austenandrews

Re: how tall is life Did a bot hack Lord Ghee's account?

Re: Israeli Start-Up Makes Army Units Vanish Into Thin Air I figured that would be a primary use. Seems like it'd be of more restricted utility against human eyes, but against heat-seeking tech and even IR pattern matching it might be very effective.

Re: Israeli Start-Up Makes Army Units Vanish Into Thin Air Not foolproof - camo, not invisibility - but pretty slick. The part about disguising your heat signature as something else is nifty. I'd like to see a demo of that. How does it mask waste heat, though? Is there an internal heat sink or something? Is it possible to shift it to a non-FLIR frequency, maybe? Or is it only good until the plates heat up?

FLIR camo? Sounds interesting. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137553

Re: "Neat" Pictures I assume his name is Shawn.

Re: "Neat" Pictures That's impressive.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I'm up to season six of Buffy. Netflix makes it easier now. Probably not going to watch Angel though. I'm hovering just below my saturation point for Whedonspeak and nonsensical continuity.

Re: International Everything is a Spaceship Day I once had a rocket cake when I was a kid. Forgot about it until just now.

Re: "Neat" Pictures You how phlogiston is the material form of heat? Snow is the material form of cold. Primitive peoples north of the Gulf Coast still believe in its existence.

Re: Air Force bought it's first MECHA in '62 Reminds me of Kronos.

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language It's the standard SF consideration - the more alien you make something, the less intuitively applicable it is to various situations. Where you draw the line depends on how your setting works.

Re: Alien Language Vs Not Very Alien Language For sounds, maybe find a related collection of noises and approximate them with speech sounds/letters. Bird calls, mechanical sounds, musical instruments; some collection that you can intuitively relate as a set but are at different angles from normal human speech. Kind depends on the aliens, I suppose, but what if alien "names" don't work like ours? Maybe each alien has a collection of names, each to be used only in its proper context?

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! I love that he wants to go back to Giger for some fresh design work. "Worn out" indeed.

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! Ridley Scott talks Alien prequel. Very interesting.

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! This. Welch would have been way too glamorous for that bunch.

Re: SCIENCE!! One step closer to magnetic monopoles? Michio Kaku postulated using them as propulsion in the Earth's magnetic field.

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! The evidence doesn't support that scenario: Who's Oz?

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! I'm talking about when they were making Alien3, twenty years ago. She was the star of the show back then.

Re: So....the Universe....Discuss! Sure, but that's not the goal. As much as pop culture likes to think of the Big Bang as an iconic Beginning Of Everything, it's really just an event to be investigated.

Re: Jokes Did you hear about the famous dog who got dysentery?

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! Alien3 had to feature Ripley. She was the face of the franchise. It'd be like making a Pirates of the Caribbean movie without Johnny Depp - you could do it, and it might be good, but it's not necessarily the best thing for business.

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF190-Extreme_Crocball.jpg

Re: I love me some xenomorphs! So it's not that the aliens are good at basketball. Ripley's just that good. Well that makes a little more sense.

Re: Parallel Universe Star Wars Death Star plans get destroyed and Luke/Han/Obi-Wan don't get sucked into the story. Alderaan still gets blown to smithereens, but without tracking the Millennium Falcon, Tarkin doesn't find the rebel base. So it's the status quo from the start of the movie, more or less, but with the Rebellion quickly losing support against the threat of the Death Star. The destruction of Alderaan might have stirred Obi-Wan out of his hibernation, though. Maybe he could coax Luke away from home and take him to meet the rebels anyway. Obi-Wan could serve as the Rebellion's Force-guided counter to Vader. Good thing too, because the Death Star would have blown Hoth to dust in the time it took to land the walkers..

Re: Jokes