@CoffinDodger (If the typos crap. Blame my keyboard): I think there will always be a market for books, much like today there is still a market for poetry, it just happens that the market is much smaller than it once was.

Slashing book prices doesn't necessarily mean slashing authors' royalties. Sure, it probably does mean that, but it doesn't have to. It should mean cutting back on the publisher's cut and on the retailers cut of the sale of books, much like it should have meant reducing the cut of the record labels and the movie…

Might there be a practical application to intentionally using your non-dominant hand, even prior to stroke and some other disuse?

@Daveinva: New York and Chicago, both simultaneously the birthplace of skyscrapers, developed not because of arrogance or hubris or boldness but because of the finite land available near their business centers. In Chicago, that meant the Loop and in New York, it was first proximity to Wall Street and second to that to…

@ilos: Western European cities and American cities tend to resist changes to their skyline, even if those changes are proportionally smaller in scale. Parisians are not fond of their modern architectural towers, nor have London's modern skyscrapers been particularly well received. By contrast, Asian cities and Dubai…

Dubai's willingness to build vertically is a bit refreshing given the reluctance of some European and American cities to encourage super tall skyscrapers (consider for example, New York's recent stink over the Penn plaza tower, or the Jean Nouvel tower that lost its top to a community board). But the unfortunate…

I read this on Saturday night in about 15 minutes while drinking an anise flavored cocktail. I think "read" might have been an exaggeration since there were so few words. But the monsters and robots and particularly the mechanical teradactyl-like creatures all seem unique, creative and interesting to look at.

It sort of all reminds me of the carnival levels in Left 4 Dead 2.

I think in part the availability of the dating pool plays a part. In places like New York with fewer single men than women, there is probably more pressure to have casual one night flings; its easier for men to move on to someone else than to expend time and effort wooing a partner disinterested in immediate…

Kilgore Trout also published a novel, Venus on the Half-Shell. This lead to much speculation as who Kilore Trout was, if he was real, or just Vonnegut in a different skin. But turns out he was one persona of Philip Jose Farmer.

This reminds me, I need to go Facebook Stalk some Exes.

You are absolutely right.

During the great blackout that covered the northeast, it became painfully apparent that gas stations should all have backup generators to operate their electric pumps.

Saturn sedans in the late 1990's got great gas mileage. I had a 1999 manual that got 39 highway.