Recent content by Ken Fabian

Imaginary weapons can be easily made of imaginary 'wear resistant' materials, or just don't ever mention barrel wear - problem fixed. Suspension of disbelief - an essential SF story ingredient - is not a matter of the story details conforming to reality. There wouldn't be SF stories if...

I think the problems rising sea levels bring are going to be worst for those who do not have the economic resources to move or are denied entry or residency or acceptance or opportunity if they attempt to do so. The options available to those with sufficient economic prosperity - build better...

Plasma explosions would be fine for a fictional projectile weapon - just don't say how they would work. It is fiction - there isn't any requirement that the technologies should actually work. For lots of SF the key technologies more often don't exist and wouldn't work but it doesn't detract...

The warming world is the principle evidence - welcome to the test tube. I would much prefer computer modeling well in advance myself.

Now it is more cost effective to over-build and just add more fixed PV. Flat panels are easiest to make and to install. It is almost exclusively 'fixed' flat panels now; tracking systems are rarely cost effective. Lack of space/shading is a site specific problem best fixed by choosing a...

@Dani Rose Seems more likely there is an enduring absence of internal homogeneity that goes way back, possibly to the earliest coalescence of disparate asteroid and cometary materials into this planet. Or arising from subsequent internal circulations and geo-chemical processes that...

Not sure that subjecting impregnated chimps or other primates to it as a proxy and is good and ethical science either, but I have a deep distaste for cruelty, to animals as well as humans, that is not universally shared. But I also don't see 'colonising' moon or Mars for the usually cited...

Not sure what you are after. Net metering is not strictly a product of the inverter type, it is how the system is wired to the meter and the type of meter - and crucially, what the rules about it are. Inverters and grid connections need to conform to appropriate local requirements. Different...

The vestibular effects look quite serious and a persistent mismatch between what eyes see and what the inner ears sense can be nauseating and disorienting. (I recall [don't have a link offhand] a study using a room rotating around a vertical axis - the inner ear senses rotation in that direction...

Government funded media can be 'at arms length'. Australia's experience (possibly UK and elsewhere too) is that such media are not government mouthpieces and can and do criticise governments, parties and initiatives. I think more often with more freedom and less bias than commercial media - in...

Freedom of speech looks different to freedom of 'the press'. The latter is the freedom of press owners to promote their views widely whilst suppressing (or mocking or misrepresenting) others, including political partisan ones, with minimal constraints. They can be held accountable for slander...

@DOGE3500 The invitation to expand on your OP and make/argue your point, whatever that point is, remains open. As it is the OP doesn't present a question and as a comment on the Judd et al study it is ambiguous and leaves too much to the reader's assumptions. My assumption that it is a...

Bass is widely underrated (along with drummers) - plenty of online info about gerry mulligan but the band's bassist(s)? Even finding the man's name took some searching. That piece really impressed me - I keep trying for the right superlatives but in the end... pivotal keeps coming to mind. It...

@Hornbein What guys like that could do with an upright bass is awesmacking. On electric bass I do like Chris Squire, but he has plenty of ratedness. Just listened again to Yessongs, the live recording - the bass just floors me every time I hear it.

Agreed, in a backhanded way since he did get plenty of accolades. A guy who can make a friend's song about crying guitars that features his best friend making one cry... about the bass? Paul's brilliance with bass was exasperating for George at times I suspect. I admit a liking for some of the...