I call that risk assessment, but yeah, one of the things I teach my kids is how to evaluate risk, minimise it if need be, but not to ignore it or avoid it altogether. Sometimes people flip out when they see my kids do something “dangerous” while “unattended”, such as climbing some stairs. I think it’s more dangerous…

A lot of people still do this (I assume, I haven’t done a survey). For example, my front door is closed by a screen door that a baby can’t get out of. By the time my kids were old enough to work out how to open the door, they were old enough to be in that outside area. The backyard is sealed off with a much stronger…

You can’t compare modern society to a hundred years ago and then say “the most leisure time in human history”. Just because people a thousand years ago or ten thousand years ago didn’t read books or watch TV doesn’t mean they had no leisure time. In fact, in many cases in hunter gather societies their material needs…

The idea of grafting always gives me the creeps. True Frankenfruit in action.

I’ve got The Muppet Show from the 70s on DVD...back then Kermit wasn’t dating Miss Piggy, she had an unreciprocated crush on him. And Gonzo’s first act was eating a tire to the tune of Flight of the Bumblebees...Vaudevillian gold.

Sure, there could be. But this argument seems to be predicated on the premise that it is inevitable that a civilisation will use all the galaxy’s energy, and soon after using all of its star’s energy. I don’t think it’s inevitable by a long shot.

Not really, CRISPR is great, but it has its limitations.

We watched “The Blues Brothers”. A great movie, but twice as long as a school period, so we only ever watched half of it. They always started at the beginning. I watched the first half maybe 50 times before I managed to see the end.

I haven’t read the book, but I’m pretty sure this is a reference to the alphas, betas, gammas etc that are the castes in the novel.

I normally appreciate stories that pop the “the universe is teeming with aliens” bubble, but this doesn’t do it for me. For starters, I don’t really see the point of using the entire energy output of a galaxy. It seems excessive. There could also be good reasons why it doesn’t happen, kind of like there are good…

I’m editing my book, which is apropos because one of my characters joins a fraternity and goes through a disturbing initiation ritual, and I thought I may have gone over the top with it, but yesterday I discovered that no, no I hadn’t...

They were actually around before they appeared in Star Trek.

I get the distinct impression that nobody really wants to be normal any more, anyway. They want something that makes them special, “misunderstood” by society, and deserving of special treatment.

They’re like ninjas. We don’t see them, we just see what they do.

This is especially annoying because they claim it’s other people who are reinterpreting the Bible, rather than their own view which is revisionist.

In Alice they all looked weird, I don’t think that was Depp-specific.

I remember these things. They always struck me as try-hards trying to be cool. Spider-man was cool, everyone who worked at Marvel not so much.

I’m a little disappointed no-one has pointed out that the “spider” man only had six legs.

Everyone considers my wife to be lucky - which I guess reflects well on me.

I really liked the end of this article. I tend to differentiate happiness (a superficial and temporary feeling of elation) from joy (a profound long-term pleasure in one’s life and how it is going). Everyone has different definitions, of course.