The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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Just call an exterminator - you will sleep better for more than one reason...
The consultant was the exterminator. He just didn't do any exterminating because he didn't find any evidence. And he refused to let us pay $2K "just in case."Kids today... heck, I wouldn't recognize the names Belka and Strelka. Tsk.
I saw a really neat sight this weekend. The dogs & I were taking a walk through the fields about dawn & I could see Cloud, a flea-bitten gray, against the tree line across the field. I wondered why he was out there alone, thinking the other 2 horses were in the barn. Then I saw little white dots moving on the ground near to him & suddenly a white streak appeared above them. Then another white streak off to the sides. It was the other 2 horses, but their chestnut coats blended in so well that only their white markings (socks & blazes) were visible. Quite spooky!
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Maybe they were ghosts!
Brexit is a big topic and I'm not going to go there, but it is funny how my work was impacted by it.
I make software. Some of it is approved by government authorities for diagnosing genetic abnormalities. The EU requires that we put a contact address in the EU on the splash screen. We used an address in London. Now, since UK may leave the EU, we've had to create an update simply to change that splash screen! And it has to go through weeks of testing to prove that it still works correctly even though the only thing we changed was the splash screen! (Of course, I want medical devices to be thoroughly tested, but this case just feels funny.)
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They are trying to prevent fires, which is a good thing. But people turning on generators may cause fires. So maybe all they are really preventing is more liability lawsuits.
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Not sure how I'll celebrate. Maybe go out and ride my bicycle gaily. But I do that every day!
Dang, if I'd known I'd've worn purple or something when I ran errands this morning.
I have a Goodreads question.I've recently gotten 6 likes of my status on H Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer. I read it in early 2018. Even though I wrote a brief review, the likes are for my status, i.e. currently reading. The likers all have read fewer than 100 books and have 0 to 3 friends. Is this some sort of spam/scam?
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Buck wrote: "I have a Goodreads question.I've recently gotten 6 likes of my status on H Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer. I read it in early 2018. Even though I wrote a brief review, the likes are for my stat..."
I frequently get people 'liking' my status, when it is a book from years ago, that I have usually not even reviewed. No idea what that is about, but my likes are more often from friends than randoms.
At least I "like" during browsing all current statuses of books I enjoyed and books I plan to read. Maybe GR makes 'anniversary' statuses (i.e. the same day any previous year) re-appear like memories in FB
If you don't land on the home page of this group, please take a look & tell us what you think of the new banner.https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Jim wrote: "If you don't land on the home page of this group, please take a look & tell us what you think of the new banner.https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/..."
I like it even if two rows with 6 books each would be even better :) and maybe with a single theme except for publishing date
Buck wrote: "I have a Goodreads question.I've recently gotten 6 likes of my status on H Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer. I read it in early 2018. Even though I wrote a brief review, the likes are for my stat..."
I sorted the community reviews by 'newest' and found several recent members' ratings. So maybe some other group or IRL club is reading it. Though there's no congruence between members who rated it recently and your status likes... hmm.
In any case, I don't think there's a concern. Just be alert, as we all always need to be anyway.
Oleksandr wrote: "I like it even if two rows with 6 books each would be even better :) and maybe with a single theme except for publishing date "Glad you like it. The space for that banner is set to a precise size, so I think 6 books, one for each period, is the best we can do. Trying for covers with big names in all ways & plenty of color was the object. We've linked it to the group description, so it shows up when searching for a group, too.
Jim wrote: "If you don't land on the home page of this group, please take a look & tell us what you think of the new banner.https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/..."
I like it :)
Some of the old covers are top notch.
And, Buck, I can't see people liking my books or reviews as a problem in itself. I might be a bit more cautious if they were adding me as friends, but one reason someone might not have a lot of books is that they just joined GR.Perhaps I am trying to see the world through rose coloured glasses, but when I joined GR I was a kid in a candy store; so many other people out there having read books I love which not many other people seemed to.
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And maybe they joined simply because they are planning on publishing and promoting their own book. Not a problem if they just click "like" on your status. But I don't accept friendships from people who have few books added, and/or haven't actually interacted with me already.
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I've recently gotten 6 likes of my status on H Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer. I read it in early 2018."
The person "Andrew Geeberz" who liked it has a suspicious profile. His profile links to a "sexy" site on a Russian domain. It won't hurt you in any way as long as you don't click on it. (If you do click on it, you might get a free surprise from Russia!)
Ed wrote: "Buck wrote: "I have a Goodreads question.I've recently gotten 6 likes of my status on H Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer. I read it in early 2018."
The person "Andrew Geeberz" who liked it has a..."
Yeah, I just got similar spam.
Jim wrote: "If you don't land on the home page of this group, please take a look & tell us what you think of the new banner.https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/..."
I like it! 5 classic books and John Scalzi, the Master of Snark!
Ok, thank you RJ, you made me laugh out loud for real. We mods are currently talking about how often to change it... maybe your comment has convinced me to leave the current version up for awhile.
An idea: why not to give 6 covers of last 'full cycle' of monthly reads and change it when the next cycle is done?
Oleksandr wrote: "An idea: why not to give 6 covers of last 'full cycle' of monthly reads and change it when the next cycle is done?"This has been suggested, but most covers don't show up very well. Does anyone pay attention to the banner on the home page? We haven't had one for 6 years & I didn't notice.
We created it so we could link it into the description for group searches. IOW, it's mostly advertising here:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/searc...
If people really pay attention to it, I'd like to know. Seems to me most people don't go to the home page very often & then they're looking for something specific - save when they first join. I could be wrong, so please chime in.
To be honest, I don't go to home pages much, neither group pages nor my own. I go to book reviews or ongoing chats like this one.
Deborah wrote: "To be honest, I don't go to home pages much, neither group pages nor my own. I go to book reviews or ongoing chats like this one."Same here most of the time
Cheryl wrote: "Ok, thank you RJ, you made me laugh out loud for real..."Anytime. ;-)
Oleksandr wrote: "Deborah wrote: "To be honest, I don't go to home pages much, neither group pages nor my own. I go to book reviews or ongoing chats like this one."Same here most of the time"
And same for me. Though pretty pictures can lure me in . . . 😇
NEWS:https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Two of our own share the Booker Prize! Cool pix, too.
Has anyone read Evaristo's "Blonde Roots"? It's a reverse-slavery fantasy (Africans enslave Europeans) that earned her an AC Clarke nomination in 2009. Zen Cho (another Londoner) liked it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Other reactions here are mixed.
I might prefer her "The Emperor's Babe": a Sudanese, well, babe in 3rd century London who gets it on with Emperor Septimius Severus on his state visit. Zuleika has Pictish (Scottish) slaves who can't understand why she won't free them: "don't they understand how good I am to them?" -- and their accents are conveyed in the kind of heavy-handed slurred phonetics that you find in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Heh. It's written in blank verse, but that doesn't seem to bother most readers. Zen Cho liked this one, too.
Jim wrote: "If you don't land on the home page of this group, please take a look & tell us what you think of the new banner.Looks lovely to me. It would have appealed to me when I was looking for a group because it has titles I recognize and love and some I don't know at all - so familiarity and novelty - and a sense of the chronological spread of the books the group reads.
Maybe it would be nice if the banner changed to reflect recent reads but I never looked at the first page after I found out how to go to the discussions directly so certainly wouldn't be necessary for me.
Thanks for letting me know about the home page. It's good to know. We are going to change the banner so it isn't the same as the picture that shows up in the description which is what you see when searching for a group. Basically, it will be the same idea, a cover from each reading period. We'll probably change it occasionally, although I don't know how often. If you have a favorite cover, you can post it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Please read the rules.
I like the banner just fine. it expresses what we are about. But I never see the home page.I suggest changing the profile pic to complement the banner.
This week gremlins attacked our vehicles. Last week I noticed the battery in my car was getting old & I thought I should change it out. I procrastinated because I have 6 birthdays among kids & grandkids from 17Oct-10Nov & that's tough on the budget. It seemed fine & started the car without a problem until after a dentist appointment when it wouldn't start at all - totally dead. Oh, & the high beam went out on a headlight as I was driving to work.So I took my wife's truck to work the next day with the battery. One of the blinkers was out. She was going to use my old farm truck to go to her doctor's appointment, but gas started leaking on the ground from a point under the driver's seat. I knew what that was immediately, the stupid quick connect on the fuel filter. It's a terrible design requiring 3 hands & never seems secure. The washer needed should be in next week.
In the meantime, I've fixed all the other issues. Changing the headlight in my car was a drag. I think they design those things for people with baby sized hands as strong as King Kong's. The blinker turned out to be a corroded socket. Sigh. All the vehicles are old, but they're so bloody expensive. We'd like to replace my wife's truck, but a 3/4 ton pickup with 4WD & an 8' bed starts at about $40K. Ugh. That's like taking on another mortgage.
Jim wrote: "This week gremlins attacked our vehicles. Last week I noticed the battery in my car was getting old & I thought I should change it out. I procrastinated because I have 6 birthdays among kids & gran...""It just goes to show, it's always something."
My wife took her car to the local tire & oil change place. They wanted nearly $200, So did the dealership. So I changed it, What a pain. You are right about the design. It seems that the people who design the things we buy are better at making them different than they are at making them better.
"It just goes to show, it's always something." Ayup.
We actually have 2 reliable vehicles now -- including my 1996 Pathfinder, still miraculously (almost) trouble free -- but a girl sideswiped the Accord a month back. No injuries but both cars a mess. Ours took $8,000 in body work, or about 60% of what it was worth! Hate to think of what that will do to our premiums. Bah.
And I've already scratched the stupid new plastic bumper! Actually, dumb driver (me). I hate those things.
Jim wrote: "It's a terrible design requiring 3 hands & never seems secure. The washer needed should be in next week."Just reminded me a quote from RAH's The Rolling Stones:
Despite their great sizes and tremendous power spaceships are surprisingly simple machines. Every technology goes through three stages: first, a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final stage of smooth simplicity and efficient performance based on correct under-standing of natural laws and proper design therefrom
We were in the second stage with cars when it was written and remain there 70 years later
LOL! Seems like I hit a popular topic - the woes of car ownership. Great minds, Oleksandr. I was thinking of the same quote as I worked on that headlight.
Thank goodness for Google because the owners manual says to get the dealer to change it. It's actually a simple operation once I knew what to do. There's a clip holding the bulb in, but I couldn't see it due to all the structural members in the way.
Buck, was that $200 to change the light bulb?!!!
Peter, I agree on the hate for plastic bumpers. I had to use plastic cable ties to hold my front bumper to the plastic running under the car as it was coming loose. They had been using those silly little plastic pins, but those fell out. I wonder if it will be a problem for the oil change. I've never changed it in this car. I quit some years back when they started putting the filters in totally inaccessible places requiring special tools. Besides, my local mechanic does it for about $10 more than it costs me for the oil & filter. Well worth it to me.
Forthenco Pacino wrote: "Does owning HotWheels count?"Hah! My grandson thinks so since his dog eats them.
;)
How about the rats who relax by driving little electric cars? 😇Or is that a "Science in the News" topic?
And when do the cats get their chance at those motoring rats? 🐀 😻
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By the way, Beverley Cleary is alive and well at 103 years old!
Peter wrote: "How about the rats who relax by driving little electric cars? 😇Or is that a "Science in the News" topic?"
I suppose it does, but it's pretty funny. Might as well put it here:
https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/26/r...
Interesting that they find it relaxing. Of course, they're not stuck in traffic or dodging suicidal deer, either.
Fall back an hour! Dogs do not tell time by the clock.At 4:30 this morning, Lily was demanding breakfast. Her stomach was upset, but I still had to get up to offer it to her. The Princess then declined & laid down on my spot in the bed.
Jim wrote: "it's pretty funny. Might as well put it here:https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/26/r...
Me: From the close-up photo, the Ratmobile was made out of: (wait for it) a plastic container for the jumbo-size packages of cat-treats! I still have a couple under the house, to use for this-and-that.
And I hear you re the suicidal deer! Around here, you can add, suicidal turkeys. . . 😎
Mod
Hmm. I read that wrong.
Oh! I was wondering. "I hear you, re' the deer" would have been easier for me to read. But not nearly as entertaining.
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
A History of the English Speaking Peoples, 4 Vols (other topics)Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (other topics)
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
A Night in the Lonesome October (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Winston Churchill (other topics)Roger Zelazny (other topics)
Felix Salten (other topics)
Sam Kean (other topics)
Chuck Tingle (other topics)
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Whew! Congrats. I'll bet that's a HUGE relief.