galaxy face-on rather than edge-on and filling a large portion of the night sky. I'm not holding my breath for it, but would that even be possible? How far beyond the galactic plane do stars (and their planets) form? Thanks!

Thanks for joining us today. A recent article on io9 (link below) described findings from the CIBER team in which there seemed to be a much more infrared glow between galaxies than expected. The team ruled out lingering infrared radiation from early galaxies as a source, inferring that there must be a large number of…

Yeah, you have to wonder whether a technical civilization on such planets would study and explore (and mythologize) space with as much ardor as we have. No constellations. Imagine a sky where the brightest object was M31, our closest galaxy, a faint and fuzzy light—and pointing the first telescopes at it would reveal…

I had the same thoughts! According to this, it appears that if the spacesuit is still intact and near a heat source (facing the sun?), bacteria that are already inside the body will decompose it in a similar manner as on Earth. If the face plate is smashed—yes, you're right, the extreme cold and lack of air and…

Even though this is taboo, for the sake of discussion I would just like to reiterate my comment from the Lifehacker post a few days ago:

I was curious about similar libraries in the NYC area, and I discovered that the SF club at SUNY Stony Brook (one of the biggest NY state colleges) has a library of over 18,000 titles, including some fantasy it seems. Link to catalog here: http://lskull.net/sf4mcat/search… Lends out only to students though, so I guess…

Yeah, it's kind of shame when you think about it, that organizations and structures may not facilitate creativity. When I was a grad student, it dawned on me that even if I were to secure a job after graduation, I would not be spending my time playing around with ideas, having discussions with colleagues, etc. You…

I agree— and I hope that any scripted depiction of this outbreak in media would dispassionately (and accurately) reflect the challenges that individuals, organizations, governments have faced...rather than stoke further panic. It's a fine line, and somehow I feel that even if creators restrained their sensationalism,…

That is fascinating, and I had no idea it existed. And in my case it actually worked (I retained comprehension at over 400 wpm). It's amazing to think that in the future, we won't be swiping to read or even following lines of text—we'll essentially be viewing flash cards of individual words in rapid succession. Like…

The more you know! I was having trouble visualizing this, so these may help:

Props to the cat, but I'm also concerned that it was in this environment to begin with. This is why cats are safest indoors! Not to mention that in a wildlife refuge cats could compromise native rodent and avian conservation (not sure how it would affect the Key deer subspecies, though). I hope that cats in these…

Thanks for stopping by today. Do you and others in your field have an idea of what extinct birds sounded like?

In the foreword to the new translation of Roadside Picnic, Ursula K. LeGuin talks about the strain of elitism in SF—characters with extraordinary talents or in positions of great power. Perhaps the proclivity for high-stakes, saving-the-world stories also biases characters towards the elite.