That makes me question why I'm speaking to someone who'd celebrate the death of a father and an upstanding human being because he played a video game with someone you have a grudge against.

Yeah dude, that loving husband and father of two, known by thousands for his grace, kindness, and diplomacy was ethically compromised by his long-standing membership in a video game organization now led by a man who said something horrible while drunk. Fucking Vilerat! He should've known that the Mitanni would…

Someone is mean in a video game and his friends literally deserve to die

That's fine. I don't think the quality of television shows is really a democratic value, though; the more sophisticated and thoughtful a critic gets the more likely s/he is likely to point to The Wire as a triumph, and I think that's telling.

They're very different shows. Breaking Bad is a little more shiny and accessible and it doesn't take 10 hours to really get going (The Wire is the slowest of slow burns). Breaking Bad punches you in the face and drags you in whereas The Wire creeps up on you. Breaking Bad is tense and clear where The Wire will have…

It has all of those, and while Breaking Bad is superb, it's not quite in The Wire's league.

Hahaha dude, click the fucking 'skip tutorial' button in the top right of the briefing screen

This is what happened. The BtRL team split; all but two of the BtRL developers went on to make Diaspora.

I'd add that the FreeSpace Open engine is (as the name suggests) open source, so this isn't really the same engine we played FreeSpace 2 on - it's actually packing some pretty respectable graphical horsepower (FXAA, god rays, the like) and is also super customizable.

The Hugos are for science fiction and fantasy, just like the Nebulas.

It's a flash forward, shot to be the film's opening but depicting events that take place after its ending. This is a technique used a lot in episodic TV, a little less so in movies.

This is actually not 'basic mammalian biology' whatsoever. It seems straightforward, but with cryptic female choice, sperm competition, and the powerful evolutionary incentives for female promiscuity added to the mix, it turns out that biological instincts don't always point the way you'd expect.

Here's my best take on it.

The assumption of mediocrity is actually something that scientists, especially cosmologists, keep in mind constantly and often use in their reasoning.

Why do you believe this? The brain is an organ, a material artifact accessible to empirical investigation like anything else. The mind is not mystical energy field, it's a computational system.

I have read His Dark Materials, but I'm honestly unsure. I loved The Golden Compass as a work of entertainment, but I think I'd need to give it another re-read before passing judgment on its literary merit.

Part of maturing as a genre reader is stepping outside of the confines of the genre box, the pleasant pulp comfort zone where modest prose and 'world building' are merits enough to carry a work. Valente, Mieville, LeGuin, Butler - these are all authors who can stand up to a critical eye, whether on the strength of…

Those are both pretty mediocre entries that fall squarely in the high end of pulp. The talk should go to writers like LeGuin and Valente.

The Wire, baby. Once and future king.

That information is pretty freely available, actually, check dotlan