It lost me the moment Reedus says that the air is getting thin, but the flexible plastic isn’t sinking toward him under the (presumably) greater pressure outside. (the way it does suddenly, much later) The gas inside with Reedus might have been exchanged with something else, lowering the oxygen concentration, but…

The easier levels are fairly easy (this is from the web version). The harder levels are insane. The thing I really like about N is that there is no leveling-up. Your success is entirely down to your skill, not how many hours you’ve spent grinding.

Gomi’s corner corner could have thrown in the towel. I appreciate refs who stop fights with pinpoint accuracy, but I’d have the refs err on the side of letting the fighters go in most cases rather than cutting it short, and leave it to the corners to protect their fighter if they think they need it.

The original novel was by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. The scary part is: that’s from memory. But I checked wikipedia to make sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s… There were sequels written only by Nolan.

For the counterpoint, check the comments on this post, which effectively say gigawatt, schmigawatt, plain energy is useless against the Federation’s shields, no matter the quantity, that the Empire isn’t set up to defend against the Federation’s weapons (which are not simply energy), and further that the math on the…

I wish it weren’t so, but Transportation, Energy Generation, and Military are *far* from being ties. See here for details, but summing it up, the Empire destroys the Federation on these measures: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/…

“...it’s been extensively modified for horsepower...” doesn’t this make this pretty much a race between a stock car and... another stock car? It’s just the degree of modification that separates them?

That bear left the strawberry rhubarb because he knew if he ate it I’d be coming for him.

That’s an interesting point. Even if the environment doesn’t help with that, they could still migrate in by random movement/expansion. If you cleared a random 30x30 mile area in the ocean of all sharks, it probably wouldn’t take more than a few years (maybe months) for it to be completely re-populated.

I don’t think it needs to be the case that they can sense the volcano getting ready to erupt — they just have to be unaware of the risk in the first place.

I took from the above that the environment isn’t that hostile, but the question is why the animals would choose to be there given the risk of eruption, and my response is that they don’t know how volcanoes work, so they would just spread there randomly (as long as it’s not (as you put it) so hot, full of ash and…

Too soon!

Why so serious?

This seems fairly straightforward to me. If the volcano is inhabitable for even a year, it’s not like the sharks are passing on stories about great uncle Steve who died there a year ago. They're going to expand into any currently-hospitable place. They don't understand volcanoes, and when (if) it kills them, they'll…

I wasn’t able to get past the idea that someone could be good at *all* games, even games they are unfamiliar with. Apart from James Bond, that’s impossible. As just one example, any reasonably skilled Go player could wipe the floor with an inexperienced (at Go) Chess Grandmaster, and vice versa. There is just no…

I’m not a huge fanfic reader, but I have read several HP stories. Perhaps my opinion is rooted in the fact that only one of the stories I’ve read comes close (and not too close, really) to having an unchanged-Harry-Potter. HPMOR as you say could be considered a Mary Sue, although I think that’s a bit critical. I read…

Genuinely curious — so you think that fan-fiction is better-represented by something where the protagonist is (largely) unchanged, but the circumstances around him or her change?

HPMOR started interesting, but lost its way. This is a great example: Harry starts off wondering how magic violates (or doesn’t) conservation of energy, among many other interesting questions, and answers basically none of them. The idea of arbitrage in the knut/sickle/muggle exchange was toyed with, and then dropped.…

Fan fiction changes something by definition. That something isn’t proscribed from being the protagonist.

8 out of 9 in the world *do* have access to clean water: http://water.org/water-crisis/o… As of 2011, only 17% of the world’s population are living on under $1.25 per day. Both problems need to be solved, but the world is much better off than you think.