Recent content by Artribution

It is accurate, though. The gradient spans the width of the image. You may need to adjust your monitor's brightness settings or zoom in closely to see it.

I didn't notice that until now, but yeah, it's the leading edge that's longer, not the trailing edge. I realize it doesn't really mean anything, but just out of curiosity, I made a more mathematically accurate gradient: And applied a uniform blur: And some enhancement:

I mean a transiting exoplanet tends to produce a light curve that looks like this: A sudden, precipitous ingress and egress leveling out to become a flatter middle section - because the planet is a single mass, and it's either "all there" or all not. The light curves from KIC 8462852 are the...

I noticed a couple of things about that light curve. First: it's not symmetrical. One side is steeper than the other. Second: It's diffuse on the sides but sharp in the middle. That's the opposite of what an exoplanet transit tends to look like: In Photoshop, I converted the object's light...

I don't have any suggestions for villain how-to books. But a line from Legend of the Galactic Heroes comes to mind: "There are few wars between good and evil; most are between one good and another good." He was also motivated by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. 11 million Germans served in...

It seems a disintegrating planet shouldn't create a spherical cloud, though. It should be a long, diffuse trailing cloud - a ring fragment. Like when moons and asteroids disintegrate around planets. You get a ring of debris, not a spherical cloud. On the other hand, what if the disintegrating...

Aliens: Thank you, Earth ape. We'd love to have a look at one of your designs.

Eh? In my dissent from the murder-your-darlings opinion, I'm basically saying, write the way you want. I'm not imposing a style or method. Of course, sometimes your darlings actually are bad, but if you have people to critique your story, you should be able to identify the bad parts whether...

Other opinions? ...I'm afraid I don't see the point.

Here, I've found my own literary authority to tell you all how much crap the "murder your darlings" thing is: It means that if you have fallen in love with a particular piece of your writing, beware. Or as the American writer Elmore Leonard once (allegedly—if I spend any more time on Google I...

Well, I do. As noted, he makes a conscious decision to write in a very "plain" style, as he calls it. It's not a criticism to say his style of prose is basic and utilitarian. That's how he intends it to be. And as part of his writing process, it does help to explain his amazing prolificity...

Sure, and I've never heard Stephen King described as a particularly brilliant writer when it comes to style, either. He's often said he prefers to write prose in a "plain" style that "gets the job done". It's been said he writes novels like he'd build a shelf in his garage. Which makes sense...

I profoundly hate this advice. It originates from an essay on writing by British novelist Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. If you've never heard of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and can't recall any of his novels, don't feel bad. No one can, probably because his rule kept him from writing anything he might...

Or maybe the male birds have to grow continuously larger because the female birds simply don't want to mate and have to be overpowered, and there's an arms race between them. Birds are messed up. That's what I meant. Sauropod young were preyed on by theropods and their size was their only...

Sexual selection? That's a big thing with birds, after all. Maybe the female only mates with the biggest male. Or the bigger males simply kill the smaller ones. Or it could be there were other predators/prey driving an arms race, but they've died off since. Well, skeletal pneumaticity varies...