I miss Bruce as a name. You've got Bruce Wayne, Bruce Willis, Bruce Lee, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Banner. Brucie as a childhood name, Brewsky if/when he imbibes alcohol. Can't do much better than Bruce.

I appreciate that this was filed under "astronomy" and not "space porn," which always made me feel a little guilty.

Thanks for stopping by today. If current climate trends continue, do you foresee an increase in tornado frequency, severity, or both? What about events such as derechos, which produce tornado-like winds, and do you believe northern regions such as the Mid-Atlantic and New England will become more vulnerable?

Tittering aside (pun intended), seriously this artwork is gorgeous. The world is richer for this. Thanks to the artist and thanks for covering it on io9. And yes, ornithology is dirty, but if I may I just wanted to share a precious joke that I saw recently unrelated to the Paridae or Sulidae families:

Sounds cool—I would be really interested in the events surrounding the initial insertion of the "thorn" (the tower), the invasion, and the apparently doomed defensive operation from the tower. But it would be just as cool to see what happens to the biologist and what is on the island.

Interesting comparison to the light tunnel in 2001, maybe even more interesting if you think about the God and Adam moment before Bowman turns into the Star Child.

I guess it's a matter of subjective opinion and taste. Those opinions do seem conceivable, but I think it's important to note that the book is a first-person narrative of a biologist who is introverted and somewhat aloof. The detached, almost clinical tone of the book, and the extensive depictions/cataloging of the…

I took the psychologist's Annihilation order as something she desperately wanted to induce upon herself, but couldn't. Or that she was so terrified of the biologist, that she ordered Annihilation upon herself, if it were possible. But your interpretation is much more plausible, simpler, and creepier.

I thought this was an absorbing and enjoyable read. A few questions for folks who have read it, if I may: (spoiler warning for those who haven't)

This book was cool! I've mentioned this before, but for me it reminded me of the first season of Lost, that same sense of eerie calm and strangeness. I am a slow reader, but I think most folks should be able to get through it within a few days. It features an interesting and believable protagonist. The pervading sense…

My family and I thought that the musical score for this episode, and for the series overall, was really well done. Anyone else feel the same? I mean, my god, this show already pinches at the heart-strings, but the orchestral accents take it over the top (and in a good, emotionally resonant way, not a soap opera or…

Still an extremely powerful episode for me personally, and a great way to highlight and extend one of B5's themes. Namely the idea that we are always creating a legacy, and the linkages between past, present, and future demand us to think bigger than ourselves, because stewardship is our destiny, and no matter how…

Horrifying thought, and plausible, but why would the Terminus folks bother to kidnap her when they have already been luring people in?

Sorry, this should do it:

"No rock-climbing wall, wave pool, and 24-hour buffet? The massage room has swords and cannons, the dance floor has blood stains on it, and I need some frickin' chocolate from the chocolate fountain, but all I find is some weird guy staring at me before muttering something about cholera."

That's what I think, too. And hope. FTL isn't the same as teleportation, unfortunately, at least not on intergalactic scales. Hopefully our advancement in the FTL arena will be more dramatic than incremental, which is to say that hopefully we won't be tinkering with 3.1x10^8 m/s one day and 3.2x10^8 m/s the next.…

I just checked, and if my calculation is correct, a day-long journey to the Andromeda galaxy would require traveling more than 926 million times faster than light. 926,566,931 times faster, give or take.

I guess for these birds, there is such a thing as a free lunch!

I've read that the sky contains 12.7 million times more area than the Hubble Deep Field, and I've always been amazed at that. So using the metaphor that is commonly used, that's a lot of eight-foot soda straws.

Great Maker, it all makes sense now! That honestly never occurred to me before.