Shay Guy

Magazines like Weekly Shonen Jump, Ribon, and Big Comic serialize perhaps one or two dozen self-contained comics in one periodical, printed in black and white on cheap newsprint, covering a wide range of demographics and genres. Could this business model work on a large scale in the United States? DC and Marvel normally sell titles in individual pamphlets, but the magazine format could theoretically help publicize new series and have them support each other. Could it succeed in America, using American-created comics?

What does animation do best? If you wanted to tell a story in an audiovisual medium, why would you choose to animate it?

I suspect that animation's greatest strengths lie in speculative fiction. Look at some of the most influential anime series ever, like Yamato, Gundam, Macross, and Evangelion. Or look at one of the most acclaimed non-comedy American cartoons, Avatar. Any of these in live action would be prohibitively expensive, and might not work as well anyway.

When I type up a forum post, or part of a piece of fiction I have floating around in my head, sometimes my computer will have a problem and I'll lose what I wrote. Whenever this happens, it's always MUCH harder to do it again than it was the first time. Why is this?

It doesn't seem that anything has yet topped a certain mecha series from 1995, but what's come the closest?

Let's say you have a barrier. On both sides of the barrier, there is an extremely large (infinite would probably make for easier modeling) chamber filled with a fluid. There is a great pressure difference -- say on one side there's air at 1 bar (~100 kPa) and on the other is the equivalent of the bottom of the Mariana Trench (100 MPa, 1000 bar).

Now suppose you open an aperture in the barrier, say, two square meters. How do you calculate the speed with which the high-pressure fluid passes through the opening? I think I learned this in high school, but I've forgotten. T_T

Imagine that a new source of precious metals were discovered, from which they could be gathered so cheaply, and in such great quantities, that the prices of all precious metals per unit of mass were driven down to industrial-metal levels. How would this affect the world economy? What about businesses? How would it all adjust to such a great influx of historically rare commodities?

Even the best novel critic may find it almost impossible to write a book worth reading. I remember reading something about how we have different vocabularies for reading, listening, writing, and speaking, and I'm guessing this is a similar matter. But why is it?

Don't think there's much more to add, save that I'm doing some research for a story and looking for a material that can have a sizable pocket of vacuum in the middle without imploding. Manufacturing difficulties are irrelevant.

Or, to put it another way, is there any type of body armor that specializes in flame-based attacks?

You'd want something that doesn't burn or conduct heat very easily, so I'm guessing a ceramic of some sort. What are the best materials for those kinds of criteria? Disregarding expense for the moment.

Don't think there's much more to add, save that I'm doing some research for a story and looking for a material that can have a sizable pocket of vacuum in the middle without imploding. Manufacturing difficulties are irrelevant.

I'm trying to write a story that relies on this sort of thing. I know it was used as a plot device in Ender's Shadow, but little about the real neurology. Can anyone shed some light?

This idea has interested me for some time, mainly because of what is said here (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Sliding... ) on the differences in tone between the two anime series. It seems to me that there is some potential for dramatic conflict, if the appropriate writer were to try their hand at it. However, I haven't been able to find any stories of the sort, although BOTH series have been crossed frequently with Ranma 1/2. (SM/Ranma seem to mesh fairly naturally, while a number of techniques have been used for getting Ranma into the Eva plotline.) The vast majority of such crossovers, like fan fiction in general, may be bad, but I would be very surprised if there were NONE worth reading.

A few years ago, I read a story about a guy who invented a machine that could temporarily wipe your memories and knowledge of a movie before you watched it, and restore them afterwards. I think this was in "Analog" - does anyone know its name, or author, or issue?

The more comments on Digg I read, the more backlash against the pseudoscience called "intelligent design" I read, the more predictions of the future I read (e.g. Ray Kurzweil's implicit description of religion as "rationalization" for death which will become obsolete), and the more I hear about Richard Dawkins...the more I wonder if contempt for belief in God, organized religion, and so forth isn't inherent in the concept of atheism.

I dearly hope this is not true, because there is far too much contempt in this world as it is, and I am personally fairly religious. But how can atheism and contempt possibly be separated, when an atheist essentially believes I pray to a fictional being? And how else can so much apparent contempt be explained?

I attend the University of Houston, and I live in the dorm, but I go home (in Houston, too) for the weekends. I have µTorrent on my laptop, and I've noticed that my download speeds are dramatically greater at home, on the order of ten to twenty times faster. Why is this? Testing at speedtest.net, my overall download speed is ~400 kbps here, so why are torrents so slow? Does it have to do with a secure connection? (And while I'm at it, I can't connect to ZiRC with Chatzilla here either...even with :7001.)

Imagine that you are given the opportunity to communicate with a world that has the tech level of, say, the middle ages. Or, say, a fantasy world such as Middle-Earth or The Legend of Zelda's Hyrule. (The latter was actually what I was originally thinking of.) You can ask questions to ascertain to exact science/tech level there. Now then: if you wanted to accelerate their technological progress, what advice would you give them? (Trying not to come off to them as a total nutcase.)

The printing press would obviously be important, if they don't have it already. Ditto for the steam engine - but what would you tell them? That steam can be used to turn wheels and paddles? To separate the condenser? How to make a governor for it? And then electromagnetism; would you tell them to study lightning carefully, observe its effects on compasses, mix metals? Probably most important would be simply the scientific method. Your thoughts?

I've read a lot of the standard explanations, but here's the thing. Up to that point in the Bible - Genesis 1 - God was characterized by one thing: creation. All a (theoretical) first-time reader knows about God is that He creates. So does that mean that we, as God's "image," are creators as well? Jack Miles seems to think so ("God: A Biography"). What does this imply for those who have "created" very little, particularly in today's Web 2.0 age where all, regardless of skill, are invited to contribute their creations? What if you can't create anything at all, even crap? What are you then?

Michael Kinsley observed ( http://www.slate.com/id/2154507 ) that Internet users are becoming less and less anonymous. If so, why is the standard for behavior still so much lower than in meatspace? Even among relatively small forum communities, where people come to know each other to a fair extent, there are still many habitually extremely rude individuals, many of whom are grown adults.

To the best of my knowledge, the prevailing theory for this could be summarized by "Gabe's GIFT" ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 ). But is this really true, given that often, there's really not that much anonymity? Some people shrug it off with a comment along the lines of "LOL, it's the Internet." But why should this be an intrinsic characteristic of the Internet? Particularly with message boards, which allow you to carefully think through what you have to say before saying it; it's much easier to keep your temper. So WHY is there so much incivility?

An explanation: All techniques to build self-discipline that I have come across, all exercises and such, all have the same problem. They all seem to require you to *already have the self-discipline you're looking for.* I keep asking "how do I do this?" or "how do I not cave in?" and at some point, everybody ends up telling me "just DO it" or "you do it by doing it" - a piece of advice that I find about as useful as "you fly by flying." It's a brick wall that I keep coming up against. Maybe (probably) it's "just" a mental thing, but I don't know how to change my thought patterns either. There has to be SOME way around it - or is it already too late for me to back out of this dead end? What's the matter with me? And what's the solution?