(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best television books

I've read the book the comic is quoting. I very much recommend it.

You could probably go to your local bookstore and have them order you a copy, but if you don't want to do that:
Amazon.co.uk have a copy as well as abebooks.co.uk. There only seem to be used hardcover editions. For a new copy your only option seems to be paperback.

Have you tried this one? https://www.amazon.com/Lie-Groups-Physics-Geometry-Introduction/dp/0521884004

I've had it for a while, but only just started reading it. I would imagine this book goes into that quite a bit.

US link - also comes in Sith and Bounty Hunter flavours, not got them though.

I don't even need to look at your history or wishlist to know you not only want, but NEED this game of thrones should be a part of everyone's life!

Excuse me, but you seem to be operating on a few misunderstandings. Some of them major, some of them minor.

Your first misunderstanding is to think that EPS conduits are the same thing as warp plasma conduits. This is the kind of rookie mistake you'll make if you rely on wikis rather than proper engineering textbooks. Riddle me this: if EPS conduits carry warp plasma, why would the Cardassian built Terok Nor station, powered by standard deuterium fuelled fusion reactors and possessing no warp-flight capability, have EPS conduits? If you can find Terok Nor's secret anti-matter powered warp core, you should drop the Starfleet Corps of Engineers a line, because they'd probably be really interested to know where it is. Warp Plasma conduits are a completely different kettle of fish; the stuff that goes through them is comparable to matter from the core of a star. If EPS conduits carried that kind of material, entire decks would be vapourised by the smallest containment breach.

EPS conduits carry extremely high voltage, high ampage electric currents generated by fusion reactions. The reason that starships use this system is because EPS conduits are superconductive; if you routed this power through metal cables you'd have to deal with a number of problems, such as the entire ship melting in a matter of seconds from the waste heat generated. Older ships used to use ceramic superconductors, but it turns out containing a plasma is a lot easier, and more efficient, than keeping all your main power lines cooled to below 150 kelvins. The safety risks involved in the EPS conduit system are far outweighed by the safety risks of losing main power when some subsystem shorts in the middle of a neutron storm or a barrage of Klingon torpedoes. You're right in saying this doesn't directly power every electrical system on the ship; many low level systems (like lights, for example) are fed from the EPS conduits by conductive cabling. However, you seem to be massively under-estimating how many high power systems a starship has.

Why doesn't a starship disintegrate under flight stress when it goes from cruising to full impulse power? More importantly, why aren't all the crew instantly reduced to a thin red paste during even the simplest of manouevres? Impulse power can take a modern starship up to 80% of light-speed, at accelerations of 100's of g's. The reason the ships don't break apart and the crew stay in one piece is because the entire starship is pervaded by three incredibly important, and incredibly power intensive systems: the Structural Integrity Field (SIF), the inertial damping field, and the artificial gravity field. The systems that generate these fields are distributed throughout the vessel, and require an enormous amount of power. There are plenty of other major systems that have high power yields as well. For example, did you know that the central computer core of nearly all modern starships contains systems that generate 3,000 millicochrane plus warp-fields to allow for superluminal computation? Those don't run on the same current as the PADD you use to play Parrises Squares Manager and watch Rigellian porn, let me tell you.

Finally, you seem to be under the (fairly common) misunderstanding that systems that take power from the EPS conduits actually run on the plasma directly; that the plasma flows through them and does work. This is a pretty basic error. The energy that the EPS delivers is plain old electricity; most systems tap electrical energy off the EPS safely using electromagnetic couplings. Using plasma as the conductive medium outside the conduits and a few specific high-energy applications would lead to some ridiculously bulky hardware; that shit doesn't contain itself, as many a Sickbay-bound engineer will tell you.

I dumped my cheating girlfriend two weeks ago. Not a big life changing decision, but flabbergasted none the less.

Edit : The force shall set me free

Straight people in general obsess with homosexuality, not just homophobes. It's a huge cultural moment. We're an Other and we hold secrets to life and sex they think are refused to them.

For this, I bring your attention to gay writer Mark Simpson's: It's a Queer World: Deviant Adventures in Pop Culture.

Simpson argues that we're shifting from a society in which heterosexuality is deemed "normal" and homosexuality "abnormal" to one in which different combinations of sexuality and gender roles are totally compatible. As that happens, the assurances that heterosexuals get for being heterosexual -- stability, commitment, security -- become increasingly called into question. The rise in divorce and changing gender roles is making heterosexuality seem as not so stable as it once was. After all, how is heterosexuality "normal" when it is exposed for being as fucked up and dysfunctional as it is? Straight people no longer have any guarantees (if they ever did) that their life will be any better when buying into the heterosexual norm, so what do you do? And of course by the "norm" I mean cultural norms and the way heterosexuality is expressed, not sexual attraction per se.

The elevation of us gays to prominent cultural figures; no, a cultural force or tsunami, then has much to do with this breakdown. As heterosexuals try to grapple with this new reality, we gays are here living in our own reality which we've defined and made central to our lives. We gays have defined ourselves and have come to grips with who we really are, while straight people are increasingly unsure of themselves. Therefore, straight people fear what we represent but also envy us, and are beginning to copy us in everything from style to acting as passive figures of desire who are acted upon and desired by women, not the other way around.

> Whatever the truth behind the sex-confessional imperative of the late twentieth century, homosexuals are, more than anyone else, creatures of this "secret of sex" narrative. It is taken as a given that it is their "secret of sex" -- so much more secret because it was so much more shameful -- which holds the key to their identity; their sexuality is what defines them and is how they choose to define themselves when they "come out." In fact, the coming-out narrative is a myth for our time, a myth in which the homosexual takes on the status of a modern religious hero who, through a process of testing sexual self-inquiry, soul-searching, and self-examination, arrives at the answer to the question "Who am I?" in terms of the sex-confessional question "Whom do I desire?" and then shares that discovery with the world. Or, more succinctly, the homosexual learns to say "yes" to sex and thus to himself. And saying "yes" to oneself is by far the most virtuous thing anyone can do these days; saying "no," the worst possible crime. In short, the homosexual is the existential, expressive star of our modern, individualistic, introspective universe.

For another example, see straight football star Michael Irvin "coming out" as a supporter of GLBT equality on the cover of Out magazine. We're in a bizarre moment in which the ultimate expression of heterosexuality in the Western mind -- a black football star -- is redefined as not only supportive of gay rights, but also pampered, dressed-up, exfoliated and desired for everyone to see.

YK: The value of the debate for many political scientists is questionable. Given that people (as a number of questions in this AMA have rightly suggested!) are skilled at dismissing and ignoring the information that they disagree with, it is difficult to imagine that people are going to be persuaded by anything that happens at the debate. Some scholars have seen some post-debate shifts among certain groups of voters (for example, Hillygus and Jackman’s 2003 [piece] (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-5907.00041/full) on decision-making in the 2000) election, but arguably responses to the debate may be based on more than just the facts discussed (Jamie Druckman shows this in his [paper] (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2508.t01-1-00015/full) on debate winners):
There is also some research that suggests that the actual debate – candidates arguing and fighting – may lead people to either mistrust or retreat from politics. In some of her [work] (https://www.amazon.com/Your-Face-Politics-Consequences-Uncivil-Media/dp/0691173532/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1478274480&sr=8-2&keywords=Diana+Mutz) Diana Mutz shows that political debates – especially if they are “uncivil” – can have negative effects on people.

In our book, Samara Klar and I suggest that seeing argumentative politics makes people want to hide their partisanship and pretend to be independents.

So, I think some of this points to the idea that debates aren’t actually all that helpful.

On the other hand, its possible that debates are “exciting” – which makes more people tune in just to see the spectacle, which helps people learn something about politics. So, this may be a silver lining of the combative debate.

Thank you! That site is much cleaner than most prepper blogs; it reminded me of The Wirecutter, but for prepping. And I imagine that that it's a relatively few people that have spent time with X-risk futurists and are into prepping. Interesting.

That Leah Stokes tweet they quoted,

>Love it when our most prominent outlets give voice to doomsday climate predictions that are wildly out of step with reality.

I hope she says that about... pretty much every climate change article in a major publication these days.

Those 3 points boil it down quite nicely, and I do think they cover the main sources of difference. It reminds me of the Remembrance of Earth's Past and the >!everyone survives or everyone dies, no 'saving remnant'!< attitude in the last book. For some reason it surprises me coming from journalists.

>I don't think modern environmentalists, even the ones with a more apocalyptic bent, are hostile to all localist solutions

Totally agreed! The hopeless apocalypticism seems most common among the "thinkpiece crowd" and many of the environmentalists I read are closer to that blog you mentioned, and the "Plan A/Plan B" bent. Resilience acts a sort of blog-host and aggregator combined, and I think the balance is slightly in favor of "Plan A/Plan B," but the current top post is a review of Naomi Klein's new book that says hope is dangerous and stupid.

>Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous.

I think it's a weird line to walk; I understand wanting to avoid complacency, but push too hard on the hopeless narrative and you'll just get people fiddling while Rome burns and amusing themselves to death.

>focusing on local solutions is fine in general, but can sometimes function as a rationalization for NIMBYism and a refusal to accept environmental trade-offs

Agreed. It's a danger, just like the potential abuses and overreaches of any policy. The NIMBY side of localism also interacts badly with the recent pushes for more immigration, which I think is what's behind most of the ire.

I am on the side of decentralization, sustainability, and localism, rather than... utter hopelessness and doomsaying.