Andrew Turner's page

Astronauts are awesome!

An awesome movie.

Just picked this up tonight. Never heard of it before, but definitely a winner.

So awesome!

Wow. Just spectacular.

I so seriously want to see this movie!

I know it's not real, but wouldn't it be totally brilliant!?

Lego Jabba's Palace Offends Muslim Community; Lego Ceases Production

Buy your set today, because it'll cost a small fortune a year from now.

This thread is devoted to collecting and discussing apparently offensive items.

Is the complaint about the Lego set legit, or hypersensitive political correctness at its best?

I'm a Western rational secularist, so I don't see it at all. Personally, I think it's more a matter of hypersensitive activists insecure in their own standing, likely looking, deliberately, for offense in and from everything around them.

What do you think?

WTF

I propose a Bill that makes it illegal to fail a student for arguing that the Refrigerator Fairy turns that light on and off.

As long as students are still required to answer correctly on tests, I really don't care what they privately believe. And if a student wants to submit a paper or research project that argues H. sapiens and T. rex cohabited, then awesome--as long as they follow the scientific method (...whereby they will prove themselves wrong).

I can argue all day that 2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2, but I still better answer '2' on the test.

Awesome!

I'm a bit over an hour into this game; just started exploring NYC, and found new meaning to the term 'concrete jungle'.

Gameplay is more streamlined and controls are more responsive vice Crysis 2. The story is developing nicely, and Psycho is a fun NPC who doesn't get in the way (or really help in fights at all), or hog the best weapon for 99.5% of the game.

The graphics are phenomenal--honestly the best graphics I've ever seen in a video game.

Anyone else playing?

OMG

V/H/S is a found-footage style film. Personally, I'm a big fan of these, but I understand how many might be put off by yet another one. The cool thing about this movie is that it's a series of stories in the vein of Tales from the Dark Side. I went into this one having no idea what it was about, just that it was a horror film, and found myself very pleasantly surprised by just how good it is.

Overall, surprisingly well made for a low-budget flick, and the acting--with the exception of one tale, which suffers from dialogue issues, and another one, which seems to suffers from a huge dose of reductio ad absurdum that's eventually resolved, both of which are nonetheless saved by the coolness of the ideas (you'll know it when you see it)-- actually comes off as realistic and genuine.

At any rate, if you hate found-footage films, you'll probably hate this one too. If you like them, or are still neutral, give it a shot.

Jeffrey Combs at his best.

Saw this tonight--was worried it would be torture porn (which I detest)--it is not. Actually a great movie. A stellar Pyrrhic ending; very highly recommended.

Cool enough to me to merit a weekend jaunt to China this spring.

Promotional video here.

Awesome, and a lot of work.

So, something like 99% of the movie is one long computer animated photorealistic cartoon.

Awesome.

If this doesn't win the Oscar for best SFX, the Judges are literally certifiable.

MS to bring Holodecks to every home

OK, not quite, but within the next 20 years for sure.

Occupy Unmasked

Another side to the Occupy movement. Some eye-opening material unfortunately mixed with some over-the-top Right Wing props.

Go ahead. Watch this. Don't cry... I dare you.

Kisses on the Bottom - Complete Kisses

I just got this today as my Xmas Eve present, from my wife. Greatest album; absolutely perfect.

Fallout 3: You Found The Jasper Hills Farmhouse!

An absolutely wonderful PA film, full of drear and with a brilliant unhappy ending: wasteland wanderers stumble upon farmhouse-trap of anthropophagic Raiders.

There are so many of these: post the coolest ones in this thread.

Here's a ridiculous example.

Wiki article.

Watch a bit.

Personally, this is my favorite show of the season. Terry O'Quinn is spectacular, as usual.

Boo!

Dishonored

RPG-Shooter by Bethesda; just at a glance the style looks a lot like Fallout/Bioshock.

Anyone playing? How do you like it?

Atlas Shrugged Part 2

Who's going to see this? How was it?

Ensiferum--My new favorite band.

My sister introduced me to these guys with this song:

In My Sword I Trust

This thread is dedicated to scientific explanations of various phenomena in myths and legends across the world.

Fire-filled twister in Australia

Another one in Brazil

A plausible explanation for the Pillars of Fire in various myth cycles.

Awesome Sauce with Extra Gravy.

Anyone have the December 1987 issue? Here's a picture.

If so, there's a story inside by Mona Clee called "Iron Butterflies" --could you give me a brief synopsis? I've looked around for a week now and can't find any republication of the story, and I haven't seen that magazine since I was a kid.

I'm in the middle of writing a short story and I have a sneaking suspicion I'm remembering reading "Iron Butterflies" from 25 years ago and simply re-writing it.

Thanks in advance!

This is one of the last relics from my childhood still missing from my collection. I'm tired of the auction game; I've been trying to find a New Mint-in-Package copy for 10 years.

If you have a MIP copy, 4th printing or earlier, message me.

I'm willing to pay $150. This is more than twice the going price at auction.

AD&D SuperModule The Temple of Elemental Evil, 1985, by Gygax and Mentzer.

MS Surface tablet

I know absolutely nothing about this tablet, but the commercial is awesome. I'm very interested in owning this device.

So. Much. Awesome.

Chronicle

Google Driverless Car

I didn't pay any attention to this when it was first in the news, frankly because I'd seen MB's tech, which relies on sensors in the roads, and remained fairly unimpressed.

I just saw a demo of Google's car: spectacular; in a word.

It uses laser tech to continuously scan the road, meaning it can operate anywhere.

My wife and I just finished watching The Atom Smashers, a documentary covering the search for the Higgs boson at FermiLab. It's an older film, from 2008, but still very interesting. It's a bit downbeat, and I kind of felt like I could just start crying at any moment--but I'm pretty passionate about science in general, and physics in particular.

At any rate, I think the film's most significant message is familiar to many of us on these boards, especially to those of us who will open this thread; and it's something we've talked about at some length: the state of science and science education in the US.

When the last shuttle mission returned, here's what I posted.

What's hurting science in America?

The government certainly isn't helping things along. The 2013 budget for HEP is less than $1 billion. When we're talking a budget in the trillions, a billion is nothing. It's like asking the average American wage earner for a penny. On the other hand, the military spent $1 billion just in advertising! And now we're doing everything we can to weed the ranks. The 2013 NASA budget is a paltry $17 billion, and before you think that's an awful lot of money, it's 0.48% of the total 2013 budget. The government spent $31 billion last year subsidizing the railroads.

There's a lot of tech out there, and our kids are very much integrated into technology and with one another through technology. In fact, I'm presenting a paper this coming winter that talks specifically about the ethics of technology (and its use) as seen through the eyes of our youth. Tech is everywhere, and maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe tech is so ubiquitous we literally don't notice it anymore.

I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone my age and younger who isn't tech savvy, yet I'd be equally pressed to find many people of the same group who could explain how the GPS actually works, or why there's a magnet in their microwave oven.

I could name the top ten physicists in America right now and the overarching commonality would be that 8/10 are senior citizens a year or so from joining the emeriti.

This thread is effectively omnibinary. That's right: I made that up, just like the supernatural.

I actually had to close my office door after reading this.

Bucket List Baby Passes Away at 6 Months

SMA Type 1

Maybe in a few more years, stem cell research will effectively delete this condition from the list of human disorders.

I have my subscriptions set up to ship together rather than as a product becomes available, and I know that your policy is to charge for an item when it ships.

However, while I'd like to maintain my all-together shipping preference, Id like to read the epub versions of Pathfinder Tales (like Death's Heretic) as soon as the product is available.

Is it possible you guys could charge me for the novels as they're available so I can download the epub file but still wait and ship the physical product per my shipping prefs?

Project Glass SmartGlasses

Watching this video reminds me of how I felt the very first time I picked up an iPhone. 100% Awesome.

1E Reprints on the way

Procedes go toward the Gygax Memorial.

Thanks to Ari Marmell for the link; I echo his sentiments: WTF?

Fascism Alive and Well in Arizona

As a sworn defender of the US Constitution, I'm rather disgusted by this development.

Detailed Final Plan for the last two books in the Song of Fire and Ice.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG--I'm stoked!

Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas, one and all!

I hope the season is kind to you and yours.

-Andrew :-)

In the Xmas spirit, my brood and I attempted to build a 'ready-made' modular Gingerbread village. Upon our rather disastrous failure, my oldest said, "It's like Godzilla dropped by."

Well, we decided Cthulhu would do.

Has anyone else made a village or a house (whether you did a very good job or not...)?

Suggestion 1:

Give away a couple copies of each new major publication (like Bestiary 3), signed by everyone who had a hand in it.

Only rule to win is being a message board member with at least, I don't know, 10 posts and one thread.

Just randomly pick a couple message board members who meet the criteria.

Suggestion 2:

Make a dozen signed copies of each new major publication available for purchase, first come-first serve, with a 25% (or so) markup.

The profits for those copies go to charity, tallied at the end of each FY.

(sorry if this thread is in the wrong place)

Not only is this just one hell of a great movie, it's a walk back in time for we grognards! It's like finding a lost Speilberg film from the 80s. Camera angles, close ups, pans, sound design, even lens flares--vintage awesome!

Very highly recommended.

Prof. Ferguson, Harvard, Discusses the rise and potential fall of Western Dominance

I found this TED excerpt to be quite interesting. Ferguson has a few very interesting remarks, though no epiphanies.

I take some exception to the argument that Westerners as a group, particularly North America, have lost the Puritan work ethic; since much of what Ferguson contends seems to hinge on this opinion. I work a good 60+ hours a week, and while I have most weekends off and the plethora of federal holidays, I'm always on call except when physically on vacation (where I still get plenty of work email). I work my ass off.

I'm currently stationed in South Korea (Ferguson's example of hard workers), and I agree that the average Korean professional works very close to 12 hours a day, six days a week--but there's this interesting cultural norm in Korea called the Easy Lunch (two hours long) and the Business Dinner (sometimes as long as three hours of nothing but drinking and talking about work): to say Koreans work an average of three to four hours longer than Americans each day is a bit disingenuous.

Plenty of Korean professionals--and I'd guess professionals the world over--bring their work home and continue to type away (just like me) well past 10 PM. But professionals are a class of worker, an echelon is what I mean. Professionals the world over aren't the bulk of the national workforce, rather the laborer makes up that bulk, from commerce to service. The average laborer is working their ass off for less money than professionals but for specific work periods; and they don't tend to be on call 24-7. My point is that professionals are working long hard hours and laborers are working shorter hard hours, but everyone's working their asses off. The part-time teen at the Qwick-e Mart isn't and shouldn't be representative of the total workforce.

Absolutely phenomenal film. Very highly recommended.

Episode 1 of this 10th and final :-( series airs Sunday at 9 PM.

Apollo 18 is awesome!

I went in with really no expectations, and was marginally prepared to be underwhelmed. I started the film with a small bag of popcorn and a medium drink--most films see me finish a small popcorn around the half-way mark and I usually get up once for a drink refill.

When this movie ended, I had two-thirds of a bag left and had drunk only half my Coke. I bought tickets for the very next showing, and I may go again tomorrow.

Really very highly recommended.